“A certain man made a GREAT supper, and bade many: and sent his servant
at suppertime to say to them that were bidden, come;
for all things are now ready.”
(Luke 14:16-17)
"How shall we escape, if we neglect so GREAT salvation."
(Hebrews 2:3)
"Between us and you there is a GREAT gulf fixed.”
(Luke 16:26)
Oh! the love that drew salvation’s plan;
Oh! the grace that brought it down to man;
Oh! the mighty gulf that God did span at Calvary.
Mercy there was great, and grace was free;
Pardon there was multiplied to me;
There my burdened soul found liberty
At Calvary.
(William R. Newell - 1895)
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May 22
“Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.”
(Matthew 4:19)
I do not suppose that the Lord Jesus says exactly those words to everybody.
He does not call everybody to give up their temporal employment, and go forth in the ministry of the gospel, or to go out as missionaries to distant lands.
But He does call everybody to be devoted to Himself. If devoted to Him, whatsoever your calling in life, whatsoever your station, however you may be occupied, you will be enabled to glorify Him.
And though it may not be for you to do the work of an evangelist, though it may not
be for you to go out as an apostle as Peter did, you will be able to influence others by your
life, a life lived for God, which is the best testimony anyone can give to the saving grace of God.
Fear not. It is true you are a sinner in yourself, but if your trust is in Christ and you are resting
in Him who died to save you, in Him who shed His blood to put away
your guilt, you can go forth in confidence to serve.
“From henceforth thou shalt catch men".
(H. A. Ironside)
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May 23
“All that the Father giveth me shall come to me;
and him that cometh to Me I will
in no wise cast out.”
(John 6:37)
An offered gift must be either accepted or refused.
Can he have refused it when He has said,
“Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out”?
If not, then it must have been accepted.
It is just the same process as when we came to Him first of all,
with the intolerable burden of our sins.
There was no help for it but to come with them to Him,
and take His word for it that He would not and did not cast us out.
And so coming, so believing, we found rest to our souls;
we found that His word was true, and that his
taking away our sins was a reality.
(Kept for the Master’s Use - Francis Ridley Havergal)
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May 24
“I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the
cankerworm, and the caterpillar, and the palmer-worm,
my great army which I sent among you.”
(Joel 2:25)
“My days are in the yellow leaf, the flowers and fruits of love are gone;
The worm the canker, and the grief are mine alone.”
(Lord Byron)
How few there are into whose life the locusts have not come at some time or other.
You may have had to spend years in pain and weariness; a burden to yourself and to others.
Or, constant failure may have dogged your efforts as to some pursuit in life in which you have striven for success. Your expenditure of toil, and, it may be, of treasure has brought you no reward. Or, you may be one who has to look back over years of doubt and barren speculation.
You cast off your first faith, and since then you have followed one ‘will o’ the wisp’
after another only to find yourself in deeper darkness.
One view after another has had to be abandoned, and there is nothing left for it now except an utter blank or a return to simple faith in the Bible, and to a refuge in the atoning work of Christ.
How cruelly the locusts of unbelief have wasted the years!
Years of of useless thought in which you have wandered in a hopeless maze, where you have arrived at nothing, and, indeed, are less assured of anything than when you set out.
In all these cases, and others too numerous to mention, the promise holds good,
"I will restore to you the years that the locust have eaten.”
(Angels in White - Russell Elliott)
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May 25
“The mountains melted from before the Lord."
(Judges 5:5)
“Ah Lord God! Behold, Thou hast made the heaven and
earth by Thy great power and stretched out arm,
and there is nothing too hard for Thee.”
(Jeremiah 32:17)
The dust of earth He measures out; He numbers all the stars of space;
His mighty scales the mountains weigh, but what can weigh His grace?
His fingers spread the heavens forth; He cups the seas within His hand,
But who His mercies can compute, unnumbered as the sand?
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May 26
“Ye have compassed this mountain long enough:
turn . . . northward.”
(Deuteronomy 2:3)
Last summer a party of us lost our way among the lakes of Ontario.
A violent storm came up, but we found shelter under a great rock till the storm raged past.
Then we resumed our hunt dispiritedly until one said, “Let us climb this rock; we may spy the trail from the top.”
It was a hard climb, but the challenge of the rock restored our courage.
As we conquered the heights we gained confidence and mastery, and the hill top gave us a vision of our way out.
Get high enough up, you will be above the fog; and while the men down in it,
are squabbling as to whether there is anything outside the mist,
you from your sunny station will see the far off coasts, and
haply catch some whiff of perfume from their shores,
or see some glinting of glory upon the shining
turrets of “the city that hath foundations.”
The soul which hath launched itself forth upon God is in a free place,
filled with the fresh air of the hills of God.
(Springs in the Valley)
Oh, there are heavenly heights to reach in many a fearful place,
While the poor, timid heir of God lies blindly on his face;
Lies languishing for light Divine that he shall never see
’Till he goes forward at Thy sign, and trusts himself to Thee.
(C. A. Fox)
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May 27
Mary of Bethany
This woman is mentioned three times in the New Testament
and on each occasion she is found at the
same place—at Jesus' feet.
We find her there:
As a Learner:
“Mary . . . sat at Jesus feet and heard His word . . . Mary hath chosen
that good part which shall not be taken away from her.”
(Luke 10:39,42)
As a Mourner:
“When Mary was come where Jesus was, and saw Him,
she fell down at His feet, saying unto Him,
Lord, if Thou hadst been here,
my brother had not died.”
(John 11:32)
AS a Worshipper
“Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard,
very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped His
feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment.”
(John 12:3)
(The Wonderful Word - G. Henderson)
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May 28
"Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him.
For He knoweth our frame; He remembereth that we are dust."
(Psalm 103:13-14)
He knoweth the need of my life for shelter and raiment and food;
In each trifling care of the day the word of His promise is good;
He knoweth my thoughts from afar, the wish that I never have told,
And every unspoken desire His wisdom doth grant or withhold.
He knoweth me—yet He can love, can wait with love’s patience divine,
My stubborn and arrogant heart its will to His own to resign;
He knoweth my frame is but dust;
He knoweth how much it can bear;
I rest in that knowledge supreme; I trust in His power and care.
(Flint’s Best-loved Poems)
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May 29
"The LORD is good: His mercy is everlasting; and
His truth endureth to all generations.”
(Psalm 100:5)
The Lord is the very essence of goodness. All His works are acts of love.
His mercy flows on like a river.
Goodness and mercy are attributes of God that bring man to repentance toward God.
When they come they find that His truth unswervingly endures.
Some may deny truth; but they can never change it. Now that we have tasted His goodness and mercy, it is needful that our ideas conform to God’s reality; because He will never alter truth to suit our ideas.
(Doug Kazen)
Every joy or trial falleth from above, traced upon our dial by the Sun of love.
We may trust Him fully, all for us to do, they who trust Him wholly, find Him wholly true.
(Frances Ridley Havergal)
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May 30
“That in all things He might have the pre-eminence.”
(Colossians 1:18)
If I am not giving Christ the first place in my heart
I am not in accord with the mind of God.
The most miserable man on the face of the earth is the
Christian who is trying to enjoy both worlds.
(Edward Dennett)
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May 31
"Having loved His own which were in the world,
He loved them unto the end.”
(John 13:1)
Oh, how sweet this experience of Christ’s love in this cold world!
When the heart is chilled, and yearning for a little warmth,
how sweet to turn to the Lord Jesus and
feel the warmth of His love!
Ah, looking up to Him, the heart is always warmed.
If you see any beauty in Christ, and say,
“I desire to have that,” God will work it in you.
Can you spread out no wants before Christ, the Giver, the Healer?
Believers grieve the Spirit by not using Christ,
and then God must compel them to do it.
(G.V. Wigram)
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June 1
