September 20
“Then believed they His words; they sang His praise.
They soon forgat His works; they waited not for His counsel: but
lusted exceedingly in the wilderness, and tempted God in the desert.
And He gave them their request; -- but sent leanness into their soul.
(Psalm 106:12-15)
Have you ever known a weakening in the inward places of your soul because
you had let slip the memory of what your God did in the past?
You had believed His words, you had sung His praises,
for in very truth you had seen His words fulfilled.
And then, somehow, the memory faded,
blotted out by a disappointment
perhaps, and you “forgat
His works.”
I have known this happen, and I have proved that after such forgetfulness prayer becomes less adventurous, less brave in faith and expectation. We ask for the smaller rather than the greater things, and then (as in the story from which I am quoting) “leanness" enters into the soul.
May the Lord, by His Spirit, quicken our memories, and help us to do our part by gathering
up the forces of memory. It is worthwhile to do anything that will help us to this.
“We will remember Thy love” (Song of Solomon 1:4).
“And thou shalt remember all the way the Lord
thy God led thee.” (Deuteronomy 8:2)
(Edges of His ways - Amy Carmichael)
N.J. Hiebert - 6382
September 21
“But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part,
which shall not be taken away from her.”
(Luke 10:42)
ONE THING IS NEEDFUL
Martha was busy preparing a good meal and our Lord did not mean that it was unimportant.
But Martha was flustered and bothered over matters of secondary importance
and our Lord was emphasizing what matters most,
our communion with Him.
To hate father and mother in comparison to our love for Him was a similar emphasis.
Even our religious activity, though sincere and well-intended,
can take precedence over sitting at His feet.
Ephesus (Revelation 2:4) was busy but had left her first love.
(And we can be at so many church meetings that we neglect the
home, which is the other side of the coin!)
(All the Days - Vance Havner)
September 22
"The time is short!" 1 Corinthians 7:29
"Redeeming the time!" Ephesians 5:16
"Tis not for man to trifle! Life is brief,
And sin is here.
Our age is but the falling of a leaf,
A dropping tear.
We have no time to sport away the hours,
All must be earnest in a world like ours.
"Not many lives, but only one, have we,
One, only one!
How sacred should that one life ever be,
That narrow span!
Day after day filled up with blessed toil,
Hour after hour still bringing in new spoil."
(Horatius Bonar)
"So teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom!”
(Psalm 90:12)
September 23
THE EVIDENCE GOD HAS GIVEN OF HIS LOVE
"Love suffereth long and is kind. . .”
(1 Corinthians 13:4)
Have we ever thought that if pain and suffering had not entered
the world we never could have known Divine love, as we know it now?
For the test of love is, how much is it willing to bear for the sake of others?
“Love suffereth long and is kind.”
Had there been no pain and no suffering to endure,
then love would have lacked an opportunity to display itself.
Let us never forget that pain, and pain alone, made it possible for God fully to reveal Himself.
Christ felt pain—He groaned—He suffered agony—He shed tears.
Weariness, want, and woe were His portion.
Had no such things existed, what losers had we been!
We never could have known Him as we know Him now.
(Angels in White - Russell Elliot)
September 24
“Think on (Meditate upon) these things.”
(Philippians 4:8)
God is my only necessity - God is my only resource.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
God wants to be everything to every one of us at every moment.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Christianity is CONformative, and not REformative.
We belong to an entirely new thing; every particle of power comes from Christ in glory.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
God delights in me.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Get God’s estimate of God’s things, and God’s estimate of everything.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Our difficulties should be food for faith - not material for failure.
Convert every difficulty into prayer.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If we go through a difficulty with God, all that bound us will be destroyed (Daniel 3:24, 25)
and all that is of God will stand.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
(Comforted of God - A.J. Pollock)
N.J. Hiebert - 6386
September 25
"And Enoch walked with God after he begat Methuselah three hundred years, and begat sons and daughters: And all the days of Enoch were three hundred sixty and five years:
And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him.” (Genesis 5:22, 24)
Twice we are told that “Enoch walked with God”.
His was a walk of complete separation from the world and all else that is opposed to God.
Enoch’s name means “consecration“. And for 300 years in a dark, difficult day he lived up to its meaning.
“It is very evident that Enoch knew nothing whatever about the mode of
‘making the best of both worlds’ (C.H.M.).
To him there was but one world.
Thus it should be with us.
(W. Ross Rainey)
“O Master, let me walk with Thee, in lowly paths of service free;
Tell me Thy secret; help me bear, the strain of toil, the fret of care."
(Washington Gladden 1836-1918)
N.J. Hiebert - 6387
September 26
“And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge,
that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God.”
(Ephesians 3:19)
O what rest . . . for the poor soul when he sees he has to do
with One who has conquered all enemies for him. . . .
Before he came to the consciousness of this,
the book of his daily transgressions
appeared to ascend up before God,
black with the catalogue of his
offences, on every leaf of
which was written,
Sin, sin, sin;
But now these blackened characters are effaced,
and on each page is transcribed in letters of
blood, in the blood of God’s dear Lamb,
Love, love, love.
(Pilgrim Portion for the Day of Rest)
N.J. Hiebert - 6388
September 27
“Whoso is wise, and will observe these things, even they
shall understand the loving kindness of the Lord.”
(Psalm 107:43)
On a low branch in the woods up the river, I found a cocoon.
Such a gray, drab little thing, I thought as I rested on a rock near it.
But there was life shut up in that dark bit of unpromising shell—
that would soon emerge with shining colourful wings. Not all at once.
The little creature would hang tremulously at first to the branch and move
its wings slowly up and down until they took on form and beauty.
Cocoon experiences are not limited to those little creatures, I mused, flipping a
pebble into the water. But deep in the heart of life’s grayest days,
God is preparing wings and delicate beauty and strength.
Moses spent his cocoon days in the wilderness, but he emerged after
forty years with strength to accomplish a great work for God.
Wrapped in the gloom of sorrow, trial, perplexity, we may
spend wintry days, but the spring will come when the
purpose of those days will manifest itself as
slowly as the cocoon breaks about us and
we come out again into sunlit days,
changed, but more glorious
than when we went in.
The thickest clouds bring the heaviest shower of blessing.
(Traveling Toward Sunrise)
N.J. Hiebert - 6389
September 28
THE CHRISTIAN AND THE WORLD
"And we know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness".
(1 John 5:19)
The New Testament teaches that however much the world may change on the surface,
it is always under the control of evil and of sin.
This admits that the powers of evil can be mollified (calmed) a great deal,
and they have been mollified during the passing of the centuries.
There have been periods when the world has been getting better,
but these have been followed by a terrible declension,
and the teaching of the New Testament is that the
whole time the world has been lying
"in the wicked one."
According to the New Testament (and here we get the realism), the world will always be the world;
it will never get better. I do not know the future. There may be another period of apparent
reform and improvement, but the world will still be lying "in the wicked one," and
indeed the New Testament tells us it may "wax worse and worse" (2 Timothy 3:13).
Indeed the evil of the world is so essentially a part of it and its life that its final
outlook will be judgment and destruction.
You will find this teaching everywhere.
throughout the scriptures.
The evil in the world cannot be taken out; it is to be destroyed.
There is to be an ultimate climax, and
there will be a terrible end.
(Martyn Lloyd-Jones - Walking with God)
N.J. Hiebert - 6390
September 29
“In My Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto Myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.”
(John 14:2-3)
“I AM the WAY, the TRUTH, and the LIFE: no man cometh unto the Father, but by Me.”
(John 14:6)
No one fully appreciates the gospel who leaves out the blessed hope of the Lord’s
return to receive His people to be with Himself in the Father’s house. This is
the glad consummation of the believer’s life of faith and love and hope.
Death is never set before the believer as his hope—but always it is the
Lord’s return for which he is to wait.
The gospel is God’s good news about His Son, and therefore, when fully preached, necessarily
includes the proclamation of His true sinless humanity, His deity, His virgin birth, His
vicarious sacrifice, His glorious resurrection, His present session as Advocate
and High Priest at God’s right hand in heaven, and His coming again to
reign in power and righteousness when all His redeemed
will be associated with Him.
All these precious truths are included in the word of the truth of the gospel.
(H.A. Ironside)
N.J. Hiebert - 6391
September 30
"For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning,
that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.”
(Romans 15:4)
Can you think of a time when you faced a stiff test and God provided a solution?
Then, after that, God brought you to a place of rest and peace?
In Exodus there is an account where the Children of Israel
provided us something from which we can learn a lesson.
Not long after God’s great deliverance of them from Egyptian slavery, and after they had
miraculously passed though the Red Sea on dry ground, they found themselves out
of water and thirsty. When they did come to water it was bitter. They grumbled.
That place was called Marah, which means “bitter.” We encounter bitter circumstances too. But God showed Moses a particular piece of wood; Moses threw it into the water and the water became sweet.
(Exodus 15:23-25)
Could that piece of wood make us think of the cross of Christ, that wood by which
we find life when we put our trust in what took place there?
So, they and all their livestock were revitalized so they could go on. God then made a decree that if they listened to His voice, paid attention to His commands and kept His decrees, He would spare
them from the diseases they’d been exposed to in Egypt. (Exodus15:26)
Where did God lead them next? To a place called Elim: “And they came to Elim,
where were twelve wells of water, and threescore and ten palm trees:
and they encamped there by the waters” (Exodus 15:27).
(Adapted - L.I.F.E. lines - F.P.)
N.J. Hiebert - 6392
“The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the
voice of the Son of God; and they that hear shall live”.
(John 5:25)
What is a Christian? You say a "living stone.”
And what is a stone? A stone is a bit of a rock.
See what security it gives!
Where first do we get the illustration?
In Peter’s own case.
Peter is brought to Jesus, and what does Jesus say?
“Thou shalt be called Cephas, which is by interpretation a stone” (John 1:42)
This act of the Lord’s is most significant.
He takes the place of being Simon’s Lord, and his possessor.
Changing the name always indicated that the person whose name was changed,
became the possession, or vassal (subject) of the one who changed his name.
How does this change of name take place?
The Lord speaks to Peter.
How do we become living stones?
Because we have heard the voice of the Son of God. (John 5:25).
(Simon Peter - W.T.P. Wolston)
N.J. Hiebert - 6393
“Tell me, O thou whom my soul loveth, where thou feedest, where thou makest thy flock to rest
at noon; for why should I be as one that turneth aside by the flocks of thy companions?”
(Song of Solomon 1:7)
The word appreciation seems more fitly to express the little I know of this blessed matter,
than the idea of the sensations of an earnest, ardent affection.
What is there in existence, I inquire, that I care
more for than my Saviour—that I
would prefer to Him?
What is this? Is it love?
Who else—what else—is loved more?
But, oh! the day draws near, when these eyes shall see the King in His glory.
Then shall this cold, dull heart be ravished with His beauty,
and burn for ever with a pure flame of
perfect love for Him alone.
“Soon shall our eyes behold Thee with rapture, face to face;
And, resting there in glory, we’ll sing Thy power and grace:
Thy beauty, Lord, and glory, the wonders of Thy love,
Shall be the endless story of all Thy saints above.”
(J.G. Deck)
N.J. Hiebert - 6394
No comments:
Post a Comment