Morning, May 2 Go To Evening Reading
“I pray not that thou shouldst take them out of the world.”
—John 17:15
It is a sweet and blessed event that will occur to all believers in God’s time—the going home to be with Jesus. In a few more years, the Lord’s soldiers, who are now fighting “the good fight of faith,” will have done with conflict and entered into their Lord's joy. But although Christ prays that his people may eventually be with him where he is, he does not ask that they may be taken at once away from this world to heaven. He wishes them to stay here. Yet how frequently does the wearied pilgrim put up the prayer, “O that I had wings like a dove! for then would I fly away and be at rest;” but Christ does not pray like that; he leaves us in his Father’s hands, until, like shocks of corn fully ripe, we shall each be gathered into our Master’s garner. Jesus does not plead for our instant removal by death, for to abide in the flesh is needful for others if not profitable for ourselves. He asks that we may be kept from evil, but he never asks for us to be admitted to the inheritance in glory till we are of full age. Christians often want to die when they have any trouble. Ask them why, and they say, “Because we would be with the Lord.” We fear it is not so much because they long to be with the Lord as they are tired of their troubles; otherwise, they desire to get r. They would feel the same wish to die at other times when not under the pressure of trial. They want to go home, not so much for the Saviour’s company, as to be at rest. Now, it is quite right to desire to depart if we can do it in the same spirit that Paul did because to be with Christ is far better, but the wish to escape from trouble is selfish. Instead, let your care and wish be to glorify God by your life here as long as he pleases, even though it may be amid toil, conflict, and suffering, and leave him to say when “it is enough.”
Go To Morning Reading Evening, May 2
“These all died in faith.”
—Hebrews 11:13
Behold the epitaph of all those blessed saints who fell asleep before the coming of our Lord! It matters nothing how else they died, whether of old age or by violent means; this one point, in which they all agree, is the most worthy of record, “they all died in faith.” In faith, they lived—their comfort, their guide, their motive, and their support; and in the same spiritual grace, they died, ending their life song in the sweet strain they had so long continued. They did not die resting in the flesh or upon their own attainments; they made no advance from their first way of acceptance with God but held to the way of faith to the end. Faith is as precious to die by as to live by.
Dying in faith has a distinct reference to the past. They believed the promises that had gone before and were assured that their sins would be blotted out through the mercy of God. Dying in faith has to do with the present. These saints were confident of their acceptance of God; they enjoyed the beams of his love and rested in his faithfulness. Dying in faith looks into the future. They fell asleep, affirming that the Messiah would surely come and that they would rise from their graves to behold him when he would appear upon the earth in the last days. To them, the pains of death were but the birth pangs of a better state. Take courage, my soul, as thou readest this epitaph. Thy course, through grace, is one of faith, and sight seldom cheers thee; this has also been the pathway of the brightest and the best. Faith was the orbit in which these stars of the first magnitude moved all the time of their shining here, and happy art thou that it is thine. Look anew tonight to Jesus, the author and finisher of thy faith, and thank him for giving thee like precious faith with souls now in glory.
C. H. Spurgeon, Morning and Evening: Daily Readings (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1896).
May 2: Don’t Focus on Overcoming
Judges 2:11–3:31; Philippians 1:12–18; Psalm 63–64
When I go through difficult circumstances, I want the end. I’m so focused on escape and overcoming that I barely think about what God might teach me through that experience. And I’m certainly not thinking about how He might be using me to witness to others.
Paul was on a completely different wavelength. In his letter to the church at Philippi, he sets his Roman imprisonment in context: “Now I want you to know, brothers, that my circumstances have happened instead for the progress of the gospel so that my imprisonment in Christ has become known in the whole praetorium and to all the rest” (Phil 1:12–13).
Paul wasn’t just enduring or anticipating the end of his imprisonment. He was using his experience to be a witness for Christ. His captors must have wondered: what makes a person willing to suffer like this? What makes his message worth imprisonment?
Paul’s circumstances didn’t merely create waves with those he testified to. Other believers were emboldened by Paul’s endurance and preached the gospel without fear (Phil 1:14).
It’s not natural to be filled with joy amid challenging times, and it’s not expected to have a sense of purpose when everything appears to be going wrong. We from ourselves or others during these times, but God wants to refine and use us. He’s allowing us to display the “peace of God that surpasses all understanding.” Don’t expect me as a testimony to Christ’s redemptive work (Phil 4:7). Are you responding?
How can you use your difficult circumstances to point others toward Christ?
Rebecca Van Noord
John D. Barry and Rebecca Kruyswijk, Connect the Testaments: A One-Year Daily Devotional with Bible Reading Plan (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2012).
May 2nd
The passion of patience
Though it tarry, wait for it. Hab. 2:3.
Patience is not indifference; patience conveys the idea of a solid rock withstanding all onslaughts. The vision of God is the source of patience because it imparts a moral inspiration. Moses endured, not because he had an ideal of right and duty, but because he had a vision of God. He “endured, as seeing Him Who is invisible.” A man with the vision of God is not devoted to a cause or any particular issue; he is dedicated to Himself. You always know when the vision is of God because of the inspiration that comes with it; things come with largeness and tonic to life because everything is energized by God. If God gives you a time spiritually, as He gave His Son actually, of temptation in the wilderness, with no word from Himself, endure; and the power to endure is there because you see God.
“Though it tarry, wait for it.” The proof that we have the vision is that we are reaching out for more than we have grasped. It is a bad thing to be satisfied spiritually. “What shall I render unto the Lord?” said the Psalmist, “I will take the cup of salvation.” We are apt to look for satisfaction in ourselves—‘Now I have got the thing; now I am entirely sanctified; now I can endure.’ Instantly, we are on the road to ruin. Our reach must exceed our grasp. “Not as though I had already attained; either were already perfect.” If we have only what we have experienced, we have nothing; if we have the inspiration of the vision of God, we have more than we can experience. Beware of the danger of spiritual relaxation.
Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest: Selections for the Year (Grand Rapids, MI: Oswald Chambers Publications; Marshall Pickering, 1986).
May 2
In him was life, and the life was the light of men … Ye are the light of the world.
John 1:4; Matt. 5:14
In the light, we can walk and work. We walk in the light and become entirely our light, the light of God, so that men may see our good works and glorify our Father in Heaven. Gently, silently, lovingly, unceasingly, we give ourselves to transmit the light and the love God so unceasingly shines into us. Our one work is to wait, children of the light. We let admit and then transmit the light of God in Christ.
Andrew Murray
Samuel G. Hardman and Dwight Lyman Moody, Thoughts for the Quiet Hour (Willow Grove, PA: Woodlawn Electronic Publishing, 1997).
Comments