Day 4 - Wednesday | Daily Devotions | Morning and Evening: Daily Reading | Connect the Testaments | My Utmost for His Highest | Thoughts for a Quiet Hour |

 Morning, July 2 Go To Evening Reading

“Our heart shall rejoice in Him.”

—Psalm 33:21

Blessed is the fact that Christians can rejoice even in the most profound distress; although trouble may surround them, they still sing; and, like many birds, they sing best in their cages. The waves may roll over them, but their souls soon rise to the surface and see the light of God’s countenance; they have a buoyancy about them which keeps their head consistently above the water, and helps them to sing amid the tempest, “God is with me still.” To whom shall the glory be given? Oh! To Jesus—it is all by Jesus. Trouble does not necessarily bring consolation with it to the believer, but the presence of the Son of God in the fiery furnace with him fills his heart with joy. He is sick and suffering, but Jesus visits him and makes his bed. He is dying, and the cold chilly waters of Jordan are gathering about him up to the neck, but Jesus puts His arms around him, and cries, “Fear not, beloved; to die is to be blessed; the waters of death have their fountain-head in heaven; they are not bitter, they are sweet as nectar, for they flow from the throne of God.” As the departing saint wades through the stream, and the billows gather around him, and heart and flesh fail him, the same voice sounds in his ears, “Fear not; I am with thee; be not dismayed; I am thy God.” As he nears the borders of the infinite unknown and is almost affrighted to enter the realm of shades, Jesus says, “Fear not, it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” Thus strengthened and consoled, the believer is not afraid to die; nay, he is even willing to depart, for since he has seen Jesus as the morning star, he longs to gaze upon Him as the sun in his strength. Truly, the presence of Jesus is all the heaven we desire. He is at once

“The glory of our brightest days;

The comfort of our nights.”

Go To Morning Reading Evening, July 2

“Unto thee will I cry, O Lord my rock; be not silent to me: lest, if thou be silent to me, I become like them that go down into the pit.”

—Psalm 28:1

A cry is the natural expression of sorrow, and a suitable utterance when all other modes of appeal fail us; but the cry must be alone directed to the Lord, for to cry to man is to waste our entreaties upon the air. When we consider the readiness of the Lord to hear and his ability to aid, we shall see good reason for directing all our appeals at once to the God of our salvation. It will be in vain to call to the rocks on the day of judgment, but our Rock attends to our cries.

“Be not silent to me.” Mere formalists may be content without answers to their prayers, but genuine suppliants cannot; they are not satisfied with the results of worship itself in calming the mind and subduing the will—they must go further, and obtain actual replies from heaven, or they cannot rest. Those replies they long to receive at once, they dread even a little of God’s silence. God’s voice is often so terrible that it shakes the wilderness, but his silence is equally complete with awe to an eager suppliant. When God seems to close his ear, we must not therefore close our mouths, but rather cry with more earnestness; for when our note grows shrill with eagerness and grief, he will not long deny us a hearing. What a dreadful case we should be in if the Lord should become forever silent to our prayers? “Lest, if thou be silent to me, I become like them that go down into the pit.” Deprived of the God who answers prayer, we should be in a more pitiable plight than the dead in the grave, and should soon sink to the same level as the lost in hell. We must have answers to prayer: ours is an urgent case of dire necessity; surely the Lord will speak peace to our agitated minds, for he never can find it in his heart to permit his own elect to perish.

 C. H. Spurgeon, Morning and Evening: Daily Readings (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1896).

July 2: Conflict and Certainty

1 Samuel 2:22–4:22; James 1:9–18; Psalm 119:17–32

Conflict drives fiction and riveting movies, but if we had it our way, we’d live stable, stress-free lives. We might crave the excitement or change of a vacation, but we rarely welcome an unexpected complication. So when James says to “count it all joy … when you meet trials of various kinds” (Jas 1:2), we are tempted to dismiss his perspective as something that works on paper but should not disrupt our real lives.

James shows us how to internalize a faithful response to unwelcome conflict. He begins by describing an adverse reaction: When difficult times arise, we may be like the person who prays and then doubts that God will provide them with wisdom for the situation. This person complicates the conflict by internalizing it with uncertainty and doubt. He is “like the surf of the sea, driven by the wind and tossed about” (Jas 1:6).

The irony is that, although we only create more conflict when we doubt, we like to think we can trust ourselves. As long as we remain in control (we tell ourselves), we can avoid the storms of life. It’s tempting to manufacture an attitude of stubborn self-sufficiency—of inner strength.

That’s the opposite of how we should respond. God wants us to meet the chaos by trusting in Him. We may feel tossed about by life’s events, but God provides us with wisdom to navigate the chaos we encounter. When we ask Him and trust that He’ll provide us with wisdom, He gives generously and without reproach (Jas 1:5).

Stability isn’t an inner strength, but certainty in God’s provision is. We can meet the uncertain with the certain when we trust God to help us work through the chaos. We can also remember that, at the end of the novel, the protagonist who endures conflict is changed by the experience. In the same way, God is working through the conflict in our lives to make us more wholly devoted to Him, since “testing produces steadfastness” (Jas 1:3). And there will be an end: We’ll “receive the crown of life that he has promised to those who love him” (Jas 1:12).

How are you turning to Christ amid difficult circumstances?

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).

July 2nd

The conditions of discipleship

If any man come to Me, and hate not …, he cannot be My disciple. Luke 14:26, also 27, 33.

If the closest relationships of life clash with the claims of Jesus Christ, He says it must be instant obedience to Himself. Discipleship means a personal and passionate devotion to a Person, our Lord Jesus Christ. There is a difference between devotion to a Person and devotion to principles or to a cause. Our Lord never proclaimed a cause; He proclaimed personal devotion to Himself. To be a disciple is to be a devoted love-slave of the Lord Jesus. Many of us who call ourselves Christians are not devoted to Jesus Christ. No man on earth has this passionate love for the Lord Jesus unless the Holy Ghost has imparted it to him. We may admire Him, respect Him, and reverence Him, but we cannot truly love Him. The only Lover of the Lord Jesus is the Holy Ghost, and He sheds abroad the very love of God in our hearts. Whenever the Holy Spirit sees an opportunity to glorify Jesus, He will take your heart, your nerves, and your whole personality, and simply make you blaze and glow with devotion to Jesus Christ.

The Christian life is stamped by ‘moral spontaneous originality,’ consequently, the disciple is open to the same charge that Jesus Christ was, viz., that of inconsistency. However, Jesus Christ was always consistent with Christian must be consistent with the life of the Son of God within them, no God, and the Cht with hard and fast creeds. Men pour themselves into creeds, and God has to blast them out of their prejudices before they can become devoted to Jesus Christ.

 Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest: Selections for the Year (Grand Rapids, MI: Oswald Chambers Publications; Marshall Pickering, 1986).

July 2

Being with them forty days, and speaking of the things about the kingdom of God

Acts 1:3

This lingering for forty days is the crowning proof of Christ’s tender regard for His little flock. He who had laid down His life for them is loath to leave them. Though they had forsaken Him and doubted Him, they had not wearied, much less had they worn out His love. He stays to look again, and yet again, and yet again, upon them, as if turning back and lingering to bless them. It is all of a piece with His life of love. Everywhere, He meets them without a touch of upbraiding, without recalling a single memory of all His bitter suffering, revealing Himself to the disciples with a tenderness and blessedness indescribably beautiful.

How can He go till He has healed the Magdalene’s broken heart? He must linger till poor Peter can venture near to have his forgiveness assured. He must stay to strengthen Thomas’ faith. He must tarry with them till He has made them feel that He is just the same friendly, brotherly Jesus that He has ever been, caring for them in their work, watching them with a yearning pity, stooping to kindle a fire for their warmth, and to cook the fish for their meal, and then to bid them come and dine.

Mark Guy Pearse

 Samuel G. Hardman and Dwight Lyman Moody, Thoughts for the Quiet Hour (Willow Grove, PA: Woodlawn Electronic Publishing, 1997).