Day 6 - Friday | Daily Devotions | Morning and Evening: Daily Reading | Connect the Testaments | My Utmost for His Highest | Thoughts for the Quiet Hour |
Morning, September 5 Go To Evening Reading
“Woe is me, that I sojourn in Mesech, that I dwell in the tents of Kedar.”
—Psalm 120:5
As a Christian, you have to live amid an ungodly world, and it is of little use for you to cry “Woe is me.” Jesus did not pray that you should be taken out of the world, and what he did not pray for, you need not desire. Better far in the Lord’s strength to meet the difficulty, and glorify him in it. The enemy is ever on the watch to detect inconsistency in your conduct; be therefore very holy. Remember that the eyes of all are upon you, and that more is expected from you than from other men. Strive to give no occasion for blame. Let your goodness be the only fault they can discover in you. Like Daniel, compel them to say of you, “We shall not find any occasion against this Daniel, except we find it against him concerning the law of his God.” Seek to be both helpful and consistent. Perhaps you think, “If I were in a more favourable position I might serve the Lord’s cause, but I cannot do any good where I am”; but the worse the people are among whom you live, the more need have they of your exertions; if they be crooked, the more necessity that you should set them straight; and if they be perverse, the more need have you to turn their proud hearts to the truth. Where should the physician be but where there are many sick? Where is honour to be won by the soldier but in the hottest fire of the battle? And when weary of the strife and sin that meet you on every hand, consider that all the saints have endured the same trial. They were not carried on beds of down to heaven, and you must not expect to travel more easily than they. They had to hazard their lives unto the death in the high places of the field, and you will not be crowned till you also have endured hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. Therefore, “stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong.”
Go To Morning Reading Evening, September 5
“Hast thou entered into the springs of the sea?”
—Job 38:16
Some things in nature must remain a mystery to the most intelligent and enterprising investigators. Human knowledge has bounds beyond which it cannot pass. Universal knowledge is for God alone. If this is so in the things which are seen and temporal, I am confident that it is even more so in matters spiritual and eternal. Why, then, have I been torturing my brain with speculations as to destiny and will, fixed fate, and human responsibility? These deep and dark truths I am no more able to comprehend than to find out the depth which coucheth beneath, from which old ocean draws her watery stores. Why am I so curious to know the reason of my Lord’s providences, the motive of his actions, the design of his visitations? Shall I ever be able to clasp the sun in my fist and hold the universe in my palm? Yet these are as a drop in the bucket compared to the Lord my God. Let me not strive to understand the infinite, but spend my strength in love. What I cannot gain by intellect I can possess by affection, and let that suffice me. I cannot penetrate the heart of the sea, but I can enjoy the healthful breezes which sweep over its bosom, and I can sail over its blue waves with propitious winds. If I could enter the springs of the sea, the feat would serve no useful purpose either to myself or to others, it would not save the sinking bark, or give back the drowned mariner to his weeping wife and children; neither would my solving deep mysteries avail me a single whit, for the least love to God, and the simplest act of obedience to him, are better than the profoundest knowledge. My Lord, I leave the infinite to thee, and pray thee to put far from me such a love for the tree of knowledge as might keep me from the tree of life.
C. H. Spurgeon, Morning and Evening: Daily Readings (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1896).
Hosea 11:1–12:14; Acts 5:1–42; Job 16:10–22
“When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son” (Hos 11:1). This line is beautiful if read alone. Still, it is sad when read in context: “When I called them, they went from my face. They sacrificed to the Baals, and they sacrificed to idols” (Hos 11:2). It’s incredible how quickly we forget God’s mercy and provision. All too soon, we return to putting our desires before His.
When we put things in front of God’s will—false gods and our own misguided ways (Baals and idols)—we thwart His will not only for our lives, but also for the lives of others. For each of us, God has a tremendous plan that also affects others, for His glory and for the betterment of the world. When we fail to seek His will, we neglect our faith and operate by our own agenda, setting His work aside.
Our missteps can have terribly painful consequences: “The sword rages in [my people’s] cities; it consumes [their] false prophets and devours because of their plans. My people are bent on backsliding from me. To the Most High they call, he does not raise them at all” (Hos 11:6–7).
We endanger ourselves when we backslide. Sin tears at our very souls. Yet God is loving. Unlike us, He doesn’t act out of vengeance but out of His perfect will: “I will not execute my fierce anger, I will not again destroy Ephraim; because I am God and not a mortal, the Holy One in your midst; and I will not come in wrath. They will go after Yahweh; he roars like a lion. When he roars, his children will come trembling from the sea” (Hos 11:9–10).
God’s goodness is not an excuse for our poor behavior; it’s the reason to run back to Him—our great lion. Let’s let Him roar against the darkness that seeks to capture our desires and our hearts. Let’s let Him push back. Let’s call upon Yahweh.
What circumstances in your life prompt you to call on Yahweh today? What are you battling against?
John D. Barry
John D. Barry and Rebecca Kruyswijk, Connect the Testaments: A One-Year Daily Devotional with Bible Reading Plan (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2012).
September 5th
The missionary watching
Watch with Me. Matthew 26:40.
“Watch with Me”—with no private point of view of your own at all, but watch entirely with Me. In the early stages, we do not watch with Jesus; we watch for Him. We do not watch with Him through the revelation of the Bible, in the circumstances of our lives. Our Lord is trying to introduce us to identification with Himself in a particular Gethsemane, and we will not go; we say—‘No, Lord, I cannot see the meaning of this, it is bitter.’ How can we possibly watch someone who is inscrutable? How are we going to understand Jesus sufficiently to watch with Him in His Gethsemane, when we do not know even what His suffering is for? We do not know how to watch with Him; we are only used to the idea of Jesus watching with us.
The disciples loved Jesus Christ to the limit of their natural capacity, but they did not understand what He was after. In the Garden of Gethsemane, they slept for their own sorrow, and at the end of three years of the closest intimacy, they “all forsook Him and fled.”
“They were all filled with the Holy Ghost”—the same “they,” but something extraordinary has happened in between, viz., Our Lord’s Death and Resurrection and Ascension, and the disciples have been invaded by the Holy Spirit. Our Lord had said, “Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you,” and this meant that they learned to watch with Him all the rest of their lives.
Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest: Selections for the Year (Grand Rapids, MI: Oswald Chambers Publications; Marshall Pickering, 1986).
September 5
It is high time to wake up out of sleep
Rom. 13:11
I have heard of a painter who loved to work by the morning light. He said that the colors were better understood by the light of the early day, and so he was wont to be in his studio waiting for the rising of the sun. Then, every moment, it grew lighter, and he found he could accomplish things that he could not reach if he waited unl the day had advanced.
Is there not work waiting for us—work that no one else can do—work, too, that the Master has promised to help us perform? Shall He come and find that we still sleep? Or shall the Sun of Righteousness, when He appears, find us waiting, as that painter waited, looking and longing for the first gleam of day? Surely those of us who thus wait on the Lord shall renew our strength, and, eagle-like, rise to greet the Sun.
Thomas Champness
Samuel G. Hardman and Dwight Lyman Moody, Thoughts for the Quiet Hour (Willow Grove, PA: Woodlawn Electronic Publishing, 1997).
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