Day 6 - Friday | Morning and Evening | Connect the Testaments | My Utmost for His Highest | Thoughts for the Quiet Hour |

 Morning, September 12 Go To Evening Reading

“God is jealous.”

—Nahum 1:2

Your Lord is very jealous of your love, O believer. Did he choose you? He cannot bear that you should choose another. Did he buy you with his own blood? He cannot endure that you should think that you are your own, or that you belong to this world. He loved you with such a love that he would not stop in heaven without you; he would sooner die than you should perish, and he cannot endure that anything should stand between your heart’s love and himself. He is very jealous of your trust. He will not permit you to trust in an arm of flesh. He cannot bear that you should hew out broken cisterns, when the overflowing fountain is always free to you. When we lean upon him, he is glad, but when we transfer our dependence to another, when we rely upon our own wisdom, or the wisdom of a friend, worst of all, when we trust in any works of our own, he is displeased, and will chasten us that he may bring us to himself. He is also very jealous of our company. There should be no one with whom we converse so much as with Jesus. To abide in him only, this is true love; but to commune with the world, to find sufficient solace in our carnal comforts, to prefer even the society of our fellow Christians to secret intercourse with him, this is grievous to our jealous Lord. He would fain have us abide in him, and enjoy constant fellowship with himself; and many of the trials which he sends us are for the purpose of weaning our hearts from the creature, and fixing them more closely upon himself. Let this jealousy, which would keep us near to Christ, be also a comfort to us, for if he loves us so much as to care thus about our love, we may be sure that he will suffer nothing to harm us, and will protect us from all our enemies. Oh, that we may have grace this day to keep our hearts in sacred chastity for our Beloved alone, with sacred jealousy shutting our eyes to all the fascinations of the world!

Go To Morning Reading Evening, September 12

“I will sing of mercy and judgment.”

—Psalm 101:1

Faith triumphs in trial. When reason is thrust into the inner prison, with her feet made fast in the stocks, faith makes the dungeon walls ring with her merry notes as she cries, “I will sing of mercy and of judgment. Unto thee, O Lord, will I sing.” Faith pulls the black mask from the face of trouble and discovers the angel beneath. Faith looks up at the cloud and sees that.

“’Tis big with mercy and shall break

In blessings on her head.”

There is a subject for song even in the judgments of God towards us.  First, the trial is not so heavy as it might have been; next, the trouble is not so severe as we deserved to have borne; and our affliction is not so crushing as the burden which others have to carry. Faith sees that in her worst sorrow, there is nothing penal; there is not a drop of God’s wrath in it; it is all sent in love. Faith discerns love gleaming like a jewel on the breast of an angry God. Faith says of her grief, “This is a badge of honour, for the child must feel the rod,” and then she sings of the sweet result of her sorrows, because they work her spiritual good. Nay, more, says Faith, “These light afflictions, which are but for a moment, work out for me a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.” So Faith rides forth on the black horse, conquering and to conquer, trampling down carnal reason and fleshly sense, and chanting notes of victory amid the thickest of the fray.

“All I meet I find assists me

In my path to heavenly joy:

Where, though trials now attend me,

Trials never annoy more.

“Blest there with a weight of glory,

Still the path I’ll ne’er forget,

But, exulting, cry, it led me

To my blessed Saviour’s seat.”

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

September 12: Diversity in the Church

Amos 8:1–9:15; Acts 10:34–11:18; Job 21:1–16

In our comfortable and familiar church homes, we sometimes fail to see the Church as a community of ethnic and cultural diversity. When I returned from a year in South Korea, I was surprised to find that my family and friends had made thoughtless generalizations about people I had come to know and love—some of whom were fellow believers in Christ. Most of these comments contradicted the multicultural picture of Christianity presented in the book of Acts.

Peter and the Jewish Christians in the early church underwent a shift in cultural perspective. When Peter came to Jerusalem after meeting with Gentiles, the Jews were shocked that he would eat with “men who were uncircumcised” (Acts 11:3). For so long, they had associated their religion with their identity as a nation and as a people group. Although they knew that God was extending this hope to the Gentiles, they needed to be reminded that Jesus was the Lord of all. Peter tells them, “If God gave them the same gift as also to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to be able to hinder God?” (Acts 11:17).

The hope they expected had been fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ. Now Gentiles were being added to their number. Peter testifies, “In truth I understand that God does not show partiality, but in every nation the one who fears him and who does what is right is acceptable to him” (Acts 10:34).

Strangely, Peter’s speech still needs to be heard today. We tend to confine our faith within comfortable borders—cultural, regional, or racial. We need to be challenged to see people from other ethnicities and cultural backgrounds as fellow followers of Christ. If God does not show partiality, then neither should we. The reign of Jesus extends over all people; God will draw His children from all corners of the earth, and there will be no “foreigners” in His kingdom.

How does your view of the Church need to be challenged?

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).

September 12th

By spiritual confusion

Ye know not what ye ask. Matthew 20:22.

There are times in spiritual life when there is confusion, and there is no way out to say that there ought not to be confusion. It is not a question of right and wrong, but a question of God leading you down a path that you do not understand. And it is only by going through the confusion that you will discover the meaning, what God wants.

The Shrouding of His Friendship. Luke 11:5–8 . Jesus gave the illustration of the man who appeared not to care for his friend, and He said that this is how the Heavenly Father may seem to you at times. You will think He is an unkind friend, but remember He is not; the time will come when everything will be explained. There is a cloud on the friendship of the heart, and often even love itself has to wait in pain and tears for the blessing of fuller communion. When God looks completely shrouded, will you hang on in confidence in Him?

The Shadow on His Fatherhood. Luke 11:11–13 . Jesus says there are times when your Father will appear as if He were an unnatural father, as if He were callous and indifferent, but remember He is not; I have told you—“Everyone that asketh receiveth.” If there is a shadow on the face of the Father just now, hang onto it that He will ultimately give His clear revealing and justify Himself in all that He permitted.

The Strangeness of His Faithfulness. Luke 18:1–8 . “When the Son of Man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth?” Will he find the faith that banks on Him despite the confusion? Stand off in faith, believing that what Jesus said is true, though in the meantime you do not understand what God is doing. He has bigger issues at stake than the particular things you ask.

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

September 12

Behold, we go up to Jerusalem

Matt. 20:18

Never had there been such a going up to Jerusalem as that which Jesus here proposes to His disciples. He goes up voluntarily. The act was not enforced by any external compulsion. Jerusalem might have been avoided at this time. It was deliberately sought. It was a going up to a triumph to be reached through defeat, a coronation to be attained through ignominy and humiliation.

O believer, in your walk through the world today, be strengthened, be comforted, be inspired, by the spectacle of the Captain of your salvation thus going up to Jerusalem! And remember, in all those apparently downward passages of life, there is sorrow. It may be death, lie before you, that all such descents, made or endured in the Spirit of Jesus, are really upgoing steps, leading you to the mount of God and the resurrection glory.

J. B. Stratton

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