Day 2 - Monday | Daily Devotions | Morning and Evening: Bible Reading | Connect the Testaments | My Utmost for His Highest | Thoughts for the Quiet Hour |

 Morning, October 13 Go To Evening Reading

“Godly sorrow worketh repentance.”

—2 Corinthians 7:10

Genuine, spiritual mourning for sin is the work of the Spirit of God. Repentance is too choice a flower to grow in nature’s garden. Pearls grow naturally in oysters, but penitence never shows itself in sinners except divine grace works it in them. If thou hast one particle of absolute hatred for sin, God must have given it thee, for human nature’s thorns never produced a single fig. “That which is born of the flesh is flesh.”

True repentance has a distinct reference to the Saviour. When we repent of sin, we must have one eye upon sin and another upon the cross, or it will be better still if we fix both our eyes upon Christ and see our transgressions only in the light of his love.

Genuine sorrow for sin is eminently practical. No man may say he hates sin if he lives in it. Repentance makes us see the evil of sin, not merely as a theory, but experimentally—as a burnt child dreads fire. We shall be as much afraid of it as a man who has lately been stopped and robbed is scared of the thief upon the highway; and we shall shun it—shun it in everything-not in great things only, but in little things, as men shun little vipers as well as great snakes. Proper mourning for sin will make us very jealous over our tongue, lest it should say a wrong word; we shall be very watchful over our daily actions, lest in anything we offend, and each night we shall close the day with painful confessions of shortcoming, and each morning awaken with anxious prayers, that this day God would hold us up that we may not sin against him.

Sincere repentance is continual. Believers repent until their dying day. This dropping well is not intermittent. Every other sorrow yields to time, but this dear sorrow grows with our growth, and it is so sweet and bitter that we thank God we are permitted to enjoy and to suffer it until we enter our eternal rest.

Go To Morning Reading Evening, October 13

“Love is stronger than death.”

—Song of Solomon 8:6

Whose love can this be that is as mighty as the conqueror of monarchs, the destroyer of the human race? Would it not sound like satire if it were applied to my poor, weak, and scarcely living love to Jesus my Lord? I do love him, and perhaps by his grace, I could even die for him, but as for my love in itself, it can scarcely endure a scoffing jest, much less a cruel death. Surely it is my Beloved’s love which is here spoken of—the love of Jesus, the matchless lover of souls. His love was indeed stronger than the most terrible death, for it endured the trial of the cross triumphantly. It was a lingering death, but love survived the torment; a shameful death, but love despised the shame; a penal death, but love bore our iniquities; a forsaken, lonely death, from which the eternal Father hid his face, but love endured the curse, and gloried over all. Never such love, never such death. It was a desperate duel, but love bore the palm. What then, my heart? Hast thou no emotions excited within thee at the contemplation of such heavenly affection? Yes, my Lord, I long, I pant to feel thy love flaming like a furnace within me. Come thou thyself and excite the ardour of my spirit.

“For every drop of crimson blood

Thus shed to make me live,

O wherefore, wherefore have not I

A thousand lives to give?”

Why should I despair of loving Jesus with a love as strong as death? He deserves it: I desire it. The martyrs felt such love, and they were but flesh and blood. So why not me? They mourned their weakness, and yet out of weakness were made strong. Grace gave them all their unflinching constancy—there is the same grace for me. Jesus, lover of my soul, shed abroad such love, even thy love in my heart, this evening.

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

October 13: The Last Person You Would Expect

Ezekiel 26:1–27:36; Revelation 13:1–10; Job 36:13–23

Yahweh is capable of doing anything and everything He pleases. If He were not a good God, this would be deeply frightening, but considering His wonderful character, this is comforting.

In Ezekiel 26:1–6, Yahweh describes the sins of Tyre and His plans against the powerful Phoenician city-state. The people of Tyre are arrogant. They do as they please, usually to the detriment of other people. Yahweh refuses to put up with this any longer. When He finally destroys Tyre, He does it through unexpected means: Nebuchadnezzar, king of the Neo-Babylonian empire from 605–562 bc. Despite Nebuchadnezzar’s cruel and ruthless nature, Yahweh uses him to enact punishment on Tyre (Ezek 26:7).

Stories like this make me wonder how written prophecy would look today. How often would we see God use people without their realizing it? How many evil-hearted people have been used for a larger and better purpose?

We’re never really sure how God is acting. We learn bits of information through prayer and the Bible, but only He knows what outcome He will produce. We see the trajectory—Christ’s full reign on earth and the admonishment of evil (e.g., the destruction of the beast in Rev 13:1–10)—but we don’t know precisely how that will play out.

There is no easy answer to this perplexing question, but what is certain is that Yahweh will ultimately carry out His will in the world. And His will might come in unexpected ways. No one can know the mind of God but God Himself. So when we pray, let’s pray for the miracle, not for the means.

How do you perceive God acting in your life and the lives of others? What miracle should you be praying for?

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).

October 13th

Individual discouragement and personal enlargement

Moses went unto his brethren, and looked on their burdens. Exodus 2:11.

Moses saw the oppression of his people and felt sure that he was the one to deliver them, and in the righteous indignation of his own spirit, he started to right their wrongs. After the first strike for God and for the right, God allowed Moses to be driven into deep discouragement. He sent him into the desert to tend sheep for forty years. At the end of that time, God appeared and told Moses to go and bring forth His people, and Moses said—‘Who am I, that I should go?’ In the beginning, Moses realized that he was the man to deliver the people, but he had to be trained and disciplined by God first. He was right in the individual aspect, but he was not the man for the work until he had learned communion with God.

We may have the vision of God and an obvious understanding of what God wants, and we start to do the thing; then comes something equivalent to the forty years in the wilderness, as if God had ignored the whole thing, and when we are thoroughly discouraged, God comes back and revives the call. We get the quaver in and say—‘Oh, who am I!’ We have to learn the first great stride of God—“I AM THAT I AM hath sent thee.” We have to know that our individual effort for God is an impertinence; our individuality is to be rendered incandescent by a personal relationship to God (see Matthew 3:11). We fix on the individual aspect of things; we have the vision—‘This is what God wants me to do’; but we have not got into God’s stride. If you are going through a time of discouragement, there is a significant personal enlargement ahead.

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

October 13

Now therefore, hearken, O Israel, unto the statutes and unto the judgments which I teach you, for to do them, that ye may live, and go in and possess the land which the Lord God of your fathers giveth you.

Deut. 4:1

“Hearken” and “do,” that ye may “live” and “possess.” This is a universal and abiding principle. It was true for Israel, and it is true for us. The pathway of life and the true secret of possession is simple obedience to the holy commandments of God. We see this all through the inspired volume, from cover to cover. God has given us His Word, not to speculate upon it or discuss it, but that we may obey it. And it is as we, through grace, yield a hearty and happy obedience to our Father’s statutes and judgments, that we tread the bright pathway of life, and enter into the reality of all that God has treasured up for us in Christ.

C. H. M.

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