Day 3 - Tuesday | Daily Devotions | Morning and Evening: Daily Reading | Connect the Testaments | My Utmost for His Highest | Thoughts of the Quiet Hour |

 Morning, October 14 Go To Evening Reading

“I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord.”

—Philippians 3:8

Spiritual knowledge of Christ will be personal knowledge. I cannot know Jesus through another person’s acquaintance with him. No, I must know him myself; I must know him on my own account. It will be an intelligent knowledge—I must know him, not as the visionary dreams of him, but as the Word reveals him. I must know his natures, divine and human. I must know his offices—his attributes—his works—his shame—his glory. I must meditate upon him until I “comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge.” It will be an affectionate knowledge of him; indeed, if I know him at all, I must love him. An ounce of heart knowledge is worth a ton of head learning. Our knowledge of him will be satisfying. When I know my Saviour, my mind will be full to the brim—I shall feel that I have that which my spirit panted after.

“This is that bread whereof if a man eat he shall never hunger.” At the same time, it will be an exciting knowledge; the more I know of my Beloved, the more I shall want to know. The higher I climb, the loftier the summits that invite my eager footsteps. I shall want the more as I get the more. Like the miser’s treasure, my gold will make me covet more. To conclude; this knowledge of Christ Jesus will be a most happy one; in fact, so elevating, that sometimes it will completely bear me up above all trials, and doubts, and sorrows; and it will, while I enjoy it, make me something more than “Man that is born of woman, who is of few days, and full of trouble”; for it will fling about me the immortality of the ever living Saviour, and gird me with the golden girdle of his eternal joy. Come, my soul, sit at Jesus’s feet and learn of him all this day.

Go To Morning Reading Evening, October 14

“And be not conformed to this world.”

—Romans 12:2

If a Christian can be saved while he conforms to this world, it must be so as by fire. Such a bare salvation is almost as much to be dreaded as desired. Reader, would you wish to leave this world in the darkness of a desponding deathbed, and enter heaven as a shipwrecked mariner climbs the rocks of his native country? Then be worldly; be mixed up with Mammonites, and refuse to go without the camp bearing Christ’s reproach. But would you have a heaven below as well as a heaven above? Would you comprehend with all saints what are the heights and depths, and know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge? Would you receive an abundant entrance into the joy of your Lord? Then come ye out from among them, and be ye separate, and touch not the unclean thing. Would you attain the full assurance of faith? You cannot gain it while you commune with sinners. Would you flame with vehement love? Your love will be damped by the drenchings of godless society. You cannot become a great Christian—you may be a babe in grace, but you never can be a perfect man in Christ Jesus while you yield yourself to the worldly maxims and modes of business of men of the world. It is ill for an heir of heaven to be a great friend with the heirs of hell. It has a bad look when a courtier is too intimate with his king’s enemies. Even minor inconsistencies are dangerous. Little thorns make terrific blisters, little moths destroy delicate garments, and little frivolities and little rogueries will rob religion of a thousand joys. O professor, too little separated from sinners, you know not what you lose by your conformity to the world. It cuts the tendons of your strength and makes you creep where you ought to run. Then, for your own comfort’s sake, and for the sake of your growth in grace, if you be a Christian, be a Christian, and be a marked and distinct one.

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

October 14: Persist, Don’t Just Exist

Ezekiel 28:1–29:21; Revelation 13:11–14:13; Job 36:24–33

The phrase “patient endurance” brings to mind the pasted-on smile of a parent regarding a misbehaving child—a parent clinging to the hope that someday this stage will pass. In Revelation, the term is used in a much different way.

“Here is the patient endurance of the saints, those who keep the commandments of God and the faith in Jesus” (Rev 14:12). The statement is set in the context of judgment. Here, the phrase requires more than simply sitting still and enduring persecution. It’s intended to encourage first-century believers to actively abandon the sins of the day: idolatry, pride, and oppression.

Encouraging patient endurance was a call for early Christians to persevere by pursuing righteousness—to follow Christ faithfully even while enduring a period of suffering (Rev 14:12). Patient endurance is active persistence, loyalty, and discernment. We get this sense as John continues: “And I heard a voice from heaven saying, ‘Write: “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on!” ’ ‘Yes,’ says the Spirit, ‘so that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow after them’ ” (Rev 14:13).

Rest comes later. Right now, when we suffer trials, God asks us to live lives that reflect our loyalty to Him. This loyalty and these deeds are motivated by hope that He provides—primarily through the death of Christ.

When you think about patiently enduring trials to your faith, you don’t have to regard yourself as a victim. Persist because of the hope you’ve been given, and in which God continues to uphold you. Faith doesn’t sit still.

How are you patiently enduring?

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).

October 14th

The key to the missionary

All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations. Matthew 28:18–20 .

The basis of missionary appeals is the authority of Jesus Christ, not the needs of the heathen. We are apt to look upon Our Lord as One Who assists us in our enterprises for God. Our Lord puts Himself as the absolute sovereign, supreme Lord over His disciples. He does not say the heathen will be lost if we do not go; He simply says—“Go ye therefore, and teach all nations.” Go on the revelation of My sovereignty; teach and preach out of a living experience of Me.

“Then the eleven disciples went … into a mountain where Jesus had appointed them” (v. 16). If I want to know the universal sovereignty of Christ, I must know Him for myself, and how to get alone with Him; I must take time to worship the Being Whose Name I bear. “Come unto Me”—that is the place to meet Jesus. Are you weary and heavy-laden? How many missionaries are there! We banish those marvellous words of the universal Sovereign of the world to the threshold of an after-meeting; they are the words of Jesus to His disciples.

“Go ye therefore.…” “Go” simply means live. Acts 1:8 is the description of how to go. Jesus did not say—Go into Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria, but, “Ye shall be witnesses unto Me” in all these places. He undertakes to establish the goings.

“If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you.…”—that is the way to keep going in our personal lives. Where we are placed is a matter of indifference; God engineers the goings. “None of these things move me …” That is how to keep going till you’re gone!

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

October 14

I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.

Gal. 2:20

The man who lives in God knows no life except the life of God.

Phillips Brooks

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