Day 6 - Friday | Daily Devotions | Morning and Evening: Daily Readings | Connect the Testaments | My Utmost for His Highest | Thoughts for the Quiet. Hour |

 Morning, October 24 Go To Evening Reading

“The trees of the Lord are full of sap.”

—Psalm 104:16

Without sap, the tree cannot flourish or even exist. Vitality is essential to a Christian. There must be life—a vital principle infused into us by God the Holy Ghost, or we cannot be trees of the Lord. The mere name of being a Christian is but a dead thing; we must be filled with the spirit of divine life. This life is mysterious. We do not understand the circulation of the sap, by what force it rises, and by what power it descends again. So the life within us is a sacred mystery. Regeneration is wrought by the Holy Ghost entering into man and becoming man’s life. This divine life in a believer afterwards feeds upon the flesh and blood of Christ and is thus sustained by divine food, but whence it cometh and whither it goeth, who shall explain to us? What a secret thing the sap is! The roots go searching through the soil with their little spongioles, but we cannot see them suck out the various gases, or transmute the mineral into the vegetable; this work is done down in the dark. Our root is Christ Jesus, and our life is hid in him; this is the secret of the Lord.

The radix of the Christian life is as secret as the life itself. How permanently active is the sap in the cedar! In the Christian, the divine life is always full of energy, not always in fruit-bearing, but in inward operations. The believer’s graces are not all in constant motion? But his life never ceases to palpitate within. He is not always working for God, but his heart is always living within him. As the sap manifests itself in producing the foliage and fruit of the tree, so with a truly healthy Christian, his grace is externally manifested in his walk and conversation. If you talk with him, he cannot help speaking about Jesus. If you notice his actions, you will see that he has been with Jesus. He has so much sap within that it must fill his conduct and conversation with life.

Go To Morning Reading Evening, October 24

“He began to wash the disciples’ feet.”

—John 13:5

The Lord Jesus loves his people so much that every day he continues to do for them much that is analogous to washing their soiled feet. Their poorest actions he accepts; their most profound sorrow he feels; their slenderest wish he hears, and their every transgression he forgives. He is still their servant as well as their Friend and Master. He not only performs majestic deeds for them, as wearing the mitre on his brow, and the precious jewels glittering on his breastplate, and standing up to plead for them, but humbly, patiently, he yet goes about among his people with the basin and the towel. He does this when he puts away from us day by day our constant infirmities and sins. Last night, when you bowed the knee, you mournfully confessed that much of your conduct was not worthy of your profession; and even tonight, you must mourn afresh that you have fallen again into the selfsame folly and sin from which special grace delivered you long ago; and yet Jesus will have great patience with you; he will hear your confession of sin; he will say, “I will, be thou clean”; he will again apply the blood of sprinkling, and speak peace to your conscience, and remove every spot. It is an excellent act of eternal love when Christ once for all absolves the sinner, and puts him into the family of God; but what condescending patience there is when the Saviour with much long-suffering bears the oft recurring follies of his wayward disciple; day by day, and hour by hour, washing away the multiplied transgressions of his erring but yet beloved child! To dry up a flood of rebellion is something marvellous, but to endure the constant dropping of repeated offences—to bear with a perpetual trying of patience, this is divine indeed! While we find comfort and peace in our Lord’s daily cleansing, its legitimate influence upon us will be to increase our watchfulness and quicken our desire for holiness. Is it so?

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

October 24: Constantly in Prayer

Ezekiel 47:1–48:35; 1 Thessalonians 1:1–10; Job 39:24–40:2

Desperate circumstances often dictate our prayers. We pray for others when they’re in need, or we thank God for others when they fill our needs. But how often do we thank God for the faith of those around us?

When Paul writes to the believers in Thessalonica, he opens by saying, “We give thanks to God always concerning all of you, making mention constantly in our prayers” (1 Thess 1:2). Paul and his disciples thank God for their “work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the presence of our God and Father” (1 Thess 1:3).

Those who are moving along well by our standards may be struggling in their faith. Other believers, just like us, go through ebbs and flows in their journey. It shouldn’t take a catastrophe for us to recognize their need for prayer.

We can learn something from Paul, a church planter and disciple maker who was no doubt keenly aware of the growth and struggles of the believers he mentored. For those of us who are less observant, these struggles may simmer underneath our radar. We should stop and take notice of the faith journeys of the people around us—people in our churches, our schools, and our workplaces. For whom can you thank God today?

Who needs your observant prayers today?

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 24th

The viewpoint

Now thanks be to God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ. 2 Cor. 2:14.

The viewpoint of a worker for God must not be as near the highest as he can get; it must be the highest. Be careful to maintain strenuously God’s point of view; it has to be done every day, bit by bit; don’t think of the finite. No outside power can touch the viewpoint.

The viewpoint to maintain is that we are here for one purpose only, viz., to be captives in the train of Christ’s triumphs. We are not in God’s showroom; we are here to exhibit one thing—the absolute captivity of our lives to Jesus Christ. How small the other points of view are—‘I am standing alone battling for Jesus’; ‘I have to maintain the cause of Christ and hold this fort for Him.’ Paul says—‘I am in the train of a conqueror, and it does not matter what the difficulties are, I am always led in triumph.’ Is this idea being worked out practically in us? Paul’s secret joy was that God took him, a red-handed rebel against Jesus Christ, and made him a captive, and now that is all he is here for. Paul’s joy was to be a captive of the Lord; he had no other interest in heaven or on earth. It is a shameful thing for a Christian to talk about getting the victory. The Victor ought to have brought us so entirely that it is His victory all the time, and we are more than conquerors through Him. “For we are unto God a sweet savour of Christ.” We are enwheeled with the odour of Jesus, and wherever we go, we are a wonderful refreshment to God.

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

October 24

Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.

Matt. 5:16

They say the world has an eagle eye for anything inconsistent, an eye sharp to discover the vagaries and inconsistencies in the default and the unworthy. It has an eagle eye, but the eagle winks before the sun, and the burning iris of its eye shrinks abashed before the unsullied purity of noon. Let your light so shine before men, that others, awed and charmed by the consistency of your godly life, may come to enquire, and to say you have been with Jesus.

Punshon

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