DAILY, WEEKEND, AND HOLIDAY INTERNET EVANGELIZE TO THE WORLD MINISTRY

February 18th The initiative against despair Rise let us be going. Matthew 26:46 . The disciples went to sleep when they should have kept awake, and when they realized what they had done it produced despair. The sense of the irreparable is apt to make us despair, and we say— ‘It is all up now, it is no use trying anymore.’ If we imagine that this kind of depression is exceptional, we are mistaken, it is a very ordinary human experience. Whenever we realize that we have not done what we had, a great opportunity is squandered. Then we are apt to sink into despair, and Jesus Christ comes and says— ‘Sleep on now, that opportunity is lost forever, you cannot alter it, but arise and go to the next thing.’ Let the past sleep, but let it sleep on the bosom of Christ , and go out into the irresistible future with Him . There are experiences like this in each of our lives. We are in despair, the despair that comes from actualities, and we cannot lift ourselves out of it. T...

February 17th The initiative against depression Arise and eat. 1 Kings 19:5 . The angel did not give Elijah a vision, or explain the Scriptures to him, or do anything remarkable; he told Elijah to do the most ordinary thing, viz., to get up and eat. If we were never depressed we should not be alive; it is the nature of a crystal never to be depressed. A human being is capable of depression. Otherwise, there would be no capacity for exaltation. Things are calculated to depress; things that are of the nature of death; and in taking an estimate of yourself, always take into account the capacity for depression. When the Spirit of God comes He does not give us visions; He tells us to do the most ordinary things conceivable. Depression is apt to turn us away from the ordinary commonplace things of God’s creation , but whenever God comes , the inspiration is to do the most natural simple things—the things we would never have imagined God was in, and as we do them we find He is...

February 16th The inspiration of spiritual initiative Arise from the dead. Eph. 5:14 . All initiative is not inspired. A man may say to you— ‘Buck up, take your disinclination by the throat, throw it overboard, and walk out into the thing!’ That is ordinary human initiative. But when the Spirit of God comes in and says, in effect, ‘Buck up,’ we find that the initiative is inspired. We all have any number of visions and ideals when we are young, but sooner or later we find that we have no power to make them real. We cannot do the things we long to do, and we are apt to settle down to the visions and ideals as dead, and God has to come and say— “Arise from the dead.” When the inspiration of God does come, it comes with such miraculous power that we are able to arise from the dead and do the impossible thing. The remarkable thing about a spiritual initiative is that the life comes after we do the ‘bucking up.’ God does not give us overcoming life; He gives us life as w...

February 15th Am I my brother’s keeper? None of us liveth to himself. Romans 14:7 . Has it ever dawned on you that you are responsible for other souls spiritually before God ? For instance, if I allow any private deflection from God in my life, everyone is about me suffers. We “sit together in heavenly places.” “Whether one member suffers, all the members suffer with it.” When once you allow physical selfishness, mental slovenliness, moral obtuseness, spiritual density, everyone belonging to your crowd will suffer. ‘But,’ you say, ‘who is sufficient for these things if you erect a standard like that?’ Our sufficiency is of God , and of Him alone. “Ye shall be My witnesses.” How many of us are willing to spend every ounce of nervous energy, of mental, moral and spiritual energy we have for Jesus Christ ? That is the meaning of a witness in God’s sense of the word. It takes time, be patient with yourself. God has left us on the earth—what for? To be saved and ...

February 14th The discipline of heeding What I tell you in darkness, that speak ye in light; and what ye hear in the ear, that preach ye upon the housetops. Matthew 10:27 . At times God puts us through the discipline of darkness to teach us to heed Him . Song birds are taught to sing in the dark, and we are put into the shadow of God’s hand until we learn to hear Him . “What I tell you in darkness” —watch where God puts you into darkness, and when you are there, keep your mouth shut. Are you in the dark just now in your circumstances, or in your life with God ? Then remain quiet. If you open your mouth in the dark, you will talk in the wrong mood: darkness is the time to listen. Don’t talk to other people about it; don’t read books to find out the reason of the darkness, but listen and heed. If you talk to other people, you cannot hear what God is saying. When you are in the dark, listen, and God will give you a very precious message for someone else when you get into the ...

February 13th The devotion of hearing Speak; for Thy servant heareth. 1 Samuel 3:10 . Because I have listened definitely to one thing from God , it does not follow that I will listen to everything He says . The way in which I show God that I neither love nor respect Him is by the obtuseness of my heart and mind towards what He says . If I love my friend, I intuitively detect what he wants, and Jesus says, “Ye are My friends.” Have I disobeyed some command of my Lord’s this week? If I had realized that it was a command of Jesus , I would not consciously have disobeyed it; but most of us show such disrespect to God that we do not even hear what He says , He might never have spoken. The destiny of my spiritual life is such identification with Jesus Christ that I always hear God , and I know that God always hears me ( John 11:41 ). If I am united with Jesus Christ , I hear God by the devotion of hearing all the time. A lily, or a tree, or a servant of God , may conve...

February 10th Is your imagination of God starved? Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things. Isaiah 40:26 . The people of God in Isaiah’s day had starved their imagination by looking on the face of idols, and Isaiah made them look up at the heavens; that is, he made them begin to use their imagination aright. Nature to a saint is sacramental. If we are children of God, we have a tremendous treasure in Nature. In every wind that blows, in every night and day of the year, in every sign of the sky, in every blossoming and in every withering of the earth, there is a real coming of God to us if we will simply use our starved imagination to realize it. The test of spiritual concentration is bringing the imagination into captivity. Is your imagination looking on the face of an idol? Is the idol yourself? Your work? Your conception of what a worker should be? Your experience of salvation and sanctification? Then your imagination of God is starved, and when ...

February 9th Are you exhausted spiritually? The everlasting God … fainteth not, neither is weary. Isaiah 40:28 . Exhaustion means that the vital forces are worn right out. Spiritual exhaustion never comes through sin but only through service, and whether or not you are exhausted will depend upon where you get your supplies. Jesus said to Peter— “Feed My sheep,” but He gave him nothing to feed them with. The process of being made broken bread and poured-out wine means that you have to be the nourishment for other souls until they learn to feed on God. They must drain you to the dregs. Be careful that you get your supply, or before long you will be utterly exhausted. Before other souls learn to draw on the life of the Lord Jesus direct, they have to draw on it through you; you have to be literally ‘sucked’  until they learn to take their nourishment from God. We owe it to God to be our best for His lambs and His sheep as well as for Himself. Has the way in which you have...

February 8th Instantaneous and insistent sanctification And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly. 1 Thess. 5:23–24 . When we pray to be sanctified, are we prepared to face the standard of these verses? We take the term sanctification much too lightly. Are we prepared for what sanctification will cost? It will cost an intense narrowing of all our interests on earth and an immense broadening of all our interests in God. Sanctification means intense concentration on God’s point of view. It means every power of the body, soul and spirit chained and kept for God’s purpose only. Are we prepared for God to do in us all that He separated us for? And then after His work is done in us, are we prepared to separate ourselves to God even as Jesus did? “For their sakes I sanctify Myself.” The reason some of us have not entered into the experience of sanctification is that we have not realized the meaning of sanctification from God’s standpoint. Sanctification means being made...

February 7th The discipline of dejection But we trusted … and beside all this, to-day is the third day … Luke 24:21 . Every fact that the disciples stated was right; but the inferences they drew from those facts were wrong. Anything that savors of dejection spiritually is always wrong. If depression and oppression visit me, I am to blame; God is not, nor is anyone else. Dejection springs from one of two sources—I have either satisfied a lust or I have not. Lust means—I must have it at once. Spiritual lust makes me demand an answer from God, instead of seeking God Who gives the answer. What have I been trusting God would do? And to-day—the immediate present—is the third day, and He has not done it, therefore I imagine I am justified in being dejected and in blaming God. Whenever the insistence is on the point that God answers prayer, we are off the track. The meaning of prayer is that we get hold of God, not of the answer. It is impossible to be well physically and to be dejecte...

February 6th Are you ready to be offered? I am already being poured out as a drink offering. 2 Tim. 4:6 (R.V. margin.). “I am now ready to be offered.” It is a transaction of will, not of sentiment. Tell God you are ready to be offered; then let the consequences be what they may, there is no strand of complaint now, no matter what God chooses. God puts you through the crisis in private, no one person can help another. Externally the life may be the same; the difference is in the will. Go through the crisis in the will, then when it comes externally there will be no thought of the cost. If you do not transact in will with God along this line, you will end in awakening sympathy for yourself. “Bind the sacrifice with cords, even unto the horns of the altar.” The altar means fire—burning and purification and insulation for one purpose only, the destruction of every affinity that God has not started and of every attachment that is not an attachment in God. You do not ...

January 28th But it is hardly credible that one could so persecute Jesus! Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me? Acts 26:14. Am I set on my own way for God? We are never free from this snare until we are brought into the experience of the baptism of the Holy Ghost and fire. Obstinacy and self-will will always stab Jesus Christ. It may hurt no one else, but it wounds His Spirit. Whenever we are obstinate and self-willed and set upon our own ambitions, we are hurting Jesus. Every time we stand on our rights and insist that this is what we intend to do, we are persecuting Jesus. Whenever we stand on our dignity we systematically vex and grieve His Spirit; and when the knowledge comes home that it is Jesus Whom we have been persecuting all the time, it is the most crushing revelation there could be. Is the word of God tremendously keen to me as I hand it on to you, or does my life give the lie to the things I profess to teach? I may teach sanctification and yet exhibit the spirit ...

January 27th Look again and think Take no thought for your life. Matthew 6:25. A warning which needs to be reiterated is that the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the lust of other things entering in, will choke all that God puts in. We are never free from the recurring tides of this encroachment. If it does not come on the line of clothes and food, it will come on the line of money or lack of money; of friends or lack of friends; or on the line of difficult circumstances. It is one steady encroachment all the time, and unless we allow the Spirit of God to raise up the standard against it, these things will come in like a flood. “Take no thought for your life.” ‘Be careful about one thing only,’ says our Lord—‘your relationship to Me.’ Common sense shouts loud and says—‘That is absurd, I must consider how I am going to live, I must consider what I am going to eat and drink.’ Jesus says you must not. Beware of allowing the thought that this statement is...

January 26th Look again and consecrate If God so clothe the grass of the field, … shall He not much more clothe you? Matthew 6:30. A simple statement of Jesus is always a puzzle to us if we are not simple. How are we going to be simple with the simplicity of Jesus? By receiving His Spirit, recognizing and relying on Him, obeying Him as He brings the word of God, and life will become amazingly simple. ‘Consider,’ says Jesus, ‘how much more your Father Who clothes the grass of the field will clothe you, if you keep your relationship right with Him.’ Every time we have gone back in spiritual communion it has been because we have impertinently known better than Jesus Christ. We have allowed the cares of the world to come in, and have forgotten the ‘much more’ of our Heavenly Father. “Behold the fowls of the air”—their one aim is to obey the principle of life that is in them and God looks after them. Jesus says that if you are rightly related to Him and obey this Spirit that is i...

January 25th Leave room for God But when it pleased God … Gal. 1:15. As workers for God we have to learn to make room for God—to give God ‘elbow room.’ We calculate and estimate, and say that this and that will happen, and we forget to make room for God to come in as He chooses. Would we be surprised if God came into our meeting or into our preaching in a way we had never looked for Him to come? Do not look for God to come in any particular way, but look for Him. That is the way to make room for Him. Expect Him to come, but do not expect Him only in a certain way. However much we may know God, the great lesson to learn is that at any minute He may break in. We are apt to overlook this element of surprise, yet God never works in any other way. All of a sudden God meets the life—“When it was the good pleasure of God.…” Keep your life so constant in its contact with God that His surprising power may break out on the right hand and on the left. Always be in a state of expectanc...

January 24th The overmastering direction I have appeared unto thee for this purpose. Acts 26:16. The vision Paul had on the road to Damascus was no passing emotion, but a vision that had very clear and emphatic directions for him, and he says—“I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision.” Our Lord said, in effect, to Paul—‘Your whole life is to be overmastered by Me; you are to have no end, no aim, and no purpose but Mine.’ ‘I have chosen him.’ When we are born again we all have visions, if we are spiritual at all, of what Jesus wants us to be, and the great thing is to learn not to be disobedient to the vision, not to say that it cannot be attained. It is not sufficient to know that God has redeemed the world, and to know that the Holy Spirit can make all that Jesus did effectual in me; I must have the basis of a personal relationship to Him. Paul was not given a message or a doctrine to proclaim, he was brought into a vivid, personal, overmastering relationship to Jesus C...

January 23rd Transformed by insight We all, with open face, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image. 2 Cor. 3:18. The outstanding characteristic of a Christian is this unveiled frankness before God so that the life becomes a mirror for other lives. By being filled with the Spirit we are transformed, and by beholding we become mirrors. You always know when a man has been beholding the glory of the Lord, you feel in your inner spirit that he is the mirror of the Lord’s own character. Beware of anything which would sully that mirror in you; it is nearly always a good thing, the good that is not the best. The golden rule for your life and mine is this concentrated keeping of the life open towards God. Let everything else—work, clothes, food, everything on earth—go by the board, saving that one thing. The rush of other things always tends to obscure this concentration on God. We have to maintain ourselves in the place of beholding, keeping t...

January 20th Are you fresh for everything? Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. John 3:3. Sometimes we are fresh for a prayer meeting but not fresh for cleaning boots! Being born again of the Spirit is an unmistakable work of God, as mysterious as the wind, as surprising as God Himself. We do not know where it begins, it is hidden away in the depths of our personal life. Being born again from above is a perennial, perpetual and eternal beginning, a freshness all the time in thinking and in talking and in living, the continual surprise of the life of God. Staleness is an indication of something out of joint with God—‘I must do this thing or it will never be done.’ That is the first sign of staleness. Are we freshly born this minute, or are we stale, raking in our minds for something to do? Freshness does not come from obedience but from the Holy Spirit; obedience keeps us in the light as God is in the light. Guard jealously your relationship to God....

January 19th Vision and darkness A horror of great darkness fell upon him. Genesis 15:12. Whenever God gives a vision to a saint, He puts him, as it were, in the shadow of His hand, and the saint’s duty is to be still and listen. There is a darkness which comes from an excess of light, and then is the time to listen. Genesis 16 is an illustration of listening to good advice when it is dark instead of waiting for God to send the light. When God gives a vision and darkness follows, wait. God will make you in accordance with the vision He has given if you will wait His time. Never try and help God fulfill His word. Abraham went through thirteen years of silence, but in those years all self-sufficiency was destroyed; there was no possibility left of relying on commonsense ways. Those years of silence were a time of discipline, not of displeasure. Never pump up joy and confidence, but stay upon God (cf. Isaiah 50:10, 11). Have I any confidence in the flesh? Or have I got beyo...

January 18th It is the Lord! Thomas answered and said unto Him, My Lord and my God. John 20:28. “Give Me to drink.” How many of us are set upon Jesus Christ slaking our thirst when we ought to be satisfying Him? We should be pouring out now, spending to the last limit, not drawing on Him to satisfy us. “Ye shall be witnesses unto Me”—that means a life of unsullied, uncompromising, and un-bribed devotion to the Lord Jesus, a satisfaction to Him wherever He places us. Beware of anything that competes with loyalty to Jesus Christ. The greatest competitor of devotion to Jesus is service for Him. It is easier to serve than to be drunk to the dregs. The one aim of the call of God is the satisfaction of God, not a call to do something for Him. We are not sent to battle for God, but to be used by God in His battlings. Are we being more devoted to service than to Jesus Christ?  Chambers, Oswald. My Utmost for His Highest: Selections for the Year . Grand Rapids, MI: Oswald Ch...