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

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 Christ ian 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 beh...

January 22nd What am I looking at? Look unto Me , and be ye saved. Isaiah 45:22 . Do we expect God to come to us with His blessings and save us? He says— ‘Look unto Me , and be saved.’ The great difficulty spiritually is to concentrate on God , and it is His blessings that make it difficult. Troubles nearly always make us look to God ; His blessings are apt to make us look elsewhere. The teaching of the Sermon on the Mount is, in effect—Narrow all your interests until the attitude of mind and heart and body is concentration on Jesus Christ . Many of us have a mental conception of what a Christ ian should be, and the lives of the saints become a hindrance to our concentration on God . There is no salvation in this way, it is not simple enough. “Look unto Me” and—not ‘you will be saved,’ but ‘you are saved.’ The very thing we look for, we shall find if we will concentrate on Him . We get preoccupied and sulky with God , while all the time He is saying— ‘Loo...

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 re...

January 11th What my obedience to God costs other people They laid hold upon one Simon, … and on him they laid the cross Luke 23:26 . If we obey God it is going to cost other people more than it costs us, and that is where the sting comes in. If we are in love with our Lord , obedience does not cost us anything, it is a delight, but it costs those who do not love Him a good deal. If we obey God it will mean that other people’s plans are upset, and they will gibe us with it— ‘You call this Christ ianity ?’ We can prevent the suffering; but if we are going to obey God , we must not prevent it, we must let the cost be paid. Our human pride entrenches itself on this point, and we say— ‘I will never accept anything from anyone.’ We shall have to, or disobey God . We have no right to expect to be in any other relation than our Lord Himself was in ( see Luke 8:2–3 ). Stagnation in spiritual life comes when we say we will bear the whole thing ourselves. We cannot. We...

January 9th Intercessory introspection And I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless. 1 Thess. 5:23 . “Your whole spirit …” The great mystical work of the Holy Spirit is in the dim regions of our personality which we cannot get at. Read the 139th Psalm ; the Psalmist implies— ‘ Thou art the God of the early mornings, the God of the late at nights, the God of the mountain peaks, and the God of the sea; but, my God , my soul has further horizons than the early mornings, deeper darkness than the nights of earth, higher peaks than any mountain peaks, greater depths than any sea in nature— Thou Who art the God of all these, be my God . I cannot reach to the heights or to the depths; there are motives I cannot trace, dreams I cannot get at—my God , search me out.’ Do we believe that God can garrison the imagination far beyond where we can go? “The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin’ —if that means in conscious experience only...

January 8th Does my sacrifice live? And Abraham built an altar … and bound Isaac his son. Genesis 22:9 . This incident is a picture of the blunder we make in thinking that the final thing God wants of us is the sacrifice of death. What God wants is the sacrifice through death which enables us to do what Jesus did, viz., sacrifice our lives . Not ‘I am willing to go to death with Thee ,’ but, ‘I am willing to be identified with Thy death so that I may sacrifice my life to God .’ We seem to think that God wants us to give up things! God purified Abraham from this blunder, and the same discipline goes on in our lives. God nowhere tells us to give up things for the sake of giving them up. He tells us to give them up for the sake of the only thing worth having, viz., life with Himself . It is a question of loosening the bands that hinder the life, and immediately those bands are loosened by identification with the death of Jesus , we enter into a relationship with God w...

January 7th Intimate with Jesus Have I been so long with you, and yet hast thou not known Me? John 14:9 . These words are not spoken as a rebuke, nor even with surprise; Jesus is leading Philip on. The last One with whom we get intimate is Jesus . Before Pentecost the disciples knew Jesus as the One Who gave them power to conquer demons and to bring about a revival ( see Luke 10:18–20 ). It was a wonderful intimacy, but there was a much closer intimacy to come— “I have called you friends.” Friendship is rare on earth. It means identity in thought and heart and spirit. The whole discipline of life is to enable us to enter into this closest relationship with Jesus Christ . We receive His blessings and know His word , but do we know Him ? Jesus said— “It is expedient for you that I go away” —in that relationship, so that He might lead them on. It is a joy to Jesus when a disciple takes time to step more intimately with Him . Fruit bearing is always mentioned as the...

January 6th Worship And he pitched his tent having Bethel on the west and Ai on the east; and there he builded an altar. Genesis 12:8 . Worship is giving God the best that He has given you. Be careful what you do with the best you have. Whenever you get a blessing from God , give it back to Him as a love gift. Take time to meditate before God and offer the blessing back to Him in a deliberate act of worship. If you hoard a thing for yourself, it will turn into spiritual dry rot, as the manna did when it was hoarded. God will never let you hold a spiritual thing for yourself; it has to be given back to Him that He may make it a blessing to others. Bethel is the symbol of communion with God ; Ai is the symbol of the world. Abraham pitched his tent between the two. The measure of the worth of our public activity for God is the private profound communion we have with Him . Rush is wrong every time; there is always plenty of time to worship God . Quiet days with God ...

November 9: Fear Not What’s Outside but Inside 1 Kings 11:9–12:33 ; Mark 7:14–8:10 ; Proverbs 3:6–3:12 How should we respond to a miraculous experience? Worshiping God for His goodness is the right place to start, but our ongoing response is every bit as important as our initial reaction. We see this play out in Solomon’s life. “Yahweh was angry with Solomon, for he had turned his heart from Yahweh, the God of Israel who had appeared to him twice. And [Yahweh] commanded [Solomon] concerning this matter not to go after other gods, but he did not keep that which Yahweh commanded” ( 1 Kgs 11:9–10 ). Despite Solomon’s experience with Yahweh, he chose to deny Him. This angered Yahweh—not just because of the general disobedience, but also because, after Solomon’s miraculous experience, he had more reason than anyone to stay devoted. Solomon’s refusal of the opportunity to turn back to Yahweh only aggravated the situation. We don’t know exactly what led Solomon to disobey, alth...

November 13th Faith and experience The Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me. Gal. 2:20 . We have to battle through our moods into absolute devotion to the Lord Jesus, to get out of the hole-and-corner business of our experience into abandoned devotion to Him. Think Who the New Testament says that Jesus Christ is, and then think of the despicable meanness of the miserable faith we have— ‘I haven’t had this and that experience!’ Think what faith in Jesus Christ claims—that He can present us faultless before the throne of God, unutterably pure, absolutely rectified and profoundly justified. Stand in implicit, adoring faith in Him, He is made unto us “wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.” How can we talk of making a sacrifice for the Son of God! Our salvation is from hell and perdition, and then we talk about making sacrifices! We have to get out into faith in Jesus Christ continually; not a prayer meeting Jesus Christ, nor a boo...

November 12th The transfigured life If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. 2 Cor. 5:17 . What idea have you of the salvation of your soul? The experience of salvation means that in your actual life things are really altered, you no longer look at things as you used to; your desires are new, old things have lost their power. One of the touchstones of experience is—Has God altered the thing that matters? If you still hanker after the old things, it is absurd to talk about being born from above, you are juggling with yourself. If you are born again, the Spirit of God makes the alteration manifest in your actual life and reasoning, and when the crisis comes you are the most amazed person on earth at the wonderful difference there is in you. There is no possibility of imagining that you did it. It is this complete and amazing alteration that is the evidence that you are a saved soul. What differe...

November 11th The supreme climb Take now thy son … Genesis 22:2. God’s command is—Take now, not presently. It is extraordinary how we debate! We know a thing is right, but we try to find excuses for not doing it at once. To climb to the height God shows can never be done presently, it must be done now. The sacrifice is gone through in will before it is performed actually. “And Abraham rose up early in the morning, … and went unto the place of which God had told him” ( v. 3) . The wonderful simplicity of Abraham! When God spoke, he did not confer with flesh and blood. Beware when you want to confer with flesh and blood, i.e., your own sympathies, your own insight, anything that is not based on your personal relationship to God. These are the things that compete with and hinder obedience to God. Abraham did not choose the sacrifice. Always guard against self-chosen service for God; self-sacrifice may be a disease. If God has made your cup sweet, drink it with grac...

November 10: Take Up Your Cross 1 Kings 13:1–34 ; Mark 8:11–9:1; Proverbs 3:13–22 The way we respond to desperate circumstances often clarifies what gives us hope. Jesus’ followers faced the very real threat of death by choosing to follow Him—something He warns them about: “And summoning the crowd together with his disciples, he said to them, ‘If anyone wants to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life on account of me and of the gospel will save it’ ” ( Mark 8:34–35 ). In Jesus’ time, “taking up the cross” would have been associated with a shameful death at the hands of the ruling Roman powers. To risk suffering this type of shameful death required more than lukewarm commitment. Jesus doesn’t limit this calling to His disciples; anyone who “wants to come after” faces this uncertainty and must hold a faith that displays this loyalty. For some Christians today, follo...

November 9th Sacramental service Who now rejoice in My sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ.… Col. 1:24 . The Christian worker has to be a sacramental ‘go-between,’ to be so identified with his Lord and the reality of His Redemption that He can continually bring His creating life through him. It is not the strength of one man’s personality being superimposed on another, but the real presence of Christ coming through the elements of the worker’s life. When we preach the historic facts of the life and death of Our Lord as they are conveyed in the New Testament , our words are made sacramental; God uses them on the ground of His Redemption to create in those who listen that which is not created otherwise. If we preach the effects of Redemption in human life instead of the revelation regarding Jesus, the result in those who listen is not new birth, but refined spiritual culture, and the Spirit of God cannot witness to it...

November 4th The authority of reality Draw nigh to God, and He will draw nigh to you. James 4:8 . It is essential to give people a chance of acting on the truth of God. The responsibility must be left with the individual, you cannot act for him, it must be his own deliberate act, but the evangelical message ought always to lead a man to act. The paralysis of refusing to act leaves a man exactly where he was before; when once he acts, he is never the same. It is the foolishness of it that stands in the way of hundreds who have been convicted by the Spirit of God. Immediately I precipitate myself over into an act, that second I live; all the rest is existence. The moments when I truly live are the moments when I act with my whole will. Never allow a truth of God that is brought home to your soul to pass without acting on it, not necessarily physically, but in will. Record it, with ink or with blood. The feeblest saint who transacts business with Jesus Christ is emanc...

November 3rd A bond-slave of Jesus I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. Gal. 2:20 . These words mean the breaking of my independence with my own hand and surrendering to the supremacy of the Lord Jesus. No one can do this for me, I must do it myself. God may bring me to the point three hundred and sixty-five times a year, but He cannot put me through it. It means breaking the husk of my individual independence of God, and the emancipation of my personality into oneness with Himself, not for my own ideas, but for absolute loyalty to Jesus. There is no possibility of dispute when once I am there. Very few of us know anything about loyalty to Christ— “For my sake.” It is that which makes the iron saint. Has that break come? All the rest is pious fraud. The one point to decide is—Will I give up, will I surrender to Jesus Christ, and make no conditions whatever as to how the break comes? I must be broken from my self-reali...

November 2nd Authority and independence If ye love Me, ye will keep My commandments. John 14:15 ( R.V. ). Our Lord never insists upon obedience; He tells us very emphatically what we ought to do, but He never takes means to make us do it. We have to obey Him out of oneness of spirit. That is why when Our Lord talked about discipleship, He prefaced it with an IF—you do not need to unless you like. “If any man will be My disciple, let him deny himself” ; let him give up his right to himself to Me. Our Lord is not talking of eternal positions, but of being of value to Himself in this order of things, that is why He sounds so stern ( cf . Luke 14:26 ). Never interpret these words apart from the One who uttered them. The Lord does not give me rules, He makes His standard very clear, and if my relationship to Him is that of love, I will do what He says without any hesitation. If I hesitate, it is because I love someone else in competition with Him, viz., myself. Jesus C...

October 31st Discernment of faith Faith as a grain of mustard seed.… Matthew 17:20 We have the idea that God rewards us for our faith, it may be so in the initial stages; but we do not earn anything by faith. Faith brings us into right relationship with God and gives God His opportunity. God has frequently to knock the bottom board out of your experience if you are a saint in order to get you into contact with Himself. God wants you to understand that it is a life of faith, not a life of sentimental enjoyment of His blessings. Your earlier life of faith was narrow and intense, settled around a little sun-spot of experience that had as much of sense as of faith in it, full of light and sweetness; then God withdrew His conscious blessings in order to teach you to walk by faith. You are worth far more to Him now than you were in your days of conscious delight and thrilling testimony. Faith by its very nature must be tried, and the real trial of faith is not that we find...

October 30th Faith Without faith it is impossible to please Him. Hebrews 11:6 . Faith in antagonism to common sense is fanaticism, and common sense in antagonism to faith is rationalism. The life of faith brings the two into a right relation. Common sense is not faith, and faith is not common sense; they stand in the relation of the natural and the spiritual; of impulse and inspiration. Nothing Jesus Christ ever said is common sense, it is revelation sense, and it reaches the shores where common sense fails. Faith must be tried before the reality of faith is actual. “We know that all things work together for good,” then no matter what happens, the alchemy of God’s providence transfigures the ideal faith into actual reality. Faith always works on the personal line, the whole purpose of God being to see that the ideal faith is made real in His children. For every detail of the commonsense life, there is a revelation fact of God whereby we can prove in practical experie...

October 29th Substitution He hath made Him to be sin for us, … that we might be made the righteousness of God.… 2 Cor. 5:21 . The modern view of the death of Jesus is that He died for our sins out of sympathy. The New Testament view is that He bore our sin not by sympathy, but by identification. He was made to be sin. Our sins are removed because of the death of Jesus, and the explanation of His death is His obedience to His Father, not His sympathy with us. We are acceptable with God not because we have obeyed, or because we have promised to give up things, but because of the death of Christ, and in no other way. We say that Jesus Christ came to reveal the Fatherhood of God, the loving-kindness of God; the New Testament says He came to bear away the sin of the world. The revelation of His Father is to those to whom He has been introduced as Saviour: Jesus Christ never spoke of Himself to the world as one Who revealed the Father, but as a stumbling-block ( see John...