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

 Morning, November 4 Go To Evening Reading

“For my strength is made perfect in weakness.”

—2 Corinthians 12:9

A sense of weakness is a primary qualification for serving God by doing God’s miracle, working well, and having any amount of success. When God’s warrior marches forth to battle, strong in his own might, when he boasts, “I know that I shall conquer, my own right arm and my conquering sword shall get unto me the victory,” defeat is not far distant. God will not go forth with that man who marches in his own strength. He who reckoneth on victory thus has reckoned wrongly, for “it is not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.” They who go forth to fight, boasting of their prowess, shall return with their gay banners trailed in the dust and their armor stained with disgrace. Those who serve God must serve him in his own way and strength, or he will never accept their service. God can never own that which man doth, unaided by divine strength. The mere fruits of the earth he casteth away; he will only reap that corn, the seed of which was sown from heaven, watered by grace, and ripened by the sun of divine love. God will empty out all that thou hast before he will put his own into thee; he will first clean out thy granaries before filling them with the finest of the wheat. The river of God is full of water, but not one drop of it flows from earthly springs. God will have no strength used in his battles but the strength he imparts. Are you mourning over your own weakness? Take courage, for there must be a consciousness of weakness before the Lord will give thee victory. Your emptiness is the preparation for your being filled, and your casting down is the making ready for your lifting up.

“When I am weak, then am I strong,

Grace is my shield and Christ my song.”

Go To Morning Reading Evening, November 4

“In thy light shall we see the light?”

—Psalm 36:9

No lips can tell the love of Christ to the heart till Jesus himself shall speak within. Descriptions all fall flat and tame unless the Holy Ghost fills them with life and power; until our Immanuel reveals himself within, the soul does not see him. If you could see the sun, would you gather together the standard means of illumination and seek in that way to behold the orb of day? No, the wise man knoweth that the sun must reveal itself, and only by its own blaze can that mighty lamp be seen. It is so with Christ. “Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona:” said he to Peter, “for flesh and blood hath not revealed this unto thee.” Purify flesh and blood by any educational process and elevate mental faculties to the highest degree of intellectual power, yet none of these can reveal Christ. The Spirit of God must come with power and overshadow the man with his wings, and thenholy of holies, in that mystic the Lord Jesus must display himself to the sanctified eye, as he doth not unto the purblind sons of men. Christ must be his own mirror. The great mass of this blear-eyed world can see nothing of the ineffable glories of Immanuel. He stands before them without form or comeliness, a root out of a dry ground, rejected by the vain and despised by the proud. Only where the Spirit has touched the eye with eye salve, quickened the heart with divine life, and educated the soul to a heavenly taste, only there is he understood. “To you that believe he is precious”; to you, he is the chief corner-stone, the Rock of your salvation, you're all in all; but to others, he is “a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense.” Happy are those to whom our Lord manifests himself, for his promise to such is that he will make his abode with them. O Jesus, our Lord, our heart is open, come in, and go out no more forever. Show yourself to us now! Favour us with a glimpse of thine all-conquering charms.

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

November 4: Cutting a Deal with God

1 Kings 5:1–6:38; Mark 4:1–24; Proverbs 1:20–27

Sometimes, we think we can make deals with God. We hear His commands, but we plan on being faithful later. Or we make light of our rebellious thoughts and actions, thinking they’re only minor offenses in the grand scheme. Perhaps we believe God will overlook them just as quickly as we’ve rationalized them.

Jesus emphasized “having ears to hear” in the Gospel of Mark. He expected much more than a captive audience, though: “ ‘If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear!’ And he said to them, ‘Take care what you hear! With the measure by which you measure out, it will be measured out to you and will be added to you’ ” (Mark 4:23–24).

Jesus issued this command shortly after giving His disciples unique insight into the parable of the Sower and the Seed. The rocky soil, thorns, road, and good soil represented various responses to the good news. The good soil was receptive to the seeds. But more than that, such soils “receive it and bear fruit—one thirty and one sixty and one a hundred times as much” (Mark 4:20).

Jesus revealed the kingdom's secret to His disciples, the surrounding crowd, and us. Now that we hear, we must take care to respond. Bear fruit befitting His work in you (Mark 4:20), and let others know why you bear fruit (Mark 4:21–22). Because He has given to you in such abundance, He expects you to live abundantly for Him.

How are you rationalizing your response to God’s work? Are you delaying responding to God?

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).

November 4th

The authority of reality

Draw nigh to God, and He will draw nigh to you. James 4:8.

Giving people a chance to act on the truth of God is essential. The responsibility must be left with the individual; you cannot act for him; it must be his deliberate act, but the evangelical message should always 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. Its foolishness stands in the way of hundreds convicted by the Spirit of God. Immediately, I precipitate.  An act that, the second I live, is all the rest of myself over into existence. The moments when I truly live are when I act with my whole will.

Never allow a truth of God 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 emancipated the second he acts; God's almighty power is on his behalf. We come up to the truth of God, confess we are wrong, but go back again; then we come up to it again and go back until we learn that we have no business to go back. We must go clean over some word of our redeeming Lord and transact business with Him. His word ‘come’ means ‘transact.’ “Come unto Me.” The last thing we do is to come, but everyone who does come knows that that second, the supernatural life of God, invades him instantly. The dominating power of the world, the flesh, and the devil is paralyzed, not by your act, but because your act has linked you to God and His redemptive power.

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

November 4

Jacob lifted his eyes and looked, and behold, Esau came, with him, four hundred men.

Gen. 33:1

Do not lift up your eyes and look for Esau’s. Those who look for trouble will not be long without finding trouble to look at. Lift them higher—to Him from whom our help cometh. Then, you can meet your problems with an unperturbed spirit. Those who have seen the face of God need not fear the face of man that shall die. To have power with God is to control all the evils that threaten us.

F. B. Meyer

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