Day 5 - Thursday | Daily Devotions | Morning and Evening: Daily Reading | Connect the Testaments | My Utmost for His Highest | Thoughts for the Quiet Hour |
Morning, December 19 Go To Evening Reading
"The lot is cast into the lap, but the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord."
—Proverbs 16:33
If the disposal of the lot is the Lord's, what is the arrangement of our whole life? If the simple casting of a lot is guided by him, how much more the events of our entire life—especially when we are told by our blessed Saviour: "The very hairs of your head are all numbered: not a sparrow falleth to the ground without your Father." It would bring a holy calm over your mind, dear friend, if you were always to remember this. It would so relieve your mind from anxiety that you would be better able to walk in patience, quiet, and cheerfulness as a Christian should. When a man is anxious he cannot pray with faith; when he is troubled about the world, he cannot serve his Master, his thoughts are serving himself. If you would "seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness," all things would be added unto you. You are meddling with Christ's business and neglecting your own when you forget your lot and circumstances. You have been trying to "pro" ide" wo" k and forgetting that it is yours to obey. Be wise and attend to the obeying, and let Christ manage the providing.
Come and survey your FathFather'srehouse and ask whether he will let you starve while he has laid up so great an abundance in his garner? Look at his heart of mercy; see if that can prove unkind! Look at his inscrutable wisdom; see if that will ever be at fault. Above all, look up to Jesus Christ, your Intercessor, and ask yourself, while he pleads, can your Father deal ungraciously with you? If he remembers even sparrows, will he forget one of the least of his poor children? "Cas" thy burden upon the Lord, and he will sustain thee. He will never suffer the righteous to be moved."
"y soul, rest happy in thy low estate,
Nor hope nor wish to be esteesteem'dgreat;
To take the impression of the Will Divine,
Be that thy glory, and those riches thine.
Go To Morning Reading Evening, December 19
"And" there was no more sea."
—R "violation 21:1
Scarcely could we rejoice at the thought of losing the glorious old ocean: the new heavens and the new earth are none the fairer to our imagination if, indeed, literally, there is to be no great and vast sea, with its gleaming waves and shelly shores. Is not the text to be read as a metaphor, tinged with the prejudice with which the Oriental mind universally regarded the sea in the olden times? An actual physical world without a sea is mournful to imagine; it would be an iron ring without the sapphire, which made it precious. There must be a spiritual meaning here. In the new dispensation, there will be no division—the sea separates nations and sunders peoples from each other. To John in Patmos, the deep waters were like prison walls, shutting him out from his brethren and his work: there shall be no such barriers in the world to come. Leagues of rolling billows lie between us and many a kinsman whom tonight we prayerfully remember, but in the bright world to which we go, there shall be unbroken fellowship for all the redeemed family. In this sense, there shall be no more sea. The sea is the emblem of change; with its ebbs and flows, its glassy smoothness and mountainous billows, its gentle murmurs, and its tumultuous roarings, it is never the same. Slave of the fickle winds and the changeful moon, its instability is proverbial. In this mortal state, we have too much of this; the earth is constant only in her inconstancy, but in the heavenly state, all mournful change shall be unknown, and with it all fear of storm to wreck our hopes and drown our joys. The sea of glass glows with a glory unbroken by a wave. No tempest howls along the peaceful shores of paradise. Soon shall we reach that happy land where partings, changes, and storms will end! Jesus will waft us there. Are we in him or not? This is the grand question.
C. H. Spurgeon, Morning and Evening: Daily Readings (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1896).
December 19: The Rechabite Saga
Jeremiah 35:1–36:32; Romans 8:18–39; Proverbs 22:17–23:18
We're drawn to learning and quick to speak. We think we know God's ways. He can easily prove us wrong. Many of us have made this mistake: We believe we live righteously, and God slams us for our actions. He quickly deconstructs our worldview, questioning our ethics, way of being, and lifestyles. Why? Because even if we don't think we are taking awe'reles, we might be living by our own choices rather than Yahweh's will—anYahweh's disobedience. The story of the Rechabites demonstrates this point.
Yahweh had requested that the Rechabites shun alcohol and live in tents, so they did. They obeyed this request until Nebuchadnezzar invaded Judah, which they inhabited with the rest of God's people. God sent them one final test: He asked His prophet, Jeremiah, to prompt them to drink wine. They resisted—and passed the test (Jer 35:1–11).
The Rechabites obedRechabites'model shows the actions of the rest of God's people as God'shensible by comparison. Yahweh remarks to Jeremiah, "Go and say to t "the people of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, 'Can you not learn a lesson to listen to my words?' declares Yahwe.' 'The words of Jo'adab, the son of Rechab, that he commanded his descendants not to drink have been carried out, and they have not drunk until this day, for they have obeyed their ancestor's commaancestor'shave spoken to you repeatedly, and you have not listened to me" (Jer 35:13–14)" God's people hadGod'sbeyed Him by seeking other gods and committing other sins. Still, this line hints at the deeper problem: They had not carried out Yahweh's essentials, which was to listen to His will.
God's people thoGod'sthey were in the right. They believed they were behaving correctly. But in reality, they disobeyed His basic commandments and then disobeyed His will. Like God's people, are arGods living in disillusionment, failing to acknowledge that you're living out God's will?
Ask God: "Am I really on "the right track? Is this God's will, or is it the manifestation of a false belief about my obedience that I'm creating?"
I'm D. Barry
"
John D. Barry and Rebecca Kruyswijk, Connect the Testaments: A One-Year Daily Devotional with Bible Reading Plan (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2012).
December 19
What to concentrate on
I came not to send peace but a sword. Matthew 10:34.
Never be sympathetic with the soul whose case makes you conclude that God is complex. God is more tender than we can conceive, and every now and again, He gives us the chance of being the rugged one that He may be the tender One. If a man cannot get through to God, it is because there is a secret thing he does not intend to give up: 'I will admit I 'ave done wrong, but I no longer intend to give up that thing than fly.' It is impossible to deal sympathetically with a case like that: we must get deep down to the root until there is antagonism and resentment against the message. People want the blessing of God, but they will not stand the thing that goes straight to the quick.
If God has had His way with you, your message as His servant is merciless insistence on the one line, cut down to the very root, otherwise there will be no healing. Drive home the message until there is no possible refuge from its application. Begin to get at people where they are until you get them to realize what they lack, and then erect the standard of Jesus Christ for their lives—' We never can be that!' Then drive it home,' "Jesus Christ says, "You must."" ut how can we b''''‘'ou cannot unless you have a new Spirit" (Luke 11:13).
There must be a sense of need before your message is used. Thousands of people are happy without God in this world. Why did He come if I was pleased and moral until Jesus came? Because that kind of happiness and peace is on a wrong level, Jesus Christ came to send a sword through every peace that is not based on a personal relationship with Himself.
Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest: Selections for the Year (Grand Rapids, MI: Oswald Chambers Publications; Marshall Pickering, 1986).
December 19
A hearer of the word … a doer of the work
James 1:23, 25
Religion may be learned on Sunday but is lived in the weekday's work. The wweekday'sfaith may be lit in the church, but it does burn in shops and on the street. Religion seeks its life in prayer, but it lives in deeds. It is planted in the closet but grows in the world. It plumes itself for flight in songs of praise, but its actual flights are in works of love. It resolves and meditates on faithfulness as it reads its Christian lesson in the Book of Truth, but "faithful is that faithfully does."" It puts its"" ore on in all the aids and help"" of the sanctuary as its dressing room, but it combats for the right, the noble, and the good in all the activities of practical existence, and its battleground is the whole broad field of life.
John Doughty
Samuel G. Hardman and Dwight Lyman Moody, Thoughts for the Quiet Hour (Willow Grove, PA: Woodlawn Electronic Publishing, 1997).
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