Day 4 - Wednesday | Daily Devotions | Morning and Evening: Daily Reading | Connect the Testaments | My Utmost for His Highest | Thoughts for the Hour |

 Morning, January 1 Go To Evening Reading

“They did eat of the fruit of the land of Canaan that year.”

—Joshua 5:12

Israel’s weary wanderings were over, and the promised rest was attained. No more moving tents, fiery serpents, fierce Amalekites, and howling wildernesses: they came to the land which flowed with milk and honey and ate the old corn of the land. Perhaps this year, beloved Christian reader, this may be thy case or mine. Joyful is the prospect; if faith is in active exercise, it will yield unalloyed delight. To be with Jesus in the rest that remains for the people of God is a cheering hope, and to expect this glory so soon is double bliss. Unbelief shudders at the Jordan, which still rolls between us and the goodly land, but let us rest assured that we have already experienced more ills than death at its worst can cause us. Let us banish every fearful thought and rejoice with great joy, hoping that this year we shall begin to be “forever with the Lord.”

A part of the host will tarry on earth this year to serve their Lord. If this should fall to our lot, there is no reason why the New Year’s text should not still be valid. “We who have believed do enter into rest.” The Holy Spirit is the earnest of our inheritance; he gives us “glory begun below.” In heaven, they are secure, and so are we preserved in Christ Jesus; there they triumph over their enemies, and we have victories, too. Celestial spirits enjoy communion with their Lord, which is not denied to us; they rest in his love, and we have perfect peace in him: they hymn his praise, and it is our privilege to bless him, too. This year, we will gather celestial fruits on earthly ground, where faith and hope have made the desert like the garden of the Lord. Man did eat angels’ food of old, and why not now? O for grace to feed on Jesus, and so to eat of the fruit of the land of Canaan this year!

Go To Morning Reading Evening, January 1

“We will be glad and rejoice in thee.”

—Song of Solomon 1:4

We will be glad and rejoice in thee. We will not open the gates of the year to the dolorous notes of the sackbut but to the sweet strains of the harp of joy and the high-sounding cymbals of gladness. “O come, let us sing unto the Lord: make a joyful noise unto the rock of our salvation.” We, the called and faithful and chosen, will drive away our grief and set up our banners of confidence in the name of God. Let others lament their troubles; we who have the sweetening tree to cast into Marah’s bitter pool with joy will magnify the Lord. Eternal Spirit, our effectual Comforter, the temples in which thou dwellest, will never cease to adore and bless the name of Jesus. We will; we are resolved about it; Jesus must have the crown of our heart’s delight; we will not dishonor our Bridegroom by mourning in his presence. We are ordained to be the minstrels of the skies; let us rehearse our everlasting anthem before we sing it in the halls of the New Jerusalem. We will be glad and rejoice: two words with one sense, double joy, blessedness upon blessedness. Need there be any limit to our rejoicing in the Lord even now? Do not men of grace find their Lord to be camphire and spikenard, calamus and cinnamon even now, and what better fragrance have them in heaven itself? We will be glad and rejoice in Thee. That last word is the meat in the dish, the nut kernel, the soul of the text. What heavens are laid up in Jesus! What rivers of infinite bliss have their source, aye, and every drop of their fulness in him! Since, O sweet Lord Jesus, thou art the present portion of thy people, favor us this year with such a sense of thy preciousness that from its first to its last day, we may be glad and rejoice in thee. Let January open with joy in the Lord and December close with gladness in Jesus.

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

January 1: Beginnings

Genesis 1–2; Matthew 1–2; Ecclesiastes 1:1–5

Initially, God subdued the ancient world's most significant symbol of chaos: the waters. He also created light, which the ancients thought ruled everything. Even darkness, which they deeply feared, is now governed by Him.

The ancients were in the middle, asking, “God, where are you in this chaotic world?” God answered them with a story about beginnings. In this story, God establishes order in a chaotic world. He rules other gods, the light, and the night. It’s as if God said, “Why are you afraid? I’m here. I’m working it out.”

Matthew 1–2 gives us another beginning—a child born in humble circumstances. But it’s through this child, Jesus, that the world itself was first created. And that’s not all: everything is brought together in Him and through Him. Chaos is made orderly: “Because all things in the heavens and on earth were created by him … and he is before all things, and in him all things are held together” (Col 1:16–17). If we want to truly understand our origins, we need this frame of reference.

Like the ancients, we, too, are in the middle. We worry that evil and chaos will reign, but we must let Christ take control. He can bring order to our unruly lives. We need a new beginning. In Genesis, God wants us to see Him taking back what He created—including us.

What chaos do you fear? We often feel in the middle, but our beginnings suggest that Christ holds everything together. What areas of your life need God’s order? Where do you need Christ to step in and hold together?

John 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).

January 1st

Let us keep to the point.

My eager desire and hope is that I may never feel ashamed but that now as ever, I may honor Christ in my own person with fearless courage. Phil. 1:20. (Moffatt.)

My Utmost for His Highest. “My eager desire and hope being that I may never feel ashamed.” We shall all feel very much ashamed if we do not yield to Jesus on the point He has asked us to yield to Him. Paul says—“My determination is to be my utmost for His Highest.” To get there is a question of will, not of debate nor of reasoning, but a surrender of will, an absolute and irrevocable surrender on that point. An over-weening consideration for ourselves is the thing that keeps us from that decision, though we put it that we are considering others. When we consider what it will cost others if we obey the call of Jesus, we tell God He does not know what our obedience will mean. Keep to the point; He does know. Shut out every other consideration and keep yourself before God for this one thing only—“My Utmost for His Highest.” I am determined to be absolutely and entirely for Him and for Him alone.

My Undeterredness for His Holiness. “Whether that means life or death, no matter!” (v. 21). Paul is determined that nothing shall deter him from doing precisely what God wants. God’s order has to work up to a crisis in our lives because we will not heed the gentler way. He brings us to the place where He asks us to be our utmost for Him, and we begin to debate; then He produces a providential crisis where we have to decide—for or against, and from that point, the ‘Great Divide’ begins.

If the crisis has come to you on any line, surrender your will to Him absolutely and irrevocably.

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

January 1

Come up in the morning … and present thyself … to me at the top of the mountain.

Exod. 34:2

My Father, I am coming. Nothing on the mean plain shall keep me away from the holy heights. Help me to climb fast, and keep Thou my foot, lest it fall upon the hard rock! At Thy bidding I come, so Thou wilt not mock my heart. Bring with Thee honey from Heaven, yea, milk and wine, and oil for my soul’s good, and stay the sun in his course, or the time will be too short to look upon Thy face and hear Thy gentle voice.

Morning on the mount! It will make me strong and glad that the rest of the day has begun so well.

Joseph Parker

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