Day 6 - Friday | Daily Devotions | Morning and Evening: Daily Reading | Connect the Testaments | My Utmost for His Highest | Thoughts for the Quiet Hour |

Morning, January 3 Go To Evening Reading

“I will give thee for a covenant of the people.”

—Isaiah 49:8

Jesus Christ is the sum and substance of the covenant and one of its gifts. He is the property of every believer. Believer, canst thou estimate what thou hast gotten in Christ? “In him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.” Consider that word “God” and its infinity, and then meditate upon “perfect man” and all his beauty; for all that Christ, as God and man, ever had, or can have, is thine—out of pure free favor, passed over to thee to be thine entailed property forever. Our blessed Jesus, as God, is omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent. Will it not console you to know that all these great and glorious attributes are altogether yours? Has he power? That power is yours to support and strengthen you, to overcome your enemies, and to preserve you even to the end. Has he loved it? Well, there is not a drop of love in his heart that is not yours; you may dive into the immense ocean of his love, and you may say of it all, “It is mine.” Hath he justice? It may seem a stern attribute, but even that is yours, for he will by his justice see to it that all which is promised to you in the covenant of grace shall be most certainly secured to you. And all that he has as a perfect man is yours. As an ideal man, the Father’s delight was upon him. He stood accepted by the Most High. O believer, God’s acceptance of Christ is thine acceptance; for knowest thou not that the love which the Father set on a perfect Christ, he sets on thee now? For all that Christ did is thine. That perfect righteousness that Jesus wrought out when, through his stainless life, he kept the law and made it honorable is thine and imputed to thee. Christ is in the covenant.

“My God, I am thine—what a comfort divine!

What a blessing to know that the Saviour is mine!

In the heavenly Lamb thrice happy I am,

And my heart it doth dance at the sound of his name.”

Go To Morning Reading Evening, January 3

“The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.”

—Luke 3:4

The voice crying in the wilderness demanded a way for the Lord, a way prepared, and a way prepared in the wilderness. I would be attentive to the Master’s proclamation and give him a road into my heart, cast up by gracious operations, through the desert of my nature. The four directions in the text must have my serious attention.

Every valley must be exalted. Low and groveling thoughts of God must be given up; doubting and despairing must be removed; and self-seeking and carnal delights must be forsaken. Across these deep valleys, a glorious causeway of grace must be raised.

Every mountain and hill shall be laid low. Proud creature sufficiency and boastful self-righteousness must be leveled to make a highway for the King of kings. Divine fellowship is never vouchsafed to haughty, high-minded sinners. The Lord hath respect unto the lowly and visits the contrite in heart, but the lofty are an abomination unto him. My soul beseech the Holy Spirit to set thee right in this respect.

The crooked shall be made straight. The wavering heart must have a straight path of decision for God and holiness marked out for it. Double-minded men are strangers to the God of truth. My soul, take heed that thou be in all things honest and trustworthy, as in the sight of the heart-searching God.

The rough places shall be made smooth. Stumbling blocks of sin must be removed, and thorns and briers of rebellion must be uprooted. It is so great that a visitor must not find miry ways and stony places when he comes to honor his favored ones with his company. Oh, that this evening, the Lord may see in my heart a highway made ready by his grace, that he may make triumphal progress through the utmost bounds of my soul from the beginning of this year to the end of it.

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

January 3: Finding Comfort in a Cynic’s Words

Genesis 5; Matthew 5; Ecclesiastes 1:12–18

“I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after the wind” (Eccl 1:14). These aren’t exactly the words you want to hear in the morning—look who woke up on the wrong side of the bed. The intention behind them, though, is actually quite comforting.

The Preacher in Ecclesiastes goes on to prove that he doesn’t need counseling but instead should be our counselor: “What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be counted … I have acquired great wisdom … [But] in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow” (Eccl 1:15–16, 18). Although we may want to deny this fact, it’s a truism that haunts all great people: we may help the hurting people in our world, but we will never be able to end the pain, and knowledge alone will simply not get us there. Words on paper are not the solution. A manifesto, like the Declaration of Independence, may prompt significant change, but what is it without action? It is vanity. It’s a striving after the wind.

Delusion of importance has crushed many great people’s efforts. In fact, I would go so far as to say that it keeps most people from becoming what God wants them to be. And it’s not just the delusion of grandeur; it’s the delusion of insignificance or the distraction of focus. You become what you do, and what you think, write, speak, or feel is meaningless if it’s not what you do.

We, as Christians, are meant to act. As Jesus says, “You are the salt of the earth. But if salt becomes tasteless, by what will it be made salty? It is good for nothing any longer except to be thrown outside and trampled underfoot by people” (Matt 5:13). If we are salt, let’s be salty. If we are light, let’s shine brightly (Matt 5:14). Anything other than that is vain. It’s searching for knowledge for knowledge’s sake. It leaves both us and the world empty.

There is comfort to be found in the Preacher of Ecclesiastes’ words in that he tells us, albeit through harshness and cynicism, that we’re meant for more than we usually recognize. He calls us to rise to that: to shun the unimportant and focus on God’s work. What good is wisdom and knowledge if it’s not for that purpose?

What are you currently delusional about? What’s vain that you’re doing that God wishes for you to change?

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 3rd

Clouds and darkness

Clouds and darkness are round about Him. Psalm 97:2.

A man who has not been born of the Spirit of God will tell you that the teachings of Jesus are simple. But when baptized with the Holy Ghost, you find “clouds and darkness are round about Him.” When we come into close contact with the teachings of Jesus Christ, we have our first insight into this aspect of things. The only possibility of understanding the teaching of Jesus is by the light of the Spirit of God on the inside. Suppose we have never had the experience of taking our commonplace religious shoes off our commonplace religious feet and getting rid of all the undue familiarity with which we approach God. In that case, whether we have ever stood in His presence is questionable. The people who are flippant and familiar are those who have never yet been introduced to Jesus Christ. After the extraordinary delight and liberty of realizing what Jesus Christ does comes the impenetrable darkness of realizing Who He is.

Jesus said: “The words that I speak unto you,” not—‘the words I have spoken’—“they are spirit, and they are life.” The Bible has been so many words to us—clouds and darkness, then all of a sudden, the words become spirit and life because Jesus re-speaks them to us in a particular condition. That is how God speaks to us, not by visions and dreams but by words. When a man gets to God, it is by the most straightforward way of words.

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

January 3

Where art thou?

Gen. 3:9

Art thou hiding thyself away from Him who would send thee forth to do His blessed work in His own way? Let me tell you this morning, “The Lord hath need of thee.” It may seem to be only something He has for you to do, but it is essential. He has “need of thee.” Turn not thy back upon Him; put not thyself out of the way of being employed by Him; do not begin by laying down laws for thyself as to what thou wilt do and what thou wilt not do; but cry out from the very depth of thy heart, “Here am I! Send me.”

W. Hay Aitken

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