Day 5 - Thursday | Daily Devotions | Morning and Evening: Daily Reading | Connect the Testaments | My Utmost for His Highest | Thoiughts for the Quiet Hour |

 Morning, June 12 Go To Evening Reading

“Thou art weighed in the balances and art found wanting.”

—Daniel 5:27

We frequently weigh ourselves in the scale of God’s Word. You will find it a holy exercise to read some psalm of David, and, as you meditate upon each verse, to ask yourself, “Can I say this? Have I felt as David felt? Has my heart ever been broken on account of sin, as his was when he penned his penitential psalms? Has my soul been full of confidence in the hour of difficulty as his was when he sang of God’s mercies in the cave of Adullam, or in the holds of Engedi? Do I take the cup of salvation and call upon the name of the Lord?” Then turn to the life of Christ, and as you read, ask yourselves how far you are conformed to his likeness. Endeavour to discover whether you have the meekness, the humility, and the lovely spirit he constantly inculcated and displayed.

Take, then, the epistles, and see whether you can go with the apostle in what he said of his experience. Have you ever cried out as he did—“O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” Have you ever felt his self-abasement? Have you considered yourself the chief of sinners, and less than the least of all saints? Have you known anything of his devotion? Could you join him and say, “For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain”? If we thus read God’s Word as a test of our spiritual condition, we shall have good reason to stop often and say, “Lord, I feel I have never yet been here, O bring me here! Give me true penitence, such as this I read of. Give me real faith; give me warmer zeal; inflame me with more fervent love; grant me the grace of meekness; make me more like Jesus. Let me no longer be ‘found wanting,’ when weighed in the balances of the sanctuary, lest I be found wanting in the scales of judgment.” “Judge yourselves that ye be not judged.”

Go To Morning Reading Evening, June 12

“Who hath saved us, and called us with a holy calling.”

—2 Timothy 1:9

The apostle uses the perfect tense and says, “Who hath saved us?” Believers in Christ Jesus are saved. They are not looked upon as persons who are hopeful and may ultimately be saved, but they are already saved. Salvation is not a blessing to be enjoyed upon the dying bed and sung of in a future state above, but a matter to be obtained, received, promised, and enjoyed now. The Christian is perfectly saved in God’s purpose; God has ordained him unto salvation, and that purpose is complete. He is also saved as to the price paid for him: “It is finished” was the cry of the Saviour ere he died. The believer is also perfectly saved in his covenant head, for as he fell in Adam, he lives in Christ. This complete salvation is accompanied by a holy calling. Those whom the Saviour saved upon the cross are in due time effectually called by the power of God the Holy Spirit unto holiness: they leave their sins; they endeavour to be like Christ; they choose holiness, not out of any compulsion, but from the stress of a new nature, which leads them to rejoice in holiness just as naturally as aforetime they delighted in sin. God neither chose nor called them because they were holy, but he called them that they might be blessed, and holiness is the beauty produced by his workmanship. The excellencies we see in a believer are as much the work of God as the atonement itself. Thus is brought out very sweetly the fulness of the grace of God. Salvation must be of grace, because the Lord is the author of it, and what motive but grace could move him to save the guilty? Salvation must be of grace, because the Lord works in such a manner that our righteousness is forever excluded. Such is the believer’s privilege—a present salvation; such is the evidence that he is called to it—a holy life.

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

June 12: Conflict Creators and Peacemakers

2 Chronicles 29:1–30:27; 1 John 2:7–14; Psalm 104:1–15

Conflict can be good. And in communities, it’s inevitable. How we respond to it can display and develop character. But what if we are the ones responsible for creating conflict with others?

John addresses the root of chronic conflict in a letter to a church community. He tells them, “The one who says he is in the light and hates his brother is in the darkness until now. The one who loves his brother resides in the light, and there is no cause for stumbling in him. But the one who hates his brother is in the darkness, walking in the darkness, and not knowing where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes” (1 John 2:9–11).

John was giving the church a way to judge false teachers who created conflict and division. Those who hated their brothers were known by their contentious nature. Conversely, those who walked in the who were not wa light did not serve as a stumbling block for others. The light in which they dwelt was shown in their love for other Christians.

Love for other Christ-followers is not optional—it’s an outpouring of the love that God shows us. The nature of our interpersonal relationships reflects where we stand with Him. External conflict that has hatred at its root might point to our own internal conflict—one that can be defined by a disagreement between what we confess and how we live (1 John 1:6).

What is causing conflicts in your relationships? If you are causing conflict, how can you seek peace with God and others?

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).

June 12th

Getting there

Where the self-interest sleeps and the genuine interest awakens: Master, where dwellest Thou?… Come and see..… Come with Me. John 1:39.

“They abode with Him that day.” That is about all some of us ever do, then we wake up to actualities, self-interest arises, and the abiding is passed. There is no condition of life in which we cannot abide in Jesus.

“Thou art Simon, thou shalt be called Cephas.” God writes the new name on those places only in our lives where He has erased pride, self-sufficiency, and self-interest. Some of us only have the new name in spots, like spiritual measles. In sections, we look all right. When we have our best spiritual mood, you would think we are very high-toned saints, but don’t look at us when we are not in that mood. The disciple has the new name written all over him; self-interest, pride, and self-sufficiency have been completely erased.

Pride is the deification of self, and today, in some of us, is not of the order of the Pharisee, but of the publican. To say ‘Oh, I’m no saint,’ is acceptable to human pride, but it is unconscious blasphemy against God. It literally means that you defy God to make you a saint. ‘I am much too weak and hopeless, outside the reach of the Atonement.’ Humility before men may be unconscious blasphemy before God. Why are you not a saint? You do not want to be a saint, or you do not believe God can make you one. You say it would be all right if God saved you and took you to heaven. That is just what He will do! “We will come unto Him, and make our abode with Him.” Make no conditions, let Jesus be everything, and He will take you home with Him for a day and forever.

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

June 12

Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth

2 Tim. 2:15

Have thy tools ready; God will find thee work.

Charles Kingsley

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