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

 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).

Morning, June 12: Go To Evening Reading

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

—Daniel 5:27

It is well to 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 true 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. Endeavor to discover whether you have the meekness, the humility, the lovely spirit which 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 seen yourself the chief of sinners, and less than the least of all saints? Have you known anything of his devotion? Could you join with 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 many a time 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 in a hopeful state who may ultimately be saved, but as already saved. Salvation is not a blessing to be enjoyed upon the dying bed, and to be 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 which he has paid: “It is f has been paid finished” was the cry of the Savior ere he died. The believer is also perfectly saved in his covenant head, for as he fell in Adam, so he lives in Christ. This complete salvation is accompanied by a holy calling. Those whom the Savior 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 endeavor 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 them nor called them because they were holy, but he called them that they might be holy, and holiness is the beauty produced by his workmanship in them. The excellencies which 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 12th

Getting there

Where the self-interest sleeps, and the real 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 only in those places in our lives where He has erased pride, self-sufficiency, and self-interest. Some of us have the new name in spots only, like spiritual measles. In sections, we look all right. When we have our best spiritual mood on, you would think we were 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 this to-day 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, I am outside the reach of the Atonement.’ Humility before men may be unconscious blasphemy before God. Why are you not a saint? It is either that you do not want to be a saint, or that you do not believe God can make you one. It would be all right, you say, if God saved you and took you straight 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, not only for a day, but 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).