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Daily Devotionals/Readings:
Morning Devotional
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
December 28
"The life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God." —Galatians 2:20
When the Lord in mercy passed by and saw us in our blood, He first of all said, "Live"; and this He did first, because life is one of the absolutely essential things in spiritual matters, and until it be bestowed we are incapable of partaking in the things of the kingdom. Now the life which grace confers upon the saints at the moment of their quickening is none other than the life of Christ, which, like the sap from the stem, runs into us, the branches, and establishes a living connection between our souls and Jesus. Faith is the grace which perceives this union, having proceeded from it as its firstfruit. It is the neck which joins the body of the Church to its all-glorious Head.
"Oh Faith! thou bond of union with the Lord,
Is not this office thine? and thy fit name,
In the economy of gospel types,
And symbols apposite—the Church's neck;
Identifying her in will and work With Him ascended?"
Faith lays hold upon the Lord Jesus with a firm and determined grasp. She knows His excellence and worth, and no temptation can induce her to repose her trust elsewhere; and Christ Jesus is so delighted with this heavenly grace, that He never ceases to strengthen and sustain her by the loving embrace and all-sufficient support of His eternal arms. Here, then, is established a living, sensible, and delightful union which casts forth streams of love, confidence, sympathy, complacency, and joy, whereof both the bride and bridegroom love to drink. When the soul can evidently perceive this oneness between itself and Christ, the pulse may be felt as beating for both, and the one blood as flowing through the veins of each. Then is the heart as near heaven as it can be on earth, and is prepared for the enjoyment of the most sublime and spiritual kind of fellowship.
Faith's Checkbook
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
December 28
Absolute Assurance
"He hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee"
(Hebrews 13:5).
Several times in the Scriptures the LORD hath said this. He has often repeated it to make our assurance doubly sure. Let us never harbor a doubt about it. In itself the promise is specially emphatic. In the Greek it has five negatives, each one definitely shutting out the possibility of the LORD's ever leaving one of His people so that he can justly feel forsaken of his God. This priceless Scripture does not promise us exemption from trouble, but it does secure us against desertion. We may be called to traverse strange ways, but we shall always have our LORD's company, assistance, and provision. We need not covet money, for we shall always have our God, and God is better than gold; His favor is better than fortune.
We ought surely to be content with such things as we have, for he who has God has more than all the world besides. What can we have beyond the Infinite? What more can we desire than almighty Goodness.
Come, my heart; if God says He will never leave thee nor forsake thee, be thou much in prayer for grace that thou mayest never leave thy LORD, nor even for a moment forsake His ways.
MORNING THOUGHTS
DAILY WALKING WITH GOD
Octavius Winslow
DECEMBER 28.
“But thanks be to God, which gives us the victory, through our Lord Jesus Christ.” 1 Corinthians 15:57
DOES the ear of some dear departing saint of God lend itself to the recital of these closing words? Beloved of the Lord, beloved in the Lord, what a blessed opportunity have you now of leaning the entire weight of your soul, with all its sins and sorrows, upon the finished work of Jesus, your Almighty Savior, your God, your Redeemer! The great debt is cancelled. Justice exacts not a second payment, the first from your Surety, the second from you. No! justice itself is on your side; every perfection of God is a wall of fire round about you. You stand complete in the righteousness of the incarnate God. The blood of Jesus Christ, the Father’s own Son, cleanses you from all sin. Many and aggravated you now see to have been your flaws, your derelictions, your departures, your backslidings, your stumblings; sin appears now as it never did before; the sense of your utter unworthiness presses you to the earth. Well, who is on the eager watch for the first kindlings of godly sorrow in the heart of the prodigal? Who welcomes his return with joy, with music, with honors? Whose heart has not ceased to love, whose eye has not ceased to follow, amid all the waywardness and wandering of that child? Oh, it is the Father! “When he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.” Behold your God, your covenant God and Father in Christ Jesus! This reconciled Father is yours. Throw yourself in His arms, and He will fall on your neck, and will seal upon your heart afresh the sense of His free forgiveness and His pardoning love. Heaven is before you. Soon will you be freed, entirely and forever freed, from all the remains of sin. Soon the last sigh will heave your breast, the last tear will fall from your eye, and the last pang will convulse your body. Soon, oh, how soon, will you “see the King in His beauty,” the Jesus who loved you, died for you, ransomed you, and loves you still! Soon you will fall at His feet, and be raised in His arms, and be hushed to rest in His bosom. Soon you will mingle, a pure and happy spirit, with patriarchs and prophets, apostles and martyrs, and with all who sleep in Jesus, who have gone but a little before you. See how they line the shores on the other side, and wait to welcome you over! See how they beckon you away! Above all, sweetest and most glorious of all, behold Jesus standing at the right hand of God, prepared to receive you to Himself! Jesus has gone before, to make ready for the glorification of His Church. “I go to prepare a place for you.” Oh sweet words! A place prepared—a mansion set apart for each individual believer! “In my Father’s house are many mansions.” A mansion in His heart, a mansion in His kingdom, a mansion in His house, for the weakest babe in Christ. The Forerunner is for us entered, even Jesus! How sure is heaven! How certain the eternal happiness of every pardoned and justified soul!
Our Daily Walk
F.B. Myer
December 28
JESUS AS KING
"Pilate therefore said unto Him, Art Thou a King, then? Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a King."—Joh 18:37.
OUR LORD'S Royalty is suggested by the opening paragraphs of St. Matthew's Gospel, which emphasizes His descent from David; the wise men asked for Him who is born King of the Jews, and Herod feared His rivalry. All through the Gospel narrative, stress is constantly laid on the fact that He was King of the Jews and King of Israel, and it ends with the regal claim that all power and authority in heaven and earth had been entrusted to Him.
Jesus never abated His claim to Kingship, but always made it clear that His ideal was very different from that which was current among the Jews. His conception of Royalty was borrowed from Psa 72:4, where the King is said to judge the poor of the people, and save the children of the needy. It was the collision between His idea of Kingship and that of the Pharisees, which brought Him to the Cross.
For us the lesson is clear. We must begin with the recognition of the royal claims of Christ to our homage and obedience. He only becomes Saviour, in the fullest meaning of the word, when He has been enthroned as King in our hearts. With invariable precision He is described, first as Prince, then as Saviour, and that order cannot be altered without injury to our soul-life (Act 5:31; Rom 10:9; Heb 7:2). The whole content of the New Testament is altered when we view the Royalty of Christ as the chief cornerstone, not only of that structure, but of the edifice of character.
Let us not be afraid of Christ as King. He is meek and lowly, and full of understanding of the problems of our life. He shared our life, and was so poor that He had to trust in the kind offices of a friend to supply His physical needs, and in the palm branches of the peasant crowd for His palfrey and the carpeting of His royal procession; but as we watch it pass, the lowly triumph swells in proportions until it represents the whole race of mankind; and the generations that preceded His advent, and those that follow, sweep down the Ages of human history, proclaiming and acclaim-hag Christ as King. (Rev 15:3-4, R.V).
PRAYER
O God, may our hearts indite good matter, that our mouth may speak of our King. Whilst we adore Him as Wonderful may He become to us the Prince of Peace. Enable us to put the government of our lives upon His shoulder, and of His government and of our peace let there be no end. AMEN.
Daily Portions
Joseph Philpot
December 28
"For unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake." Philippians 1:29
After the Lord, by his special work on the conscience, has called us to repentance and confession of sin, as well as to faith in Jesus; after he has called us to godly sorrow; to live according to the precepts of the gospel; and to walk in the ordinances of his Church; he then calls us to suffer for and with Christ. But we cannot "suffer according to the will of God," that is, in a gospel sense and from gospel motives, until the Lord enables us in some measure to look to him. The same Spirit, who calls the believer to walk in a path of suffering, strengthens and enables him to do so.
To suffer aright, we must walk in the steps of the great Captain of our salvation, who "though a Son, yet learned obedience by the things which he suffered." The Father in this sense spared not his only-begotten Son, but led him into the path of tribulation. If the Lord of the house, then, had to travel in this dark and gloomy path of suffering, can his disciples escape? If the Captain of our salvation was "a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief," must not the common soldiers, who occupy the ranks of the spiritual army, be baptized into the same sufferings, and taste in their measure of that cup which he drank to the very dregs?
Thus, every child of God is called, sooner or later, to "suffer with Christ;" and he that suffers not with Christ, will not reign with him (2 Timothy 2:12). But the Lord, who sees what we are, as well as what we need, apportions out suffering to our several states and necessities. And however the suffering may differ, all have to pass through the furnace; for the Lord brings "the third part through the fire." All have to walk in the footsteps of a self-denying and crucified Jesus; all have painfully to feel what it is to be at times under the rod, and experience those chastisements of God, whereby they are proved to be sons, and not bastards.
My Utmost for His Highest
Oswald Chambers
December 28th.
CONTINUOUS CONVERSION
"Except ye be converted, and become as little children. . . ." Matthew 18:3
These words of Our Lord are true of our initial conversion, but we have to be continuously converted all the days of our lives, continually to turn to God as children. If we trust to our wits instead of to God, we produce consequences for which God will hold us responsible. Immediately our bodies are brought into new conditions by the providence of God, we have to see that our natural life obeys the dictates of the Spirit of God. Because we have done it once is no proof that we shall do it again. The relation of the natural to the spiritual is one of continuous conversion, and it is the one thing we object to. In every setting in which we are put, the Spirit of God remains unchanged and His salvation unaltered, but we have to "put on the new man." God holds us responsible every time we refuse to convert ourselves, our reason for refusing is wilful obstinacy. Our natural life must not rule, God must rule in us.
The hindrance in our spiritual life is that we will not be continually converted, there are wadges of obstinacy where our pride spits at the throne of God and says - I won't. We deify independence and wilfulness and call them by the wrong name. What God looks on as obstinate weakness, we call strength. There are whole tracts of our lives which have not yet been brought into subjection, and it can only be done by this continuous conversion. Slowly but surely we can claim the whole territory for the Spirit of God.
Evening Devotional
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
December 28
"I came not to send peace on earth, but a sword." —Matthew 10:34
The Christian will be sure to make enemies. It will be one of his objects to make none; but if to do the right, and to believe the I true, should cause him to lose every earthly friend, he will count it but a small loss, since his great Friend in heaven will be yet more friendly, and reveal Himself to him more graciously than ever. O ye who have taken up His cross, know ye not what your Master said? "I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother; and a man's foes shall be they of his own household." Christ is the great Peacemaker; but before peace, He brings war. Where the light cometh, the darkness must retire. Where truth is, the lie must flee; or, if it abideth, there must be a stern conflict, for the truth cannot and will not lower its standard, and the lie must be trodden under foot. If you follow Christ, you shall have all the dogs of the world yelping at your heels. If you would live so as to stand the test of the last tribunal, depend upon it the world will not speak well of you. He who has the friendship of the world is an enemy to God; but if you are true and faithful to the Most High, men will resent your unflinching fidelity, since it is a testimony against their iniquities. Fearless of all consequences, you must do the right. You will need the courage of a lion unhesitatingly to pursue a course which shall turn your best friend into your fiercest foe; but for the love of Jesus you must thus be courageous. For the truth's sake to hazard reputation and affection, is such a deed that to do it constantly you will need a degree of moral principle which only the Spirit of God can work in you; yet turn not your back like a coward, but play the man. Follow right manfully in your Master's steps, for He has traversed this rough way before you. Better a brief warfare and eternal rest, than false peace and everlasting torment.
EVENING THOUGHTS
DAILY WALKING WITH GOD
Octavius Winslow
DECEMBER 28.
"And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God." Romans 8:28
The comprehensiveness of this privilege is boundless. "All things" under the righteous government of God must necessarily be a working out of good. "You are good, and do good." In Him there is no evil, and consequently nothing can proceed from Him that tends to evil. The passage supposes something antagonistic to the well-being of the believer, in God's conduct at times. He would appear to place Himself in an attitude of hostility to those who love Him, to stand in their path as with a drawn sword in His hand. And yet to no single truth does the church bear a stronger testimony than to this, that the darkest epochs of her history have ever been those from which her brightest luster has arisen; and that those very elements which wore an aspect so portentous and threatening, by a mutual and concurrent influence, under the guiding hand of God, have evolved purposes and plans, have developed thoughts and feelings, and have terminated in results and ends, all seeking and advancing the best welfare, the highest good, of the church of Christ.
Let us pass within the individual circle of the church. Shall we take the gloomiest and most painful circumstances in the history of the child of God? The Word declares that these identical circumstances, without a solitary exception, are all conspiring, and all working together, for his real and permanent good. As an illustration of this, take tribulation as the starting-point. Thus says the apostle: "We glory in tribulation also: knowing that tribulation works patience"—the grace that shines with such surpassing luster in the furnace; "and patience experience"—apart from which all religious profession is vain; "and experience hope"—the pole-star of the believer voyaging homeward; "and hope makes not ashamed"—but confirms and realizes all that it expected. And yet, from where this flow of precious blessing—serene patience, vital experience, and beaming hope?—all flow from the somber cloud of tribulation! That tribulation was, perhaps, of the most mysterious character—of the most humiliating nature—of the most overpowering force—yet behold the blessings it flung from its dark bosom! Who with a finite prescience could have predicted, still less have commanded, that from a bud so bitter and unsightly, a flower so sweet and fair should have blown?—that a cloud so dark and foreboding should have unbosomed a blessing to brilliant and so precious?
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