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had revealed to him. “My God shall sup ply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus” (Phil. 4:19). A poor woman who had never seen the ocean was looking upon its vastness, for the first time. “What do you think of the sea?” said a friend to her as she looked upon the majestic expanse. “It is the first time,” she replied, “that I have ever seen anything of which there seemed to be enough.” Matthew Henry translates this expression, “I am the Almighty God,” “I am the God that is enough .”—-Evan H. Hopkins. —o— June 12— “Now, thanks be unto God, which always causes us to triumph” (2 Cor. 2:14). In our Christian warfare we are to stick at nothing. To believers in Christ the impossible is to shine in the attrac tive light of a glorious assurance. We are to approach boggy and trackless wastes in the confidence that thoroughfares have been provided. “And a highway shall be ther,e, and a way !” We are to march against terrific and hoary fortresses in the joyful certainty that we can overturn them to their deepest and most secret foundations. “Mighty to the pulling down of strongholds !” This is to be the shin ing distinction of the army of the Lord. It is to move against tl)e impossible, and by thè very character of its stride it is to compel the world to believe that the im possible is already being accomplished. The chiirch is not here to do what any body else can do. She is not one of a hun dred institutions standing with them in common rank and file. The Church does not share her errand. She stands alone, and her mission is to do the impossible, to achieve wonders of which no other fel lowship even dreams.— Dr. J. H. Jowett. —o— June 13 —“In the daytime . . . He led them with a cloud, and all the night with a light of fire” (Psa. 78:14). My day is my prosperity; it is thé time when the sun of fortune is bright above me ; and, therefore, it is the time when I need a shade. If my sunshine were not checkered I would forget Thee, O my God. But I have nights to meet as well as days. The night is my adversity; it is the time when the sun of fortune has gone down behind the hills and I am left alone ; and then it is, O my Father, that I need the light of Thy fire ! My light of fire for the night is the vision of Calvary —the vision of Thy love in the Cross. I need the light of Thy fire “all the night.” —George Matheson. God’s way of answering His people’s prayers is not by removing the pressure, but by increasing their strength to bear ft. The pressure is often the fence be tween the narrow way of life and the broad road to ruin; and if our heavenly Father were to remove it, it might be at the sacrifice of heaven. Oh, if God had removed that thorny fence .in answer, often to earnest prayers, how many of us would now be castaways! How the song of many a saint now in glory would be June 14 —“My grace is sufficient for thee : ' for my strength is made perfect in weak ness” (2 Cor. 12:9).
aimiiiiiHiniiiiiiHiiiHiiiiiiiiiiiniiiiniiHiiiHiuiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiMiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiHiiiiimiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiniHiiiiiiHiiliiiniiiiiiiiUB | r - „ ----------------------------------------------S----------------- •------ ---------- W | I 11 Da i ly Devo t iona l R e a d in g s | j A Message for Every Day of the Month
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remember telling a doctor that I won dered how he could handle his little lan cet so complacently. His reply was that he loved it, because of the relief it had given to so many. I was thinking of the pain; he was thinking of the benefit re ceived. Our loving heavenly Father chas tens us “for our profit, that we might be partakers of His holiness” (Heb. 12:10; read also 2 Cor. 4:15-18). “ ‘Unto Myself,’ My dear child, I would bring thee! None like Myself thy full portion can be! While in My heart there is hunger and longing That I might find choicest treasure in thee. A “ ‘Unto Myself,’ ‘To Myself’—not My service! Then to most sweetly and certainly prove That I can make thee' My channel of blessing, Use thee to shed forth the wealth of My love.” —Streams in the Desert. —o— June 10 —“I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life: no man cometh unto the Father but by Me" (John 14:6). There is nothing to be added to the Atonement, no consecration of yourself, no desperate struggle with yourself, no lengthened prayers of yours to be added to the Atonement. The new way is there for you td come in. I do not care how fa? off from God you may be—there is a new way, as it were, from where you stand today. You may be away in the dark, barren, gloomy wilderness; there is a new way for you there right into the presence of God, right into holiness, right into victory.— Rev. Barclay F. Buxton. —o— June 11 —“I am the Almighty God: walk before me and be thou perfect" (Gen. 17: 1 ). And what did this name “the Almighty God” mean? El Shaddai —the God of in finite power, engaged on behalf of His people, and the God of infinite resources, meeting all their wants. As much as to say, “I have revealed Myself to you as a God of blessing—a covenant God. I have manifested My sovereignty in taking you out of your family to make of you a great nation. But now I would have you know Me still further as the Almighty God—the God of unlimited power and of boundless provision. With such a name revealed to his soul Abraham could step out upon the unknown future without fear. Though weak and helpless in him self, in God he had all power; though poor and empty as regards his own re sources, in God he had boundless wealth. He lived by faith in the name that God
So believing is the act of reception. But belief is more than a mental assump tion. A mental assumption.may rest in the mind as idly and as impotently as marbles in a boy’s pocket. Mental assumptions may be like stones, or they may be like seeds. They are like stones when they stand alone; they become seeds when they are wedded to the will and become the faith of positive and practical life. The act of belief is the will acting on the divine an swer to our prayers, and working that answer into everything we think and say and do. When I have prayed for forgive ness I am to receive it, and I receive it when I face the road again as a forgiven man, and shape all my intercourse as one who has been forgiven, and I shall surely experience the reality of it in spiritual joy and peace. And so it is with all the waiting gifts of grace. Let us believe we have them,-let us act as though the trea sure is already in our wallets, and let us start out upon our journey giving freely, on the kindling assumption that we have freely received.— Dr. J. H. Jowett. —o— June 8 —“Unto Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood . . . be glory and dominion” (Rev.l :5,6). We may not stand alone, as the sturdy oak of the forest, and battle for ourselves against the storms of the world; nay, rather, we are made like the ivy, or like the vine, which must needs have some thing to cling to in order to grow, so that clinging and climbing up into it, it may grow luxuriantly, and bring forth fruit. We have therefore presented to us in the Word, not a Supreme Deity or a Trinity —for we cannot cling to abstractions—but a living, loving Person, who is in Himself the Triune Jehovah, manifest in the flesh. — Rev. William Haslam. —o— June 9 —“I bare you on eagles’ wings, and brought you to Myself” (Ex. 19:4). How do the eagles build their nests? The most prominent feature is large thorns, with their sharp points downwards. These are placed at the bottom; and when the time comes that the eaglets should fly, the mother “stirs up her nest,” that the pricking of the thorns should make them follow her outside: when she “flut- tereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings." “So the Lord alone did lead Israel,” and thus He carries and leads us, to bring us nearer to Himself. Most of us know what it means to have our “nest stirred up.” Some of us have experienced this several times, but it is always o r d e r e d or permitted by our heavenly Father to help us to “fly higher” (Deut. 32:13: read from verse 9 to 14). I
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