Month Five
DAY 1
MESSAGE TO THE THIRSTY
When Jesus went up to the Feast of Tabernacles in Jerusalem, there were fierce arguments among the Jews as to His identity and His authority for speaking. He answered them, yet they refused to accept the reply and wanted only to be rid of Him. On the last day of the festival, He turned to another group of whom nearly every crowd, even the most hostile, will usually contain a few—those who are thirsty for God.
“If anyone is thirsty let him come to me” (John 7:37). Jesus raised His voice to issue this invitation. He wanted it to be heard above all the din of bustling and contention. Someone would be there to whom it would be like cold water. “Whoever believes in me, let him drink” (v. 37).
Sometimes we are famished—confused, dry, upset by arguments and conflicting interpretations. To us the Savior says, “Come.” If, without the solution to all our problems, we are willing simply to believe, He says, “Drink.”
DAY 2
HOUR OF GLORY
The miracle of Lazarus’s being raised from the grave brought the crowds waving palms to Jesus, proclaiming Him King. Even foreigners (some Greeks) heard of Him and asked His disciple Philip if they might see Him. This, surely, was His hour of glory.
Heaven’s definition of glory, however, is a very different thing from Earth’s. “The hour has come,” Jesus said to Philip and Andrew, “for the Son of Man to be glorified” (John 12:23). Then He illustrated His meaning: A grain of wheat is merely a solitary grain until it dies. It is death that brings glory, the glory of the rich harvest. It was not popular acclaim but popular rejection and His own suffering and death that constituted His “hour of glory,” and He prayed to be spared that hour.
The one who would serve Him must understand the conditions. He must follow—into death; that is, he must lose himself. Then, the promise is that he will be “kept safe for eternal life” (v. 25) and honored by the Father. The hour of glory is the hour of suffering—seen from heaven’s side.
Lord, be near us in our pain and grant us the clear eye of faith to see it from heaven’s perspective. Jesus walked this road. Help us to follow Him gladly.
DAY 3
THIS LOVE AMONG YOU
As I have loved you, so you are to love one another. If there is this love among you, then all will know that you are my disciples.
JOHN 13:34-35
The love of Jesus for His disciples was unsentimental. As a man, He fully entered into their experience of being men, with all the feelings that entails, yet His love for them was not a feeling. It was decisive, both as attitude and act. He honored their dignity as men by treating them with trust, speaking honestly and straightforwardly, never tiptoeing to spare their weaker feelings, never dissimulating. At times He hurt them in order to save them. There was no care for Himself in that kind of love. He had the courage to face their anger and misunderstanding.
“If there is this love among you,” what a difference it will make in the world!
DAY 4
ALL A MISTAKE?
It is easy to conclude, when things turn out badly, that all was a mistake to begin with.
The facts of the gospel do not bear this out. Think of Jesus’ choice of apostles. He spent a whole night in prayer before He made His selection. Judas was one of His choices. Peter affirmed, in his sermon on the Day of Pentecost, that Judas was “one of our number and had his place in this ministry” (Acts 1:17). Things could not have turned out worse for Judas or for Jesus because of him, yet Scripture nowhere suggests that the original choice was a mistake. Judas was still a man, still free to sin.
When we must make decisions, we should bring to bear on them scriptural principles, prayer and all the intelligence God has dealt out to us. Then we must go on quietly in faith, knowing that the results of our obedience are God’s responsibility, not ours.
DAY 5
ENABLE THY SERVANTS
Many of our prayers are for a quick and easy solution. God is more glorified in His people when they exhibit His grace under pressure. When Peter and John had been discharged by the rulers, elders and doctors of the Jewish law with orders not to speak again in the name of Jesus, the Christians prayed about it—“They raised their voices as one man and called upon God” (Acts 4:24). Their prayer was not, “Make these people stop persecuting Thy servant”; but, remembering the word of prophecy concerning how the Messiah was to be treated, they asked God only to notice what was happening to his servants and to enable them to speak with boldness (see v. 29).
We, too, may bring any difficult situation to our heavenly Father, laying it before His eyes and asking not for instant escape but for enablement—for strength to sustain the burden and to do what we ought to do without the fear of man.
DAY 6
WILLED BLINDNESS
In Paphos there lived a sorcerer named Elymas, who posed as a prophet. He belonged to the governor’s retinue. Seized with jealousy because the governor wanted to hear the word of the Lord from Paul and Barnabas, Elymas tried to turn him aside from faith. Having seen the light, Elymas preferred darkness and preferred also that others remain in darkness if their turning to the light should turn them away from him. He thus willfully falsified the truth and was struck blind.
The result of deliberate deception is blindness. The man who, to preserve his own position, deceives himself or another, is a “swindler” (this is what Paul called Elymas), a “rascal, son of the devil and enemy of all goodness” (Acts 13:10).
God is light, and in Him is not any darkness at all.
If we guard some corner of darkness in ourselves, we will soon be drawing someone else into darkness, shutting them out from the light in the face of Jesus Christ.
Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord; and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night; for the love of thy only Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen (Book of Common Prayer).
DAY 7
IN THE STOCKS, SINGING
In the past few days, my husband and I have experienced the sudden arrest of activity that had been one form of our service to God. We are prevented from continuing. We are uncertain as to why this has happened and what we are to do.
Paul and Silas were arrested while they were proclaiming the gospel in Philippi and were put into stocks. Not only was their work halted altogether, but also they themselves were physically immobilized in a dungeon, held fast in stocks. What strange treatment for two earnest servants of God! What did they do? It would be quite understandable if they had raged or wept or sunk into depressed silence. Instead, they continued what for them had long since become habitual—they continued “at their prayers” (Acts 16:25) and sang praises to God.
To the frantic question, What do we do now? there is a very simple reply: pray and sing.
DAY 8
POWER TO MEET AND TO GIVE THANKS
Often I pray for someone whose circumstances or needs are unknown to me. There are many prayers in Paul’s letters that may be used for almost anyone. One of my favorites is in Colossians 1:9-12. A part of this prayer asks, “May he strengthen you, in his glorious might, with ample power to meet whatever comes with fortitude, patience, and joy; and to give thanks to the Father” (vv. 11-12).
That seems to cover every possibility. It does not ask for instant solutions or reversals. It does not call on God for miraculous deliverance out of any trouble that might come. It asks for a truly Christian response, by the sufficient power of God: to meet whatever comes as a true Christian should meet it, with the Holy Spirit’s gifts of fortitude, patience and joy. It asks for the power to give thanks. It takes power, doesn’t it, to thank the Father when everything in us protests? But we find in Him (not always in what happens to us) plenty of reason to thank Him and plenty of power.
DAY 9
FOOTPRINTS OF FAITH
If we look for perfect models of faithfulness, we shall find one and only one—Jesus Christ. All others are flawed, for all others are sinners. Yet Abraham, who had his faults, is held up in the letter to the Romans as a model of what faith is about. He took God at His word, when human hope was exhausted, “in the firm conviction of his power to do what he had promised” (Rom. 4:21).
Walk, then, in those footprints. Don’t try to be Abraham. Don’t insist that God fulfill for you the promise given to Abraham. He is not going to make you the father of many nations. But hang on, without giving place to the tiniest skepticism, to the promises given to all of us in Christ. “Ye are complete in him” (Col. 2:10, KJV), for example. “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (1:27, KJV). “God shall supply all your need” (Phil. 4:19, KJV). “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee” (Heb. 13:5, KJV). Not to waver in your conviction that God means what He says is to walk in the footprints of faith.
DAY 10
CHRIST MY ARMOR
When faced with the threat of any sort of invasion or attack, whether from human or spiritual foes, it is quite natural to draw back, throw up my guard and attempt to defend myself. The Christian has a far better defense—“Let Christ Jesus himself be the armour that you wear” (Rom. 13:14). Let me take my stand in Him, come to my enemy without fear, responding only in the power and with the love of Christ. Who can hurt me then? And what hostility on Earth or in hell can destroy me? That person whom I most dread to see, let me meet him as Christ meets him. Let Christ meet him. He is my armor; I am hidden in Him. My weakness, my fear, my hostility, will be covered by His strength, His courage, His love.
DAY 11
GOD’S KINGDOM, MY REFERENCE POINT
A beginner’s prayers are generally an attempt to get God to pay attention to his wants. As we grow in grace, prayer becomes an attempt to turn our attention to God. His kingdom becomes our reference point for every matter that concerns us. Will this thing further or hinder the working of the will of God in me, in those I pray for, in these situations? What is on my mind today? Let me bring it at once into the light of God’s countenance, refer it to His scrutiny, lay it (and my heart with it) open before Him. If I am not prepared to submit something, I am interested in myself, not in the Kingdom. “Set your mind on God’s kingdom and his justice before everything else, and all the rest will come to you as well” (Matt. 6:33).
DAY 12
SHUT UP AND KNOW
Do thou thyself but hold thy tongue for one day, and on the morrow how much clearer are thy purpose and duties,” wrote Thomas Carlyle. The psalmist wrote (in Psalm 46) of great cataclysms, noise, war, destruction. What is the man of God supposed to do in the middle of all that? One thing above all else: “Be still, and know that I am God” (v. 10, KJV). Simply shut up for a change. It is amazing what the quiet holding of the soul before the Lord will do to the external and seemingly uncontrollable tumult around us. It is in that stillness that the Voice will be heard, the only voice in all the universe that speaks peace to the deepest part of us.
No other voice than Thine has ever spoken,
O Lord, to me—
No other words but Thine the stillness broken
Of life’s lone sea.
There openeth the spirit’s silent chamber
No other hand—
No other lips can speak the language tender,
(“The Shepherd’s Voice,” Hymns of Ter Steegen, Suso, and Others)
DAY 13
ONE MAN’S GODLINESS
Let us never imagine that to fear the Lord and to find joy in His commandments make no real difference in the world. They matter. One man’s godliness may well make the difference between another’s shipwreck and his reaching the harbor, for a man who actually enjoys obeying God is “a beacon in darkness for honest men” (Ps. 112:4).
Reading the biographies of men and women whose hearts were gladly given to God has lit the way for me. Seeing the obedience of just one simple Christian has more than once steered me clear of danger.
One of the old gospel songs my father taught us was P. P. Bliss’s:
Brightly beams our Father’s mercy from His lighthouse evermore
But to us He gives the keeping of the lights along the shore.
Let the lower lights be burning, send a gleam across the wave—
Some poor struggling, fainting seaman, you may rescue, you may save.
DAY 14
TIME FOR GOD’S WILL
One reason we are so harried and hurried is that we make yesterday and tomorrow our business, when all that legitimately concerns us is today. If we really have too much to do, there are some items on the agenda that God did not put there. Let us submit the list to Him and ask Him to indicate which items we must delete. There is always time to do the will of God. If we are too busy to do that, we are too busy.
Lord, help me to take Your yoke on my shoulder, not a yoke of my own making. May I learn from You to be gentle and humble hearted. May I find that your load is light.
DAY 15
NO FURTHER THAN NATURAL THINGS
Well, it’s perfectly natural for you to feel that way, I told myself when I was upset with the way someone had treated me. It’s a normal reaction.
It was a normal reaction for a carnal mind. It was not normal for a spiritual one. The carnal attitude deals with things on one level only—this world’s. It “sees no further than [natural] things” (Rom. 8:5, Phillips).
Is there a telescope that will bring into focus things I would not see with merely “natural” vision? There is.
“The spiritual man is concerned with the things of the spirit” (v. 5, Phillips). It is a different means of perceiving. It will enable me to see what I could not have seen with the naked—that is, the carnal—eye.
It works. When I looked at that person who had offended me through the spiritual eye, I saw in him one of God’s instruments to teach me, instead of one of the devil’s to torment me. I saw something more. I saw a person God loves and whom He wants to love through me.
DAY 16
WE CARRY DEATH AND LIFE
When Jesus lived on Earth, He lived in an ordinary man’s body, carrying in that body both life and death. His 33 years of life were lived that He might die and through death forever destroy the power of death. He doesn’t live here anymore. We do. We who believe are His Body, assigned to carry in our bodies the death He died. Paul said it (see 2 Cor. 4:10). Insofar as we are willing to die, to cross out the self, we carry the death Jesus died. But that isn’t all! We carry also the life Jesus lived—the life that brings life to all, that will never end, that mysteriously is at work in the world because we who love Him are in the world.
O Life Eternal, purify this vessel of my body, that it may purely bear the death and life of Jesus for the life of the world.
DAY 17
WEAPONS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS
The means of conquering the world, spiritually speaking, are not weapons of violence or organized power. In fact, they are not thought of in the world as weapons at all, but as pitifully ineffective for obtaining any kind of victory. They are “patience and kindliness,” “gifts of the Holy Spirit,” “sincere love,” “declaring the truth” and “the power of God” (2 Cor. 6:6-7). They are weapons that we wield in both hands, right and left. The object of our conquest not being power, position, property or personal satisfaction, the weapons required are not such as would be used by men seeking those things. Our Captain had one aim in dying for us—that we should “cease to live for [ourselves]” (5:15). This is our aim. Therefore our weapons will seem to those whose aim is worldly (i.e., “natural” and selfish) a strange set to choose.
DAY 18
WOUNDS CAN CHANGE YOUR HEART
Living in a world broken by sin, we suffer wounds of many kinds. Perhaps the most painful are not the physical ones but those of the heart. No one has power to hurt us more deeply than somebody we love, somebody we counted on to understand and support us. But there are two ways to receive wounds. One leads to larger life. The other leads straight to death, that is, to destruction—of those we influence as well as of ourselves.
By grace we can receive the wounds of our friends as our Master received them—in the strength and for the glory of our heavenly Father. Being sinners ourselves, however, we need to be brought low at the Cross. Nothing will do this better than some piercing heart wound, provided we seek Christ because of it and pray Him to purify us.
There is another way—the world’s way. It is anger, resentment, retaliation, retreat into pride and self-justification. These are quite natural and quite lethal. The choice is ours.
The wound which is borne in God’s way brings a change of heart too salutary to regret; but the hurt which is borne in the world’s way brings death (2 Cor. 7:10).
DAY 19
THE ROOT OF HOSTILITY TO OTHERS
When personal relationships break down, it is a sure sign that there is some rift in one’s relationship with God. The deeper the rift, the broader will be the effect on the human level. Rebellion against our Creator and Redeemer—against the One who designed us and gives us the breath of life and loves us every minute of every day—is not only unreasonable but outrageous. The sense of outrage will reveal itself in our treatment of others. We get at God by getting at those He has made, especially those whom His providence has placed close to us. We cannot bear the image of God in them, for we cannot bear the ineradicability of that image in our own being. It is a constant reminder of our own sin, which is the violation of the divine image. Without the consciousness of a legitimate claim on our lives, we could not know sin.
To recognize and submit to that claim is to return to peace and fellowship.
If we claim to be sharing in his life while we walk in the dark, our words and our lives are a lie; but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, then we share together a common life, and we are being cleansed from every sin by the blood of Jesus his Son (1 John 1:6-7).
DAY 20
STARS IN A DARK WORLD
One of the letters the apostle Paul wrote from prison begs his friends to think and feel alike, to love, to have “the same turn of mind, and a common care for unity” (Phil. 2:2). In such company there would be no room for rivalry or personal vanity. Each one would be thinking the others better, seeking to put their interests first.
Obedience, humility and cheerfulness (“Do all you have to do without complaint or wrangling” [v. 14]) are rare in a warped and crooked world—nearly nonexistent, in fact, where each lives for his own ends. If a marriage counselor were to ask each partner, “What are your goals?” and the answer were “To best serve my husband (or wife); to further his (or her) goals,” the counseling period would be over; the bill, low. Any two people, any community of Christians who set themselves to look only to the other’s interest would be a rare and radiant thing, shining, as Paul said, “like stars in a dark world” (2:15).
In that same sense, a Christian might well pray, Lord, make me a star.
DAY 21
A SMOOTH PATH
The work of heavy highway equipment is to smooth the way for travelers by exalting valleys, making low the mountains and hills, straightening the crooked. Obstacles—trees, rocks, houses, even mountains themselves—are put out of the way. This is what the Lord can do for His travelers (it is promised by the prophet Isaiah [see 39:4]), but He does it without fuss and in response to the one who simply thinks of Him: “Think of him in all your ways, and he will smooth your path” (Prov. 3:6).
The mind can build barriers, produce huge obstacles, collide with boulders of impossibility. Strangely and wonderfully, when we turn our thoughts to Him with whom nothing is an impossibility (and to turn thoughts takes an act of will), He smooths the path for us. We find it possible, maybe even easy, to move forward.
Don’t waste time, energy, perhaps sleep time, thinking of all those rocks in the way. Think of Him. Think of Him! You may find your path suddenly smoothed.
DAY 22
POWER TO KEEP
There are two readings for 2 Timothy 1:12—“I know who it is in whom I have trusted, and am confident of his power to keep safe what he has put into my charge” and “what I have put into his charge” (emphasis added). Christ has all the power needed to keep anything safe. What He gives me, or what I give Him, He can take care of. I can rest in perfect assurance, having that kind of coverage.
And—come to think of it—have I anything to put into His charge that He has not first put into mine? It all comes to the same thing. “What hast thou that thou didst not receive?” (1 Cor. 4:7, KJV).
Paul was writing from prison, where he was powerless to help those he loved or to look after things he cared for. No matter. He knew the One who is never powerless. He was sure of His power to keep.
DAY 23
CROWNED BECAUSE HE SUFFERED
Over and over in the Bible we are told that there is a correlation between suffering and glory. The reason lies deep in the mystery of evil, for of course there could be no suffering for creation, for beasts or men, or for the Son of Man, had not evil entered the world. But the story does not end with suffering.
In Jesus, however, we do see one . . . crowned now with glory and honour because he suffered death (Heb. 2:9).
If we concentrate on that marvelous sequence, we will find in the midst of our own pain a great shaft of light. There is glory above us, shining down into our darkness, reminding us that “if we suffer [with him] [we need never suffer without Him, for He has entered into all our weakness, into death itself for us], we shall also reign with him” (2 Tim. 2:12, KJV).
His purposes will ripen fast,
Unfolding every hour,
The bud may have a bitter taste,
But sweet will be the flower.
(William Cowper)
DAY 24
DO YOU WANT AN ANSWER?
This is the question we need to ask ourselves when we are seeking “solutions” to our problems. Often we want only an audience. We want the chance to air grievances, to present our excuses, to make an explanation for our behavior, rather than a cure. More often than not the clearest and most direct answer can be found in the Word, but it must be sought honestly.
The way of the LORD gives refuge to the honest man, but dismays those who do evil (Prov. 10:29).
We can approach God’s Word with a will to obey whatever it says to us about our present situation, or we can avoid it and say to anyone who would try to point us to it, “Don’t throw the Book at me.” The latter is an evasion, which supports our suspicion that our problems are, in fact, insoluble. The honest (i.e., humble) heart will indeed find the Lord’s way to be a refuge.
DAY 25
WHAT IT MEANS TO BE HUMAN
If Jesus had not become man, we would not have known the full meaning of being men. He, whom Richard Crashaw described as the One “who in a Throne of stars thunders above . . . He whom the Sun serves . . . He, the old Eternal Word,” came to Earth as a helpless newborn, utterly dependent on His mother. Humanity is dependence. Jesus grew up in a poor peasant home in an out-of-the-way village and learned obedience.
Adam and Eve rejected God’s word and accepted Satan’s. Their disobedience was their declaration of independence, which in fact meant the loss of the freedom God intended for them. It is by acknowledging our own need, our helpless dependence on Him, that we may come to God. Learning that in Him we live and move and have our being, we are slowly conformed to His image. Thus and only thus, in what the old Puritans called “creaturely” dependence and obedience, we become fully human and fully free.
Lord Jesus, Master of my life, my very breath is in Your hands. Remind me throughout the hours of this day to depend on You for the help I need and to ask You for it.
O what peace we often forfeit, O what needless pain we bear,
All because we do not carry everything to God in prayer.
(Joseph M. Scriven)
DAY 26
A FINE THING
Most of us have never been anyone’s slave in the literal sense, so we can hardly enter into Peter’s meaning when he writes to servants who have suffered under perverse masters. But we know unkindness. We have been pained by someone’s lack of consideration or unjust criticism.
Why is this happening to me? is a question most of us occasionally ask. If we ask it petulantly, there is nothing particularly creditable about our attitude. The apostle Peter wrote to those slaves who were at the mercy of abusive masters. “When you have behaved well and suffer for it, your fortitude is a fine thing in the sight of God. To that you were called, because Christ suffered on your behalf” (1 Pet. 2:20-21) was his encouragement to them. His answer to the why is just this: To that you were called. If we endure merely because we savor the notion of being martyrs, there is nothing fine in that. There is nothing fine in brooding on the pain itself and how sorely we have been put upon. The fine thing is for God so to occupy our thoughts that it is really nothing to us whether others treat us well or ill. Think on Christ: How was He treated? How do your sufferings compare with His? That will give a different perspective, I think.
Let’s not be surprised at our difficulties, even if—no, especially if—we encounter them when we are truly seeking to obey the Lord. There are two kingdoms in deadly opposition to each other. If we do anything to further the kingdom of God, we may expect to find what Christ found on that road—abuse, indifference, injustice, misunderstanding, trouble of some kind. Take it. Why not? To that you were called. In Latin America someone who feels sorry for himself is said to look like a donkey in a downpour. If we think of the glorious fact that we are on the same path with Jesus, we might see a rainbow.
DAY 27
WHEN THE RIVER BURSTS
Psychologists chart stress factors related to various kinds of emotional trauma and the response of different people to those factors—death, divorce, job loss, illness and such, which threaten the very foundations of people’s lives. What can hold us at such times?
In a simple story Jesus showed the secret of stability. One man comes to Jesus, hears Him and acts on what he hears. He is like the man who builds a house on solid rock. Another man hears (is exposed to the same truth, given equal opportunity) but does not act (does not choose to act) on the word he hears. Jesus said he is building a house on sand. When floods come, when “the river burst[s] upon it” (Luke 6:49), the house collapses and falls with a great crash.
What sort of floods was He talking about? What rivers might be likely to burst over a man’s house? Surely He meant the stresses of life, not terribly different from the stresses we experience, anything that shakes the foundations. It is at such times that we become aware of what those foundations are. Have we laid them on the Rock that never moves; or have we, merely by not obeying the word we have heard, been laying them on sand? That sand is the self—shifty, unstable, carried back and forth by conflicting currents (popular opinions, for example?), utterly undependable and incapable of holding up under pressure.
Lead me, Lord, to the Rock that is higher than I. Let me hear Your word, give me grace to obey, to build steadily, stone upon stone, day by day, to do what You say. Establish my heart where floods have no power to overwhelm, for Christ’s sake. Amen.
DAY 28
DEATH SHALL NOT HOLD US
The power of the Resurrection is a power that vanquishes every other power in heaven or Earth. The battle was the bitterest ever fought, but death was the loser; Jesus, the victor. Because “the tomb could not hold Him; snapped like a straw death’s omnipotent bars,”1 sin and death and sorrow need not hold us either. The same power is available to us if we will take it by faith.
There are many tombs in which we may be held if we succumb to the powers of sin and death. Hatred, self-pity, bitterness, resentment—these are tombs. By the power that raised Jesus Christ from that sealed and guarded tomb we may be delivered from whatever seals us off from life. Jesus came to give us life, nothing less than life, abundant life.
Do you know someone you are praying for who is living in the darkness of such a tomb? Has it seemed that there is no more possibility of getting through to him than to someone buried? Resentment has sealed him off from any approach. Pray for the power of the Resurrection to release him. Refuse, by the grace of God, to be held back by his bitterness. Then ask the Lord to help you to meet him next time in the consciousness of Christ risen. Instead of dreading the meeting because of the thought of former disastrous meetings, face it with joy. Christ is risen! Christ is risen!
May the God of peace, who brought up from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great Shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, make you perfect in all goodness so that you may do his will; and may he make of us what he would have us be through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever! Amen (Heb. 13:20-21).
DAY 29
THE ARBITER IS PEACE
When there are disputes or differences of any sort between people, there are four possible results: estrangement, an armed truce, compromise or reconciliation. The first of these is the reason for a good many divorces. The second accounts for many unhappy marriages. The third may seem the best that can be hoped for. The fourth is what Christians are called to, always. In marital disputes, or those between labor and management, an arbiter is sometimes called in, often after much wrangling and bitterness. An arbiter has absolute power to judge and decide.
There is another arbiter, too often forgotten. “Let Christ’s peace be arbiter in your hearts; to this peace you were called” (Col. 3:15).
Wouldn’t it make an astonishing difference in our fellowship with one another if we would let that peace arbitrate, if we would remember the promised parting gift of Christ, “My peace I give unto you” (John 14:27, KJV), and the command to live at peace with all?
But how? we ask. How does it work? The context in Colossians shows us:
You are God’s chosen race, his saints; he loves you, and you should be clothed in sincere compassion, in kindness and humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with one another; forgive each other as soon as a quarrel begins. The Lord has forgiven you; now you must do the same. Over all these clothes, to keep them together and complete them, put on love (Col. 3:12-14, JB).
Are we willing to follow Him here? He will help us if we are. He will calm the troubled waters.
DAY 30
THE FACE OF JESUS
The face of Jesus:
marred more than any man—
spit upon,
slapped,
bloodied,
sweating,
the beard plucked,
twisted in pain—
For my salvation.
A glorious face, now.
Let its light shine on me, O Light of Life.
Let Your radiance fall on me, Sun and Savior,
Lighten my darkness.
Then grant me this by Your grace:
That I, in turn, may give
“The light of the knowledge of the glory of God” (2 Cor. 4:6, KJV)
As I see it in the face of Jesus Christ.
DAY 31
PRAY WITH JESUS
Because I am of the earth, earthy, I find that my prayers for the people I love are mostly bound by very earthy concerns—“Lord, help P. to find a good wife, show G. which college to attend, provide money for W.’s house and E.’s car, help T. with his book, give X. a better job.” It is meet and proper to pray for such things, but not to pray only for such things. There are prayers of far more lasting import that we must also learn to pray. We can find words for those in the prayer of Jesus for the people He loved (see John 17:6-26):
• that they may be one;
• that they may find His joy completed in themselves;
• that they may be kept from evil;
• that they may be made holy by the truth;
• that they may live in Christ;
• that they may grow complete into one;
• that they may be with Him;
• that the love that God has for Christ may be in their hearts.
If we learn to pray that kind of prayer, it will perhaps amend the “lesser” prayers.
Lord, teach me to pray. Open my eyes to see beyond the earthly to the heavenly. Let my primary concerns be heavenly ones, that Your kingdom may come on Earth, Your will be done in me and in those I love. Teach me to pray with Jesus, for His sake. Amen.