October
October / 171 she licks the shapeless forms of her tormentors, and, as they plunge at her, each groan of her anguish is transformed by love into a whinney of delight. She moves her massive head in a way which shows that he, who bade you turn the other cheek, created her. When strong enough to rise, the terrible creature goes forth to sacrifice herself for her own. She will starve that they may thrive. She is terrible for her little ones, as Christ was terrible for his. He who made her, taught her the secret of motherhood."
When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, / we were like those who dream. / Then our mouth was filled with laughter, / and our tongue with shouts of joy. (Ps 126:1-2)
When their captivity was ended, the Israelites rejoiced without any effort. They could not sing songs of joy in the strange land, but as soon as they were at home again, their tongues were filled with singing. And we are like them; we cannot rejoice until we also know that our captivity has been ended; but when we do know it, our mouths, like theirs, are filled with laughter and our tongues with singing, without any effort.
You shall see, and your heart shall rejoice; / your bones shall flourish like the grass. (Is 66:14)
"You shall see, and your heart shall rejoice." We need to "see" our blessings before we can rejoice over them. The Israelites could see their blessings with their outward eyes, for they were visible and tangible things. But we must see ours with our inward eyes, for they are invisible and spiritual. Our knowledge concerning them can only come by faith, while theirs came by sight. But faith is inward seeing. To believe a thing on sufficient authority is as real as seeing it.
172 / Daily He Leads Me Therefore, since we are justified by-faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand.
(Rom 5:1-2) The fact of our forgiveness in Christ is preached to us. We believe the word preached. And as a result we have peace.
But some may ask, "Is the fact true until we believe it? Are my sins forgiven before I believe that they are?" Certainly tl they are.
'Inthe heart of God od there 1s always fe ys forgiveness, like the mother, 5 not induce God to forgive us; it is not in any: sense | sn cause of our forgiveness. Faith is only the the hand by which we lay hold experimental ly of the forgiveness that is already ours in Christ.
Before the mountains were brought forth, / or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, / from everlasting to everlasting / thou art God. (Ps 90:2) God alone is unchangeable; what we call spiritual blessings are full of the element of change. The prayer which is answered today may seem to be unanswered tomorrow; the promises, once so gloriously fulfilled, may cease to have any apparent fulfillment, the spiritual blessing, which was at one time sucha joy, may be utterly lost; and nothing of all we once trusted and _rested on may be left us, but the hungry and longing memory of — it all. But when en allelse is gone, God is still left. ert cTianess 'its s joy in in him alone can in suffer 1 no wavering, For he has said, "I will never fail you nor forsake you."
_Hence we can confidently say,/"The Lord is my helper, I will not be afraid; / what can man do to met" (Heb 13: 5-6)
October / 173 What God "has said," we may indeed repeat with confidence.
Therefore our faith must unswervingly assert that fact of God's abiding presence with us. As a result of this faith we shall sooner or later experience a conscious feeling of his presence. He is not present because we ve feel him to be, but we feel his presence because we believe in the fact of it.
This divine order of the three Fs, i.e., first fact, second faith, \hird feeling, applies to every aspect and every stage of our
(experience in heavenly things.
No amount of feeling is good for an anything unless it is the result of faith in a divine fact; which fact is true anyhow, whether we e believe it or not. Let us get our facts then. And let us once and for all give up every idea that our feelings are the test and measure of these facts. The facts, when believed in, will control our feelings; but no amount of feeling, no matter how fervent, can ci can control the facts, sc sO much as a feather's weight. y Thou dost keep him in perfect peace, / whose mind is stayed on thee, / because he trusts in thee. (Is 26:3)
A Christian who had had a very joyous experience in a prayer meeting, came to the minister the next day looking very downcast and said, "In your meeting yesterday I was filled with joy, and I thought I should never be sad again; but now it is all gone and I am in the depths. What is the matter with me? Has
God forsaken me?"
'~ "Did you ever pass through a tunnel?" asked the minister.
( "Certainly I have," replied the man, "but I do not see what that ) has to do with it." "When you were in the tunnel did you think
| the sun had been blotted out and existed no longer?' continued the minister. "No, of course I did not," said the man. "I knew the sun was in the sky just the same, although I could not see it just then. But what has that to do with my experience?" "Were you very much depressed while you were going through the dark tunnel?" "No I was not, I knew I should get out into the light again soon." "And did you get out?" asked the minister. "I am out
174 / Daily He Leads Me now!" exclaimed the man joyfully. "I see what you mean. The facts are just the: the facts not in my | feelings. 'geen i For once you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord; walk as children of light. (Eph 5:8)
You are children of light, now walk as such. That is, be what you are. In our relations with God this is especially necessary, because these all exist in the unseen spiritual region, and can of course only be real to us as our faith makes them so. It is essential, then, to our peace, and also to our well-being, that we should intelligently take hold of and live out that for which Christ Jesus took hold of us. That is, we must find out who we are in God's eyes, and then we must be just that. For instance, if God says Iam his child, then I must be his child; if he says lama king, then I must be kingly, and so on in all our relationships with God. yi And you are my sheep, the sheep of my pasture, and I am your God, says the Lord God. {Ez 34:31)
Let us be sheep then and abandon ourselves to the care of the Shepherd to whom we belong. The sheep cannot care for themselves, protect themselves, or provide food for themselves; the Shepherd must do it all. The responsibility of their well- "2 being is all on his shoulders, not on theirs. They have motrinet to is do but to trust him and to follow fim. —
/~4 great many people refuse to be the sheep and insist upon Cerying to be the shepherd instead. That is, they try to assume all the duties that belong to the shepherd; and they entirely refuse to be cared for and protected as the sheep are. Or else they try to be both the sheep and also the shepherd, and to perform the part of each at the same time, an impossible and wearisome task. Let us cease, then, trying to be anything but just simply what we are; sheep in the care of the Divine Shepherd.
October / 175 | I 3 Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. (Jn 15:4) Be branches then, and realize that you have no life apart from the vine: and realize also that you have nothing to do in order to bring forth much fruit, but to abide in the vine. The branch cannot bear fruit of itself, in the very nature of things. Do not try, then, to do it, but abide in the vine, and let the life-giving sap flow through you, without effort on your part, and without anxiety. Only see to it that you do not hinder its flow by doubt or by rebellion. Be a branch and a branch only, and do not try to be anything else. Do not try to make the fruit, but consent to bear it. Let it grow.
I 4 Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. (Mt 6:28-29)
Let us be like the lilies of the field and grow as they grow, ina happy unconsciousness of our growing. Let us consider "how they grow," and let us give up all our straining, and stretching and self-efforts after growth, and try to grow like them by the power of an inward growing-life alone. Let us be like them also in this, that we do not try to cultivate ourselves. Too many try to be their_o en, to cultivate, and water, and dig about, and prune, and even sometimes to plant themselves.
They try to be what they are not, and what they never can be, i.e.,_ the husbandman instead of the branches, the gardener instead of the garden, the farmer instead of the trees and flowers. And of course they fail. But let us be what we are, the trees, and flowers, and gardens only, and let us leave to our Divine Husbandman all the care and responsibility of our growing and our blooming.
176 / Daily He Leads Me Do not yield your members to sin as instruments of I wickedness, but yield yourselves to God as men who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments of righteousness. (Rom 6:13)
God does not tell us that we are the workmen, who are to use and manage the instruments, but that we are the instruments to be used and managed by the Divine Master Workman who made us, and who alone, therefore, understands for what work we are best fitted. The only thing the instrument can do is to "yield" itself perfectly to the will of the Master Workman. The Master surely knows how best to use his instruments, and it is plainly not the business of the tool to decide these questions for itself. Neither must it try to help by its own efforts to do the work. One absolutely necessary characteristic of a tool is its pliableness. The moment resistance is felt in any tool, the moment it refuses to move just as the master wants, that moment it becomes unfit for use. If 1 am writing, and my fine gold pen begins to leak and to move with difficulty, I will soon lay it aside and take gladly in its place even a stub end of a lead pencil, if only it will move easily in obedience to my will. The strength of an instrument lies in its helplessness. Because it is helpless to do anything of itself, therefore the master can use it as he pleases. There must be no interference on the part of the instrument. j| I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love, and in mercy. (Hos 2:19)
Love takes different forms in our lives and regards its object in many different ways. The love set forth in this passage is the highest and closest and most tender that human hearts can know, and it pictures to us a glory of affection between Christ's heart and ours, such as no words can adequately express. It is one of the latest revelations that come toa soul. At first we seek his gifts only, but at last we seek him. At first we are occupied with our needs and come to the Lord simply to have them
October / 177 supplied. But at last we lose sight of the gifts in our longing for the Giver and can be satisfied with nothing short of himself.
Our souls cry out for a realized union with our Lord. And then there comes to us with untold joy the wonderful words, "As a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will your God rejoice over you," and we believe them and enter into our rest in the bosom of our Beloved!
I That they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and 1 in thee, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. (Jn 17:21)
"That they may all be one! It is all shut up in this phrase! One with the Father as the Son is one with him! Similarity of thought, of feeling, of desire, of love, of hate! We may have it all, if we will.
We may walk through this life so united to Christ, that our cares and our interests, our sorrows and our joys, our purposes and our wishes will be the same. His will alone to govern, his mind alone to lead us. He in us, and we in him, will then be our life; until at last, so intermingled will our lives become, that we shall be able to say in truth, "Not I, but Christ." For self will vanish in such a union as this, and that great "I' of ours which so fills up our present horizon, will wilt down into nothing before the glory of his overcoming presence! Be one, then, since he says we are, and let the power of that oneness be lived out in every moment of your existence.
I But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus
Christ for all who believe. (Rom 3:21-22) It is faith and faith only that can appropriate this righteousness that is ours in Christ. Just as we appropriate by faith the forgiveness that is ours in Christ, so must we appropriate by faith the patience that is ours in him, or the gentleness, or the meekness, or the longsuffering, or any other virtue we may need.
178 / Daily He Leads Me Our own efforts will not procure righteousness for us, any more than they will procure forgiveness. The Apostle Paul prays that he may be found in Christ, not having his own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith.
HN Keep meas the apple of the eye;/ hide me in the shadow of thy wings. (Ps 17:8) The mother hen keeps her little chickens under the shadow of her wings, and so will the Lord keep us, if we will let him. But this is a very large "if." What would we think of a little chicken which should stand off by itself, trembling with fright when danger was near, and saying, "I am not worthy to go under my mother's wing. I am too little, and too weak, and too insignificant. I must wait to go under until I am stronger and more worthy of her love'? Would not the mother hen have answered such a foolish little chicken by saying, "It is just because you are little and weak that I am spreading out my wings to cover you and am clucking for you to come. If you were grown large and strong, I would not want you. Your littleness and your weakness are your claim to my care."
He will not let your foot be moved, / he who keeps you will not slumber. / Behold, he who keeps Israel / will neither slumber nor sleep./ The Lord is your keeper. (Ps 121:3-5)
This psalm might be called the "Bible Keep." The Keep in an ancient castle was always the strongest and best protected room in the castle, the one which could be the last reached by any enemy. In this Keep all the sick and weak and helpless inmates of the castle were hidden in every time of danger. The qualification for entrance was simply and only need and weakness. How foolish then it would have been for any to have made their weakness the reason for remaining outside! And yet how continually is this done towards the Lord's Keep.
October / 179 bal I am sure that he is able to guard until that Day what has been entrusted to me. (2 Tm 1:12!) If we know him, we can not fail to trust him. No one who knows him ever did. And this after all is the true secret of confidence—knowledge of the trustworthiness of the one to be trusted. We act on this in our earthly affairs and are never so silly as to look inside ourselves to see whether we can or ought to trust another. We look at that other instead, and try to find out his character and his ways. But in their intercourse with the Lord, many act on an entirely different principle. They look at themselves for a warrant and ground of trust, instead of at him.
They behold self and its untrustworthiness and are filled with doubts and despair. Whereas a single soul-look at him will fill us with perfect peace, because of his utter trustworthiness.
WI Have no anxiety about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. (Phil 4:6)
We must give up all care of our own, by an utter surrender of everything to the Divine Caretaker, and by an implicit trust in him; and then we must just simply let him know our wants and our needs from day to day. If we do this honestly and persistently, the result will unfailingly be that the peace of God will keep our hearts and minds.
I remember once hearing of a man who thought he could not live unless he kept himself alive. He was afraid his breath would stop if he did not keep it going by his own efforts, and he tried so hard to keep breathing, that he nearly strangled himself in the struggle. His family in great alarm called in a physician, who, seeing at once the difficulty, called out to him peremptorily to stop trying to breathe. "I shall die if I do," gasped out the poor man. "Die then," exclaimed the doctor, "but STOP!" The man, overborne by the voice of authority, obeyed, and the moment he stopped trying to breathe, his breath came easily and without effort.
180 / Daily He Leads Me It is the same with some Christians. They are trying to keep themselves alive, and their life is nearly strangled in the effort. If they would but give up trying to live and would let Christ keep them alive, they would find themselves living easily and without effort. y Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him; / fret not thyself because of him who prospereth in his way, / because of the man who bringeth wicked devices to pass.
(Ps 37:7, KJV) The psalm speaks of "rest in the Lord," not in circumstances, or things, ioneds epic this rest takes the "fret" out of life. Divine rest is to the soul what resting in a bed is to the body.
We all know the delightful relaxation from every strain which comes to us in bed—the delicious letting go of the whole body in a perfect abandonment of ease and comfort. Such is the ease of soul that comes from resting "in the Lord." This rest implies perfect confidence in him.
If one should lie down in a bed that was in any way insecure, and was therefore liable to fall, it would be impossible to abandon oneself to rest. We would be compelled to hold on to something else, to keep ourselves safe in such a bed as that. It must be because Christians do not really believe the Lord alone to be a perfectly secure resting-place that they seek so eagerly for something else to hold on to: some good feelings, or good works, some church ordinances, or some special and remarkable experiences. What would we think of the foolishness of a man who was afraid his bed could not support him and tried to hold himself up by ropes attached to the ceiling? Yet this is nothing compared to the foolishness of those Christians who say they are resting in Christ and who yet are holding on to other supports.
Therefore, while the promise of entering his rest remains, let us fear lest any of you be judged to have failed to reach it. For good news came to us just as to them; but
October / 181 the message which they heard did not benefit them, because it did not meet with faith in the hearers. (Heb 4:1-2)
Notice the expressions "entering his rest." We cannot work for this rest, nor purchase it, nor provide it; we simply "enter into" the rest provided for us by one, who offers himself to us as our resting place. Just as we rest in a strong and loving earthly friend, who promises to help us through a difficulty, so must we rest in the Lord; and it requires faith on our part in both cases alike. If we doubt our friend, we cannot rest, no matter how much we may try; and if we doubt our Lord, we cannot rest either, no matter how much we may try. For rest comes always by trusting, not by trying.
Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for 1 am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. (Mt 11:29) Surrender, faith, and obedience are necessary at every step of the divine progress, and nowhere more necessary than here.
Without them, rest is simply impossible in the very nature of things. The little child rests in its mother, only when it yields unquestioning submission to her control and trusts implicitly in her love. The ox that yields to the yoke without chafing rests under it; while the young bullock, "unaccustomed to the yoke," finds it a galling burden. Truly many Christians have less sense than the dumb animals; for the animals, when they find the yoke inevitable, yield to it and it becomes easy, while we are tempted to chafe and worry under it as long as life lasts.
Learn to "take" the yoke upon you. Do not wait for it to be forced on you; but bow yourneck to it willingly and "take" it. Say
"Yes, Lord' to each expression of his will in all the circumstances of your life. Say it with full consent to everything, to the loss o of your money, or the loss of your health, or to the malice of enemies, or the cruelty of friends. Take each yoke as it comes, and i in the taking you will find rest.
182 / Daily He Leads Me DT When He giveth quietness, who then can make trouble? (Jb 34:29, KJV) Among the peaks of the Sierra Nevada mountains, not far from the busy whirl of San Francisco, lies Lake Tahoe. It is twenty-three miles long, ten miles wide, and so deep that the line at 1,900 feet does not touch bottom; and it lies 5,000 feet above the neighboring ocean. Storms come and go in lower waters, but this lake is so still and its water so clear that the eye can penetrate, it is said, a hundred feet into its depths. A bell can be heard for ten or twenty miles. Around its mild verdant sides are the mountains, ever crowned with snow. The sky above is as calm as the motionless water. Nature loses scarcely anything of its clear outline as it is reflected there. Here the soul may learn something of what rest is, as day after day one opens one's heart to let the sweet influences of nature's sabbath enter and reign.
And this is but a faint type of what we may find in Christ.
In the pressure of the greatest responsibilities, in the worry of the smallest cares, in the perplexity of life's moments of crisis, we may have the Lake Tahoe rest in the fastnesses of God's will.
Learn to live in this rest; and in the calm of spirit that it will give, your soul will reflect as in a mirror the "beauty of the Lord," and the tumult of men's lives will be calmed in your presence as your tumults have been calmed in the presence of God.
I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.
(Rom 12:1) However widely Christians may differ on other subjects, however divergent may be their views of truth or of doctrine, there is one point upon which every thoughtful soul will agree: and that is the fact that we all are called to an entire surrender of ourselves to the will of God. We are made for union with him, and the only pathway to this must of course be a perfect
October / 183 us to be holy are all based upon the fact that he to whom we belong is holy.
| We Not every one who says to me, "Lord, Lord," shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my
Father who is in heaven. (Mt 7:21) God's purpose in our redemption was our entire consecration.
Christians too often look upon consecration as something extra added on to salvation, not necessarily an essential part; and therefore think it is optional whether they enter into it or not, as they may please. However, the Bible declares that salvation is nothing, if it does not ultimately lead to holiness; for salvation in God's thought is holiness.
9, Awaiting our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all iniquity and to purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds.
(Ti 2:13-14) It is striking to notice that of the many announcements made concerning the work Christ came to accomplish, nearly every one declares it to be the deliverance from sin, rather than the escape of punishment. It is a salvation to holiness, rather than a salvation to heaven. Of course punishment is escaped and heaven is gained, in the nature of things, when we are saved from sin; since the greater always involves the less. But the vital thing in the redemption of Christ is evidently to redeem "from all iniquity," and "purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds."
Then I said, "Lo, I come; / in the roll of the book it is written of me;/I delight to do thy will, O my God;/thy law is within my heart." (Ps 40:7-8)
184 / Daily He Leads Me Do we "delight" to do God's will? The enemy is always trying to get in the word duty instead of the word delight; he says a stern "you must" instead of the loving "you may." When a mother cares for her child from duty only, the tender sweetness of the mother love has gone. When the husband or wife begins to say cnly "I ought" instead of "I delight to' in relationship to the other, the home becomes a prison. There is no slavery like the slavery of love, but its chains are sweet.
It knows nothing of "sacrifice," no matter what may be given up. It "delights to do the will' of the beloved one. its ~ Our Lord can never be satisfied until this is the attitude of our souls towards him. His purposes of grace for us are that there should be harmony between our wills and his: not two wills crossing one another, but two wills made one. Has it become so with us that we delight to do his will? If not, the choice is before us now, and we must decide it.
The Lord, the God of their fathers, sent persistently to them by his messengers, because he had compassion on his people and on his dwelling place; but they kept mocking the messengers of God... till the wrath of the Lord rose against his people. (2 Chr 36:15-16) A watchful walk with the Lord would have saved Judah from it all. They had had warnings without number, through the whole course of their decline. In the same way, I feel sure that no soul now falls into backsliding or captivity, without continued and often-repeated warning, both from within and without. The Lord sends messengers to such now, just as he did to Judah then, because he has compassion on them: messengers of outward sorrow, and suffering, and loss, or messengers of inward condemnation and heaviness of heart. The Holy Spirit speaks to them in a voice they cannot mistake, giving them a sight of their condition and its dangers, and drawing them back to obedience tenderly and lovingly, or seeking to drive them with stern rebuke. We must take heed to every warning sent in love and compassion to save us from backsliding, even though it may be but the slight inward check or call of the indwelling Spirit.
November Arise, go over this Jordan, you and all this people, into the land which I am giving to them, to the people of Israel.
(Jos 1:2) The Book of Joshua opens on the children of Israel encamped in the plains of Moab "on this side Jordan, in the wilderness."
Their long weary wanderings, since they had refused to enter the land forty years before, had not brought them any nearer
Canaan than they were when they set out. They were on the borders then; they were only on the borders now. They had been moving, certainly, during all these forty years, but like a great deal of what is called "religious growth," their course had not been "upward and onward." They had gone round and round in that dreary wilderness, doubling on their track continually, and journeying onward, only to journey back again. Now a river lay between them and the land of their possession. Had they gone in at first, at Kadesh-barnea, they would have had only an unseen boundary to cross and the transition would not have been so strongly marked.
186 / Daily He Leads Me So I believe that in the experience of the Christian, there need not be that definite step, to which so many object, in entering into the more full enjoyment of the promises of the gospel, if only at our conversion we were taught that we were well able to overcome the land and were urged to go in at once and possess it.
Doubtiess some do thus enter in at Kadesh-barnea. But the majority of Christians, like the Israelites, fail to enter in at first, because of unbelief, and are turned back like them to wander in the wilderness described in chapter seven of Romans.
, If thou dost kill this people as one man, then the nations who have heard thy fame will say, "Because the Lord was not able to bring this people into the land which he swore to give to them, therefore he has slain them in the wilderness."
(Nm 14:15-16) God's object in redeeming his people out of Egypt had been to bring them into the promised land. "I have come down," he said in Exodus, "to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to'—what? the wilderness, to wander there forty years:—no—"to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey." Therefore, for the sake of his own glory, it was necessary that his people should go in and be planted in the land of their inheritance.
It is the same with us. We shall enter into possession of the promises, into that land of blessing and of rest which corresponds spiritually to the Canaan of the Israelites. It is not only a privilege God gives us but a command he utters: "Abide in me."
"Be filled with the Spirit." "Reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin." "Be careful for nothing." "Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid." All these are glorious privileges, but they are also positive commands. Unless we enter into this blessed fullness of salvation, we will surely give occasion to the world to say that God is not able to bring us into the land which he promised us.