January
January / 3 him. We all know how impossible it is to rescue a drowning man who tries to help his rescuer, and it is equally impossible for the Lord to fight our battles for us when we insist upon trying to fight them ourselves. It is not that he will not, but that he cannot. Our interference hinders his working.
My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. (2 Cor 12:9] Our Lord tells us that without him we can do nothing, but do we really believe him? In spite of all our failures, we cannot help thinking that, if only we should try harder and be more persistent, we should be equal to any encounter. But we entirely overlook the vital fact that our natural powers are of no avail in spiritual regions or with spiritual enemies. The grub of the dragonfly that lives at the bottom of the pond may be a finely developed and vigorous grub; but, when it becomes a dragonfly, the powers of its grub life that availed for creeping about in the mud would be useless for winging its flight in the free air.
Just as our skill in walking on the earth would avail us nothing if we had to fly in the air, so our natural powers are of no avail in spiritual warfare. In fact, if we try to depend on them, they are real hindrances. Trusting in ourselves, when dealing with our spiritual enemies, not only causes failure, but in the end it causes rebellion; and a great deal of what is called
"spiritual conflict" might far better be named "spiritual rebellion." God has told us to cease from our own efforts, and to hand our battles over to him, and we point blank refuse to obey him.
We fight, it is true, but it is not a fight of faith, but a fight of unbelief. Our spiritual "wrestling," of which we are often so proud, is really a wrestling, not for God against his enemies, but against him on the side of his enemies. We allow ourselves to indulge in doubts and fears, and as a consequence we are plunged into darkness, and turmoil, and wrestlings of spirit. The single word that explains our dilemma is the word "unbelief," and the simple remedy is to be found in the word "faith."
4 / Daily He Leads Me A man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day.
When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and Jacob's thigh was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. (Gn 32:24-28)
You may wonder whether Jacob did not win victory by wrestling. To this I reply, that on the contrary, he gained his victory by being made so weak that he could not wrestle any longer. It was not Jacob who wrestled with the angel, but the angel who wrestled with Jacob. Jacob was the one to be overcome; and when the angel found that Jacob's resistance was so great that he could not "prevail against him," he was obliged to lame him, by putting his thigh out of joint; and then the victory was won. As soon as Jacob was too weak to resist any longer, he prevailed with God. He gained power when he lost it.
He conquered when he could no longer fight.
Jacob's experience is ours. The Lord wrestles with us in order to bring us to a place of entire dependence on him. We resist as long as we have any strength; until at last he is forced to bring us to a place of helplessness, where we are obliged to yield; and then we conquer by this very yielding. Our victory is always the victory of weakness.
Then Gideon perceived that he was the angel of the Lord.
... But the Lord said to him, "Peace be to you; do not fear, you shall not die." (Jgs 6:22-23) The Lord called Gideon for a work he felt he was incapable of | accomplishing. But the Lord promised him victory, and peace.
Then Gideon believed the Lord. Although the battle had not yet been fought, and no victories had been won, with the eye of faith he saw peace already secured. And he built an altar to the Lord, and called it Jehovah-shalom, i.e., "the Lord our Peace."
Of all the needs of the human heart none is greater than the need for peace; and none is more abundantly promised in the gospel. "Peace I leave with you," says our Lord, "My peace I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid."
Our idea of peace is that it must be outward before it can be
January / 5 inward, that all enemies must be driven away and all troubles cease. But the Lord's idea is of an interior peace that can exist in the midst of turmoil, and can triumph over it. The ground of this sort of peace is found in the fact, not that we have overcome the world, or that we ever can, but that Christ has overcome it. Only the conqueror can proclaim peace, and the people, whose battles he has fought, can do nothing but enter into it. They can neither make nor unmake it. But, if they choose, they can refuse to believe in it, and so can fail to let it reign in their hearts. You may be afraid to believe that Christ has made peace for you, and so may live on in a weary state of warfare; but nevertheless he has done it.
Have no anxiety about anything but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Phil 4:6-7) The Bible tells us that Christ is our peace, and consequently, whether I feel as if I have peace or not, peace is really mine in Christ, and I must take possession of it by faith.
Practically I believe we can always enter into peace by a simple obedience to the command in Philippians. The steps here are very plain, and they are only two. First give up all anxiety, and second, hand over your cares to God; and then stand steadfastly and peace must come. It simply must, for there is no room for anything else.
Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when | will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely.... And this is the name by which he will be called: "The Lord is our righteousness." (Jer 23:5-6)
Greater than any other need is our need of righteousness.
Most of the struggles and conflicts of our Christian life come from our fights with sin and our efforts after righteousness. And I need not say how great are our failures. As long as we try to
6 / Daily He Leads Me conquer sin or attain righteousness by our own efforts, we are bound to fail. But if we discover that the Lord is our righteousness, we will have got hold of a secret of victory. In the Lord
Jesus Christ we have a fuller revelation of this wonderful name of God.
Experimentally it seems to me like this. We are not to try to have a stock of righteousness laid up in ourselves, from which to draw a supply when needed. Instead, we are to draw continual fresh supplies as we need them from the righteousness that is laid up for us in Christ. I mean, that if we need righteousness of any sort, such as patience, or humility, or love, it is useless for us to look within, hoping to find a supply there, for we never will find it; but we must simply take it by faith, as a possession that is stored up for us in Christ, who is our righteousness. If I cannot tell theologically how this is done, I know experimentally that it can be done and that the results are triumphant. I have seen sweetness and gentleness poured like a flood of sunshine into dark and bitter spirits, when the hand of faith has been reached out to grasp them as a present possession, stored up for all who need in Christ. I have seen sharp tongues made tender, anxious hearts made calm, and fretful spirits made quiet, by the simple step of taking by faith the righteousness that is ours in Christ.
For he will give his angels charge of you / to guard you inall your ways. / On their hands they will bear you up, / iest you dash your foot against a stone. (Ps 91:1 1-12)
The Lord is like a mother who holds the hand of her little child as they walk together, that she may keep it from falling over the snares that lie in its way. It is the mother holding the child that makes it safe, not the child holding the mother.
Notice the words "bear you up," illustrated by the infant in the mother's arms, safe because of her upholding. Its little frightened gasps when danger is near, do not make it any safer, for its safety consists in the fact that its mother holds it, and everything depends on whether she is able to keep it safe.
January / 7 I O taste and see that the Lord is good! / Happy is the man who takes refuge in him! (Ps 34:8} What does it mean to be good? What is it but to live up to the best and highest that one knows? Being good is exactly the opposite of being bad. To be bad is to know the right and not do it, but to be good is to do the best we know. Since God is omniscient, he must know what is the best and highest good of all, and therefore his goodness must necessarily be beyond question. I can never express what this knowledge meant to me.
I had such a view of the real, actual goodness of God that I realized that nothing could possibly go wrong under his care, and it seemed to me that no one could ever be anxious again.
Since then, when appearances have been against him, and when I have been tempted to question whether he has been unkind, neglectful, or indifferent, I have been brought up short by the words, "The Lord is good!" np They spoke against God, saying, / "Can God spread a table in the wilderness: (Ps 78:19) This seemed a very innocent question to ask. But God had promised to supply all the Israelites' needs in the wilderness. To ask this question betrayed a secret want of confidence in God's ability to do as he has promised. In spite of its innocent appearance, it was a real "speaking against" God. A good God could not have led his people into the wilderness and then have failed to "spread a table" for them. To question whether he was able to do it was to imply that he was not good. In the same way we are sometimes sorely tempted to ask a similar question.
Circumstances often seem to make it so impossible for God to supply our needs, that we find ourselves over and over tempted to "speak against" him by asking if he can. Often as he has done it before, we seem unable to believe he can do it again, and in our hearts we limit him, because we do not believe his word nor trust his goodness.
8 / Daily He Leads Me I _ All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. (Jn 1:3)
Few of us have not been tempted at one time or other to ask God why he has made us the way we are, with our own personal makeup. We do not like our peculiar temperaments or our special characteristics, and we long to be like someone else, who seems to have greater gifts of appearance or talent.
I remember a time in my life when I was tempted to be very rebellious about my own makeup. I was a plain-spoken, energetic sort of person, trying to be a good Christian, but with no special air of piety about me. But my sister was so saintly in her looks and had such a pious manner, that she seemed to be the embodiment of holiness. I felt sure I could be a great deal better Christian if only I could become like her in looks and manner. But all my struggles were useless. My natural temperament was far too energetic and outspoken for any appearance of saintliness, and many a time I said upbraidingly in my heart to God, "Why have you made me like this?" One day I came across a sentence in an old book that seemed to open my eyes:
"Be content to be what thy God has made thee." It flashed on me that it really was a fact that God had made me, and that he must know the sort of creature he wanted me to be. If he had made me a potato plant, I must be satisfied to grow potatoes and not try to be a rose bush to grow roses. If he had fashioned me for humble tasks, I must be content to let others do the grander work. We are 'God' S workmanship," and God is good, therefore his workmanship must be good also. We may trust that he will make us something that will be to his glory, no matter how unlike this we may as yet feel ourselves to be. i Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, / whom he has redeemed from trouble and gathered in from the lands.
(Ps 107:2] We must join our voices to that of the psalmist. Our God is indeed a good God. But we must not say it with our lips only but with our whole being, with thought, word, and action, so that
January / 9 people will see we really mean it and will be convinced that it is a tremendous fact.
A great many things in God's divine providence do not look like goodness to the eye of sense, and in reading the Psalms we may wonder how the psalmist could say, after some of the things he records, "his mercy endures forever." But faith bows down before mysteries such as these and says, "The Lord is good, therefore all that he does must be good, no matter how it looks, and I can wait for his explanations."
A housekeeping illustration has often helped me here. If I have a friend whom I know to be a good housekeeper, I don't trouble over the fact that at house-cleaning time things in her house may seem to be more or less upset: carpets up, and furniture shrouded in coverings, and even perhaps painting and decorating, making some rooms uninhabitable. I say to myself,
"My friend is a good housekeeper, and although things look so uncomfortable now, all this uproar is only because she means in the end to make it far more comfortable than it was before." This world is God's housekeeping; and although things at present look grievously upset, we know that he is good and therefore must be a good Housekeeper. We must be perfectly sure that all this present upset is only to bring about in the end a far better state of things than could have been possible without it. I dare say we have all felt at times as though we could have done God's housekeeping better than he does it himself, but, when we realize that God is good, we can feel this no longer. fl These all died in faith, not having received what was promised, but having seen it and greeted it from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. (Heb 11:13-14) We, too, are seeking a homeland. In other words, we are a developing race. It is not a place we are seeking, but a condition, a new nature and a new sphere of life. There are two men in the Bible: man as an animal and man as a spiritual being. Our
10 / Daily He Leads Me natural man, the flesh man, or as the Bible calls it, the "old man," can never fulfill the righteousness of God, for it is of the earth, earthy. With our "sinful nature,' the flesh, we must of necessity always serve the "law of sin." It is only the spiritual man, the man born of God, the resurrection man, who can mind the things of the Spirit; and, in fact, it is only such who can even understand
God and his ways.
I Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. (Jn 12:24) A deeply taught Christian was asked by a despairing child of God, "Doesn't the world look to you like a wreck?" "Yes," was the reply, in a tone of cheerful confidence, "Yes, like the wreck of a bursting seed."
Any of us who have watched the first sprouting of an oak tree from the heart of a decaying acorn will understand what this means. Before the acorn can bring forth the oak, it must become itself a wreck. No plant ever came from any but a wrecked seed.
Our Lord uses this fact to teach us the meaning of his processes with us. The whole explanation of the apparent wreckage of the world at large, or of our own personal lives in particular, is here set forth. Looked at in this light, we can understand how it is that the Lord can be good, and yet can permit the existence of sorrow and wrong in the world he has created and in the lives of the human beings he loves.
It is his very goodness that compels him to permit it. For he knows that, only through such apparent wreckage, can the fruition of his glorious purposes for us be brought to pass. If we understand his ways, we, whose hearts also long for that fruition, will be able to praise him for all his goodness, even when things seem hardest and most mysterious.
| Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations. (Ps 90:1) The comfort or discomfort of our outward lives depends more upon the dwelling place of our bodies than upon almost any
January / 11 other material thing: and the comfort or discomfort of our Byard life depends similarly upon the dwelling place of our souls.
Our dwelling place is the place where we live, not the place we merely visit. It is our home. All the interests of our earthly lives are bound up in our homes; and we do all we can to make them attractive and comfortable. But our souls need a comfortable dwelling place even more than our bodies; for inward comfort, as we all know, is of far greater importance than outward. Where the soul is full of peace and joy, outward surroundings are of comparatively little account.
It is of vital importance, then, that we should find out definitely where our souls are living. The Lord declares that he has been our dwelling place in all generations, but the question is: are we living in our dwelling place? The psalmist says of the children of Israel that they wandered in the wilderness, finding no city to dwell in. Hungry and thirsty, their souls fainted within them.
The truth is, our souls are made for God. He is our natural home, and we can never be at rest anywhere else. We always shall hunger and faint for the courts of the Lord, as long as we fail to take up our abode there.
I Because you have made the Lord your refuge, / the Most High your habitation, no evil shall befall you,/no scourge come near your tent. (Ps 91:9-10)
How safe the psalmist declares this divine dwelling place to be! Notice how he says that we who are in this dwelling place shall be afraid of nothing: not the terror by night, nor the arrow by day, nor the plague that walks in darkness. Thousands shall fall beside us and around us, but no evil shall befall the soul that is hidden in this divine dwelling place.
All the terrors and all the plagues that have made our religious lives so wretched are included here, and from all of them we shall be delivered, if we make the Lord our habitation. This does not mean that we shall have no outward trials. Plagues in abundance may attack us, but nothing can
12 / Daily He Leads Me come near our soul while we are dwelling in God.
A large part of the pain of life comes from the haunting "fear of evil' which so often besets us. Our lives are full of "supposes."
Suppose this should happen, or suppose that should happen, what could we do; how could we bear it? But, if we are dwelling with God, all these supposes will drop out of our lives. Even when walking through the valley of the shadow of death, the psalmist could say, "I will fear no evil." If we are dwelling in God, we Can say So too.
I Lead thou me to the rock that is higher than 1;/for thou art my refuge, / a strong tower against the enemy.
(Ps 61:2-3) He who cares for the sparrows and numbers the hairs of our head cannot possibly fail us. He is an impregnable fortress, into which no evil can enter and no enemy penetrate. I hold it, therefore, as a self-evident truth that the moment I have really committed anything into this divine dwelling place; all fear and anxiety should cease. While I keep anything in my own care, I may well fear and tremble, for it is indeed to the last degree unsafe. But in God's care, no security could be more absolute.
The only point is to run into this strong tower and stay there forever. It would be the height of folly, when the enemy was surrounding us on every side, to stand outside of a fortress and cry out for safety. If I want to be safe, I must go in.
I Let me dwell in thy tent for ever!
/Oh to be safe under the shelter of thy wings! / For thou, O God, hast heard my vows,/ thou hast given me the heritage of those who fear thy name. (Ps 61:4-5) The psalmist wants to dwell in the tent of God forever, to be safe under the shelter of God's wings. We must do the same.
This dwelling forever in God's tent is sometimes very hard. It is comparatively easy to take a step of faith, but it is a far more difficult thing to abide steadfastly in the place into which we:
January / 13 have stepped. A great many people dwell in God's fortress on Sunday and come out of it again as soon as Monday morning dawns. This is the height of folly. One cannot imagine any sensible refugee running into a fortress one day and the next day running out among the enemy again. We would think such a person had suddenly lost all his senses. But is it not even more foolish when it comes to the soul? Are our enemies any less active on Mondays than they are on Sundays, or are we any better able to cope with them when we are in bed than when we were kneeling at our prayers? oy He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High, / who abides in the shadow of the Almighty, / will say to the Lord, "My refuge and my fortress; / my God, in whom I trust."
(Ps 91:1-2) Abiding and trusting mean exactly the same thing. While I trust the Lord, Iam abiding in him. IfI trust him steadfastly, lam abiding in him steadfastly; if I trust him intermittently, I am running into him and running out again. I used to think there was some mystery about abiding in Christ, but I see now that it only means trusting him fully. When once you understand this, it becomes really the simplest matter in the world. We sometimes say, speaking of two human beings, that they "live in each other's hearts," and we simply mean that perfect love and confidence exist between them, and that doubts of one another are impossible. If my trust in the fortress of the Lord is absolute, I am abiding in the fortress; and this is the whole story. wo The name of the Lord is a strong tower; / the righteous man runs into it and is safe. (Prv 18:10)
Since the Lord is our strong tower, nothing can possibly come to any harm that is committed to his care. As long as we believe this, our affairs remain in his care; the moment we begin to doubt, we take our affairs into our own hands, and they are no longer in the divine fortress. Things cannot be in two places at
14 / Daily He Leads Me once. If they are in our own care, they cannot be in God's care, and if they are in God's care, they cannot be in our own. This is as clear as daylight, and yet, for the want of a little commonsense, people often get mixed up over it. They put their affairs into God's fortress and at the same time put them into their own fortress as well. Then they wonder why they are not taken care of. This is all folly. Either trust the Lord out and out, or else trust yourself out and out; but do not try to mix the two trusts, for they will not mix. i) Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations. (Ps 90:1)
When we move into a new house, we not only move in ourselves, but we take with us all our belongings of every sort and description. Above all, we take our family. No one would be so foolish as to leave anything they cared for or anyone they loved outside. But I am afraid there are some of God's children who move into the dwelling place of God themselves, but by lack of faith leave their loved ones outside. More often than not it is their children who are so abandoned. We should be horrified at a father who in a time of danger should flee into a fortress for safety, but should leave his children outside; and yet hundreds of Christians do this very thing. Every anxious thought which we indulge about our children, proves that we have not really taken them with us into the dwelling place of God.
What I mean is this, that, if we trust for ourselves, we must trust for our loved ones also, especially our children. God is more truly their Father than their earthly fathers are. If they are dear to us, they are far dearer to him. We cannot do anything better for them than to trust them into his care and hardly anything worse than to try to keep them in our own.
Iknewa Christian mother who trusted peacefully for her own salvation but was racked with anxiety about her sons, who seemed entirely indifferent to Christianity. One evening she heard about the possibility of putting her loved ones into the
January / 15 fortress of God by faith and leaving them there. Like a flash of heavenly light, she saw the inconsistency of hiding herself in God's fortress and leaving her beloved sons outside. At once her faith took them into the fortress with her, and she abandoned them to the care of God. I did not see her again for a year, but, when I did, she came up to me with a beaming face. With tears of joy filling her eyes, she said, "Rejoice with me, dear friend, that I learned how to put my boys into the fortress of God. They have an safe there ever since, and all of them are good Christians today."
2 3 If God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O men of little faith: (Mt 6:30)
To many Christians this passage, and others like it, are so familiar that they have almost lost all meaning. But they do mean something, something almost too wonderful to believe.
They tell us that God cares for us human beings "much more" than he cares for the universe around us. He will watch over and provide for us much more than he will even for it.
Incredible, yet true! How often we have marveled at the orderly working of the universe, and have admired the great creative Power that made it and now controls it. But we have, none of us, I suppose, ever felt it necessary to take the burden of the universe upon our own shoulders. We have trusted the Creator to manage it all without our help.
Even where we have fully recognized that the universe is completely in God's care, we have failed to see that we are also there, and have never dreamed that it could be true that "much more' than he cares for the universe will he care for us. We have burdened ourselves with the care of ourselves. In our unbelief, we think that we are of "much less" value than the birds of the air or the lilies of the field. Man is so puny, so insignificant, of so little account, when compared to the great, wide universe. What is he, we ask, that God should care for him? Yet God declares that he does care for him and that he even cares for him much
16 / Daily He Leads Me more than he cares for the universe. Much more, remember, not much less. Every thought of anxiety about ourselves must be immediately crushed with the reflection that, since we are not so foolish to become anxious about the universe, we must not be so much more foolish to become anxious about ourselves.
Wi 4 What man of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? (Mt 7:9) All human readiness to hear and answer the cry of need, can only be a faint picture of God's readiness. If parents would not give a stone for bread, neither would God. When we ask him for something, we must be absolutely sure that we will receive the "good thing" for which we asked, whether what we receive looks like it or not.
The mother of St. Augustine, in her longing for the conversion of her son, prayed that he might not go to Rome because she feared its dissipations. God answered her by sending him to Rome to be converted there. Things we call good are often evil things to God, and our evil is his good. However things may look, we always know that God must give the best, because he is
God and could do no other.
6) 5 It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his servants in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch.
(Mk 13:34) "Each with his work." Not the same work to all, but each one has his own talent and his own place. And each one is responsible only for that which is given him to do. This seems too plain to be spoken of; but as a fact, most members of God's household are more concerned about the work given to someone else, than about that given to themselves.
Not what others do or leave undone, but what I myself do or leave undone, is the vital thing in my soul life. Neither should I care for the judgment of others concerning my work. A servant
January / 17 in a household is not anxious to know what the master or mistress next door may think of him or his work, but only what his own master and mistress think. ww But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with him, and made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. (Eph 2:4-6)
It is just as though one had died and been buried, and had risen again, and thenceforth walked in a new and risen life. Such a one would look at things from an altogether different standpoint and measure them by other measures. Try to put yourself in the place of Lazarus after he had been raised from the dead and imagine, if you can, with what eyes he would behold the world and the things of it; and you will perhaps get a glimpse of the meaning of this resurrection life. Things once all-important to him, must have lost their value, and things once insignificant, must have become of mighty import.
The place from which we look makes all the difference in how things look. The resurrection life seats us in "heavenly places," and we look from these down upon earthly things, and not up from earthly places upon heavenly things. We are to walk through this world as those whose heart and brain move there, while our feet stay here.
By Th Well done, good and faithful servant; you have been faithful over a little, I will set you over much; enter into the joy of your master. (Mt 25:23} You wicked and slothful servant! ... You ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming | should have received what was my own interest. So take the talent from him, and give it to him who has the ten talents.
(Mt 25:26-27) In the first two cases it is "Well done, good and faithful servant," and in the last, "you wicked and slothful servant." The
18 / Daily He Leads Me difference was not in the amount done or left undone, but in the faithfulness or unfaithfulness to the talents given. The servant with the two talents was commended in just the same words as the one with five. And the servant with only one talent would have received a similar approval had he shown a similar faithfulness.
For such a commendation who would not strive? To hear the Master say, "Well done" at last, would surely repay one for all that might have been passed through to deserve it!
OD: 8 So each of us shall give account of himself to God.
(Rom 14:12) We cannot avoid giving this "account," for it is one that gives itself. Our life work tells in the formation of character, and it is the character we have formed that is to be the judgment given.
In the very nature of things we receive according to what we have done, and we cannot help it.
"And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness; there men will weep and gnash their teeth" (Mt 25:30). This is a very solemn word. For we see that it is the "worthless servant" merely, who was cast into this outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth: not one who had committed some great crime, but one who had simply been unprofitable. And it was a "servant" too, not an outsider, but one of the "household." Have we ever dreamed that to be merely a "worthless servant" was so serious and grievous a thing as this?
Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the thongs of the yoke,/ to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke: (Is 58:6]
All the talking, or fasting, or weeping, or wearing of sackcloth in the world, will not do as a substitute for the Christlike life of love and kindness towards our fellow human beings. The "fast that he chooses" is to help the needy and raise the fallen, and nothing will do instead of this.
A great many Christians never do anything except for
January / 19 themselves. Whether they fast, or whether they eat and drink, it is all for themselves, to save their own souls, or to help forward their own experience; but they never lift a hand to help anyone else. Their religion is all for self-exaltation, in one way or another, either now or hereafter, and not truly for the glory of God at all.
Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For they all contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, her whole living.
(Mk 12:43-44) It is not much to give out of one's abundance; but to give "out of one's poverty," all that one has, whether in time, or in talent, or in sympathy, this is the thing that receives the Lord's approval. If then you have only one talent, and the service you render is "out of your poverty" instead of out of your abundance, even though it be all that you have, cast it into the Lord's treasury, and be sure you will win his approval, whether the world approves or not.
35] The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, whicha man found and covered up; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it. (Mt 13:44-46) Christ sold "all he had" to purchase the "field," which is the world, for the sake of the "treasure" that is hidden there, which is humanity. (This is not the usual interpretation of the passage, but by comparing Christ's own words, "the field is the world," in Mt 13:38, I think we will find it admissible.)
And again, the pearl of great price may also be considered to be the human race whom Christ purchased with his own blood, with "all that he had."
20 / Daily He Leads Me Surely, after all this, we cannot question the fact of his ownership! Since, then, it is a settled fact that we are not our own, but that we belong to God, let us consider what follows from this: 1. His ownership lays upon him the responsibility of caring for us. 2. It lays upon us the responsibility of surrender, and trust, and obedience to him.
February I In all their affliction he was afflicted, / and the angel of his presence saved them; / in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; / he lifted them up and carried them. (Is 63:9)
When I read in the Bible that God is love, I am to believe it, just because "it is written," and not because I have had any inward revelation that it is true; and when the Bible says that he cares for us as he cares for the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, and that the very hairs of our heads are all numbered, I am to believe it, just because it is written, whether I have any inward revelation of it or not.
It is of vital importance for us to understand that the Bible is a statement, not of theories, but of actual facts. Things are not true because they are in the Bible, but they are only in the Bible because they are true.
A little boy, who had been studying at school about the discovery of America, said to his father one day, "Father, if I had been Columbus I should not have taken all that trouble to discover America." "Why, what would you have done?' asked the father. "Oh," replied the little boy, "I would just have gone to the
22 / Daily He Leads Me map and found it." This little boy did not understand that maps are only pictures of already-known places, and that America did not exist because it was on the map, but it could not be on the map until it was already known to exist. The Bible, like the map, is a simple statement of facts; so that when it tells us that God loves us, it is only telling us something that is a fact.
Dy) Acquaint now thyself with God, and be at peace.
(Jb 22:21, KJV} It is not a question of acquaintance with ourselves, or of knowing what we are, or what we do, or what we feel; it is simply and only a question of becoming acquainted with God, getting to know what he is, and what he does, and what he feels.
Comfort and peace can never come from anything we know about ourselves, but only and always from what we know about God. We may spend our days in what we call our religious duties and may fill our devotions with fervor, and we still may be miserable. Nothing can set our hearts at rest but a real acquaintance with God. After all, everything in our salvation must depend upon him in the last instance. If we were planning to take a dangerous voyage, our first question would be about the sort of captain we were to have. Our common sense would tell us that if the captain were untrustworthy, no amount of trustworthiness on our part would make the voyage safe; and it would be his character and not our own that would be the thing of paramount importance.
Let not your hearts be troubled; believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you
(Jn 14:1-2) We cannot have the spirit of a son, until we know we are sons.
To doubt it, would be to lose the spirit at once.
Our Lord himself always speaks to his disciples in terms of absolute certainty concerning their relationship with God.