AUGUST 31
SUGGESTED READING: JOHN 4:7–26
But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life (John 4:14).
Rain comes from heaven, but it does not return. The Word of God comes from heaven, but it does not return in the same form.
The Word of God (to change the figure) comes like seed. Our Lord Jesus Christ planted the seed thought of truth and then left it to develop. No one can be the same after hearing the Word of God. He may object to it; he may revolt against it; but God has given that person a standard of conduct whereby he will judge himself in his best moments.
Jesus Christ preached His greatest discourses to the smallest audiences. His great discourse on the fountain of water, springing up within us unto eternal life, was given to a lone woman at the well of Samaria. He knew that the planting of that seed with one person would lead to a great harvest.
Seed evangelism is an idea that we modern preachers should adopt. So many of us suppose that we have to plow the field, sow the seed, reap the grain, bind it into sheaves, put it through the threshing machine, and make bread of it—all in one discourse. When we get back to the evangelistic method of the New Testament, we find that one may sow and another reap.
Let every Christian remain true to the calling God has given him.
PRAYER THOUGHT: Enable me, O God, to remain faithful to my calling.
SUGGESTED READING: PSALM 119:97–104
O how love I thy law! it is my meditation all the day (Ps. 119:97).
If we have presented the Word of God, it is not our business to apply it, for the Spirit of God will do that. Our hearers may seem to subside to their old level of living and forget what has been said. But they cannot forget all about it, because God says, “My word … shall not return unto me void but it shall accomplish that which I please and shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it” (Isa. 55:11). That does not mean the Word will produce what we want. But it will produce what God wants. We must sow the Word. Then, God says, “it shall accomplish what I please.”
In some cases, the Word of God will be a “savour of life unto life”; in other cases, it will be a “savour of death unto death.” But rest assured, no individual who believingly receives the Word of God can ever be the same again. It profoundly alters life! The force and power of the new idea that is planted by the Word of God will certainly bring forth fruit after many days—either in damnation or in salvation!
PRAYER THOUGHT: Have Your way, according to Your will, in the lives of those with whom I share God’s Word.
SUGGESTED READING: LUKE 15:8–10
For ye shall shout with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands (Isa. 55:12).
No shower of rain ever fell near human habitations without producing mud; and mud spatters on people’s clothes, and people who have mud on their clothes complain. By the same token, there never was a religious awakening that did not produce some elements that disgusted certain folks.
When the woman lost her coin, Jesus said she swept the house. What dust and what a turmoil that sweeping must have caused! If she had any friends in her house, they might well have protested at the dust; but she would not have stopped. She cared for nothing but the lost coin.
When God is at work, He produces all kinds of turmoil, all kinds of things that people object to; but it makes no difference to our heavenly Father. He goes on just the same, for He has His own ends to serve. And He will serve them, no matter what we feel like. God help us to understand this lesson!
PRAYER THOUGHT: O God, help me not to complain when the truth of Your Word disturbs or destroys my habits or ideas.
And the LORD said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil? (Job 1:8).
The awful problem of suffering appears often in the Scriptures and in our own lives. There remains a mystery, though, about suffering.
After the noisy clamor of the novice in suffering and the weighty words of the veteran in suffering, after the sarcasm and cynicism and bitterness of those in pain, after the slander of Satan against God, the voice of the Spirit sounds clear, “… Hast thou considered my servant Job … ?” (Job 2:3).
Perhaps a person’s ability to explain suffering is the clearest indication of never having suffered. Sin, suffering, and sanctification are not problems of the mind, but facts of life—mysteries that awaken all other mysteries, till the heart and life rest in God and, waiting patiently, know that “He doeth all things well.”
Oh, the unspeakable comfort of knowing “God reigns,” that God is “our Father,” and that “the clouds are but the dust of His feet.”
PRAYER THOUGHT: When I do not understand why I must suffer, help me to trust in Your tender care and love.
God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble (Ps. 46:1).
Religious life is based and matured on implicit trust and then transfigured by love. That life can be simply described only by the spectator, not by the saint.
The wife of a murdered missionary in China told me of the blank, amazed agony of those excruciating days. “We did not pray, we did not feel. We were dazed with sorrow,” she said.
The townspeople showed this woman a golden lock of her little child’s hair. She was told that both husband and child were discovered murdered—beheaded and naked—in that godless Chinese town. Shattered and undone, the widow returned with her other little ones to Britain. She did not doubt God, but, she said, “He didn’t answer prayer. Oh, how many thousands prayed for my husband, that good, valued servant of God, but all to no avail.”
In those days of dull amazement, the people who drove her nearly wild with distress were those who knew the Scriptures well and went to great lengths to explain the “why” and “wherefore” of her troubles and suffering and grief. She said, “Oh, how I used to beat a tattoo on the floor with my foot while they chattered, crying in my heart, How long, O Lord, how long?
“Once, as I lay prostrate on the sofa, an elderly minister entered the room softly. The old minister, who knew my husband in the other glad days, did not speak, but he came gently over to me and, kissing me on the forehead, went out. He never spoke. From that moment, my heart began to heal.”
Trust and love are the twin habits of victorious Christian living.
PRAYER THOUGHT: When I tend to dominate another Christian with my personal viewpoints, forgive me, Lord.
SUGGESTED READING: 1 PETER 4:12–15
Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you (1 Pet. 4:12).
The unexplained things in life are more than the explained. God seems careless whether mankind understands Him or not. He scarcely vindicates His saints to the world.
People told Jesus of the sickness of Lazarus. “He whom thou lovest is sick,” they cried. But Jesus went on His way. He did not send any words of hope, nor did He even go. Lazarus died, was buried, and four days afterwards Jesus appeared. Perhaps you can understand Martha, as she exclaimed, “Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died” (John 11:21).
If you do not understand that, you are unaware of the real nature of suffering. You are unaware of the poignant agony of God’s silences.
Have you read 1 Peter 4:12–19? An informal consideration of those verses will serve to knot into some kind of order what the Bible indicates, states, and implies regarding suffering.
PRAYER THOUGHT: Suffering is a mystery. Yet I commit my suffering to Your providential care.
SUGGESTED READING: 1 PETER 4:15–19
But let none of you suffer as a murderer, or as a thief, or as an evildoer, or as a busybody in other men’s matters (1 Pet. 4:15).
The springs of suffering, from a biblical point of view, are twofold: wrongdoing and wrong temper.
Wrongdoing is identified by Peter as he writes, “Let none of you suffer as a murderer, a thief, or an evildoer.” Wrongdoing finds expression in the literature of all ages. It works a suffering as cruel as that of the grave. Myers accurately describes the suffering of wrongdoing in his poem “Ammergau”:
When this man’s best desire and highest aim
Had ended in the deed of traitorous shame;
When to his blood-shot eyes grew wild and dim,
The stony faces of the Sanhedrin,
When in his rage he could not longer bear
Men’s voices, nor the sunlight, nor the air,
Nor God in Heaven, nor anything but death.
I bowed my head, and through my fingers ran
Tears for the end of that Iscariot man,
Lost in the hopeless struggle of the soul
To make the done, undone; the broken whole.
PRAYER THOUGHT: God forbid that I allow personal wrongdoing to create pain for others.
SUGGESTED READING: PHILIPPIANS 2:1–4
Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 18:4).
Humility is not an ideal; it is the unconscious result of living in right relationship to God, centered in Him. The conscious eye of a humble person is not on his service, but on his Savior.
There is nothing more awful than conscious humility; it is the most satanic type of pride. A person who consciously serves you is worse than the Pharisee eaten up with conceit.
We will be humble if the center of our affection is God’s honor. Our humility will never be understood by someone who is not Christ-centered; but Christ will know the source of our attitude.
Jesus Christ did not lift up humility as an ideal. He lived it. When we serve others only for the sake of Christ’s glory, and not for the purpose of being appreciated by them, we will be humble as He is.
PRAYER THOUGHT: Purge all pride, O God, from my heart and mind. Fill me with the humility of Your holiness.
SUGGESTED READING: PSALM 69:1–19
And that ye study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you (1 Thess. 4:11).
First Peter 4:15 speaks of the suffering that springs from the wrong temper: “Let none of you suffer … as a busybody in other men’s matters.” From talking in the wrong mood there springs a suffering so keen, so stinging, so belittling, so hopeless, that it debases and drives still lower the suffering one. An old song from the ancient pilgrim’s songbook, Psalm 120, has this thorn at the heart of its suffering. Read it carefully, dear friend.
It is humiliating to suffer from being a “busybody” or a “meddler in other men’s matters.”
The suffering that arises from a wrong temper has no refining quality, only a humiliating aspect. Peter, as a meddler in other men’s matters, got a rebuke from our Lord (John 21:21–22). Surely the rebuke contained in our Lord’s answer to Martha, who complained that Mary did not serve Him as she did, is similar (Luke 10:42). The wrecks of many severed friendships began in that mutiny and final abandonment of busybody meddlesomeness.
How will sad memory point where here and there,
Friend after friend, by falsehood or by fate,
From him or from each other parted were,
And love sometimes becomes the nurse of hate!
Rather, he thinks he held not duly dear
Love, the best gift that man on man bestows,
While round his downward path, recluse and drear,
He feels the chill, indifferent shadows close.
“Why did I not,” his spirit murmurs deep,
“At any cost of the momentary pride,
Preserve the love for which in vain I weep;
Why had I wish or hope or sense beside?”
O fruitless lesson, mercilessly taught,
Long, long echo of some angry tone!
O cruel issue of some selfish thought!
Alone to linger—and to die alone!
PRAYER THOUGHT: Lord, enable me to resist the temptation to pry into other people’s affairs.
SUGGESTED READING: LUKE 6:20–36
Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man’s sake (Luke 6:22).
Our designation as Christians is of divine appointment, no matter whether it comes from the versatile wit of Antioch or the reverent respect of the Gentile. To live worthy of the name of Christian is to suffer persecution. And mark you this, mark it well—to suffer as a Christian is a shameful thing in the eyes of this world.
Your friends who, in your hour of trial and slander, gather around you to support and stand with you, are first amazed, then dazed, then disgusted, that you really mean not to stand up for yourself but to submit meekly. They do not understand that it is a great honor to suffer on Christ’s behalf.
But in that hour, that hour when your friends pity you, Jesus Himself will come and whisper to your spirit, “Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man’s sake. Rejoice in that day, … leap for joy: for, behold, your reward is great in heaven” (Luke 6:22–23).
To suffer for your Christian meekness is an ennobling, exalting, refining, and God-glorifying form of suffering.
PRAYER THOUGHT: Jesus, You suffered for me. Enable me to suffer for You without complaining.
SUGGESTED READING: PHILIPPIANS 4:10–19
Yet if any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed; but let him glorify God on this behalf (1 Pet. 4:16).
To suffer as a Christian is not the same as being marked as peculiar because of your views or because you will not bend to conventionality. These causes of suffering are not uniquely Christian; they are things from which all people suffer, irrespective of creed or religion, or no religion. But to suffer as a Christian stems from an essential difference, which rouses the contempt of the world.
You will suffer as a Christian because you have no answer when the world’s satire is turned on you, as it was on Jesus while He hung on the Cross. There Jesus’ enemies turned His words into a jesting and a jeering, and they will do the same to you. He gave no answer, nor can you.
It was in the throes of that blinding problem that Peter staggered. He meant to go with His Lord to death, and he did, but never had he imagined that he would have to go without Him. To see Jesus, His Lord, taken by the power of the world as meek as a lamb to the slaughter, making no answer, performing no work to explain it—this froze Peter to the soul!
That is what it means to suffer as a Christian. To hear people taunt and tear His promises to you in pieces, and know you cannot answer, or to smart under the merciless, pitying sarcasms of belonging to the contemptible sect of “Christians”—that is Christian suffering.
PRAYER THOUGHT: Glorify Yourself, O God, through my sufferings.
SUGGESTED READING: HEBREWS 12:1–14
Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby (Heb. 12:11).
When my heart is stung in the first moment of suffering, and when His “rod and staff have comforted me,” I count it all joy to suffer for the glory of God.
How very hard it is to be
A Christian! Hard for you and me,
And the sole thing that I remark
Upon this difficulty, this —
We do not see it where it is,
At the beginning of the race:
As we proceed, it shifts its place,
And where we looked for crowns to fall,
We find the tugs to come—that’s all. And I find it hard
To be a Christian, as I said!
Still every now and then my head
Raised glad, sinks mournful—all grows drear
Spite of the sunshine
But Easter day breaks! But
Christ rises! Mercy every way
Is infinite—and who can say?
“Yet if any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed; but let him glorify God on this behalf.” Be willing to suffer as a Christian!
PRAYER THOUGHT: Help me to have patience in suffering, O Lord, knowing that “all things work together” according to Your will and wishes.
SUGGESTED READING: JOB 1:13–22
Wherefore let them that suffer according to the will of God commit the keeping of their souls to him in well doing, as unto a faithful Creator (1 Pet. 4:19).
The splendid solitude of God’s purpose transfigures agony into redemption, and the baffling hurricanes speed the soul like a “flaming arrow” into God’s great day. G. K. Chesterton, writing on the experience of Job, says, “But God comforts Job with indecipherable mystery, and for the first time Job is comforted. Eliphaz gives one answer, Job gives another answer, and the question still remains an open wound. God simply refuses to answer and somewhere the question is settled. Job flings at God one riddle, God flings back at Job a hundred riddles, and Job is at peace. He is comforted with conundrums.”
When the petty things, the trite things, the sentimental things, the poetic and the explainable things have been said about suffering, the still small voice of the Spirit puts the perpetual conundrum, “Hast thou considered my servant Job?” When our commonplace shoes are off our feet, and we stand before His cross, we hear the muddling conundrum still deeper and more perplexing, “This is my beloved Son, hear him.” “And yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief.”
We bow our heads, our spirits murmuring, “Who hath believed our report? and to whom hath the arm of the Lord been revealed?” (John 12:38).
PRAYER THOUGHT: Lord, I commit my present sufferings and future problems into Your hands.
Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, and life unto the bitter in soul (Job 3:20).
Job did not know the preface to his own story, and neither does any man. He was never told that God and the Devil had made a battleground of his soul. His suffering was not for his sake, or his perfecting, or his purifying—these were all incidental. No! It was simply the will of God.
In the midst of suffering, the word sounds with deeper, truer significance: “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me” (Matt. 16:24). The true disciple learns the meaning of “follow me” in the hour when the dilemma perplexes him, the billows overwhelm him, and the noise of God’s water spouts deafen him.
Doing God’s will according to my will—surely that is the very essence of Satan’s temptation of our Lord and of every sanctified soul. Some are tempted to take back their right to themselves and do God’s will according to their own sanctified understanding. “Never!” said Jesus. “I came not to do mine own will, but the will of Him that sent me.”
PRAYER THOUGHT: Lord, teach me to follow You, even when I do not understand the circumstances.
SUGGESTED READING: MATTHEW 13:1–6
And he spake many things unto them in parables … (Matt. 13:3).
A mystery, in the biblical sense, is simply a truth that has not yet been revealed. The only way to understand it rightly is through the interpretation of the Spirit of God.
Some people think that Jesus uttered some hard words in the eleventh chapter of Matthew. They think He said, “I will talk to you in parables, because I do not want you to understand.” But by examining the Scriptures, we find an altogether different meaning. The real interpretation is this: “I am going to talk to you in parables, because many of you have dull ears and hard hearts and blind eyes and cannot understand My voice. And if you will only open your ears and hear, you will understand through these parables.”
Many have dull ears and are unable to hear the voice of God. When God spoke to Jesus, the people said it thundered. But Jesus declared, “Father spoke to me.” He knew His Father’s voice. The ears of the people were stopped, but His ears were opened and could hear the message.
Think of a telegraph operator. He listens to the clicking of his instrument and takes down the message, while I might listen and listen, and yet I can make nothing of it. I do not know the voice of the telegraph instrument.
I wonder how many of us are so dull of hearing that we cannot understand when Jesus talks to us through the parables. Many people, to whom the Word of God comes in this present generation, will not listen.
PRAYER THOUGHT: Reveal to me, O Lord, the truth of Your Word. Guide me.
SUGGESTED READING: MATTHEW 13:7–9
Who hath ears to hear, let him hear (Matt. 13:9).
In the parable of the sower, Jesus said there were spiritually shallow people in every place where His Word is known; and every worker of God will find this is a fact. I am not referring to natural stupidity. God will not hold people accountable for that. I am referring to spiritual stupidity, the very kind that David meant when he said, “I was a brute before God.”
Soil in a pathway across a field is no doubt as good as any other soil, but it has been crushed down and become hard and compact. The only way to make it become fruitful is to break it up with a plow. If we do not watch and pray, we will let the cares of this life and the lust of other things harden our hearts until we will be in no condition, after a time, to hear what God says. This is exactly the condition that Jesus predicted for this present generation.
PRAYER THOUGHT: Father, as I watch and pray, keep my conscience tender, my heart pure, and my whole life spiritually productive.
SUGGESTED READING: MATTHEW 13:10–12
For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath (Matt. 13:12).
Those who hear the Word of God and do not understand it are like the wayside ground, so hard that the seed does not penetrate it. Then the Devil comes along and snatches the Word away.
By getting into a state where you do not listen to what Jesus says, you give free course to the entrance of Satan into your life. The only thing that God can do with spiritually shallow people is to permit tribulation, adversity, conviction, and sickness. When such problems come, your ears are opened and you receive a new word from God. I am not surprised that Jesus says, “In the world ye shall have tribulation.” Tribulation is God’s plow to keep the ground of the heart broken up and ready for His truth.
PRAYER THOUGHT: Oh, deliver me from the snares of Satan’s subtle attacks. I am listening, Lord, to Your voice.
SUGGESTED READING: MATTHEW 13:13–17
For this people’s heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them (Matt. 13:15).
Some people claim to get converted and entirely sanctified at every camp meeting or revival meeting. They receive the Word of God with great joy, but they soon fall back into their old way of living. They are spiritually shallow because they have never had their selfish wills broken.
Stony ground is a layer of rock, covered with only a thin soil of earth. There are many people like this.
What’s the trouble? They have never had the soil of their wills broken; they have not gone to the bottom of their spirits. Jesus says many people will bless God for the truth and receive it with gladness; but when persecution arises, they are offended.
PRAYER THOUGHT: Break my stubborn will, Lord Jesus, and have Your holy way in all I do and say.
SUGGESTED READING: MATTHEW 13:18–23
But he that received seed into the good ground is he that heareth the word, and understandeth it; which also beareth fruit, and bringeth forth, some an hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty (Matt. 13:23).
Many folks have only their emotions stirred when they hear the Word of God. You may have your emotions stirred every day of every year, and yet be the same old crooked, twisted, bent man or woman. You may have the affections of your heart stirred every day, and yet be good for nothing.
If you imagine that the world is going to be saved in this generation, you are mistaken. If we were to take literally the parable of the sower, we would realize that only one-fourth of those to whom the Word is preached will prove to be good ground. And this one-fourth He is using in the uttermost parts of the earth. Some are being sown in the foreign fields, some in the home fields.
PRAYER THOUGHT: I praise You, Lord, for the inner transformation of my heart and life!
And some fell on stony ground, where it had not much earth; and immediately it sprang up, because it had no depth of earth (Mark 4:5).
Some people receive the Word of God and run well for a time, but they permit something to hinder them—usually the cares of this world. They will tell you, “If you only knew what I have to contend with” or, “If you only knew my peculiar situation, my trials, my difficulties.”
This kind of self-sympathy, arising from the cares of this life, is carnal. It will kill the Spirit of God within you.
Jesus said, “If you look at your problems instead of Me, the Word will be choked in your heart.” Satan will try his best to have you look at the difficulties of your life. He knows that if he can get your eyes off of Jesus and onto these, he will be able to choke your spiritual life.
Have you ever noticed how many times Scripture warns us not to be anxious, not to worry? He tells us to cast our cares upon Him, to trust Him, to wait on Him, and to fret not. May God help us to keep the thorns from growing up in our hearts and choking the Word of God in us!
PRAYER THOUGHT: Forgive me when I cease to trust You, Lord, and begin to worry selfishly.
SUGGESTED READING: MARK 4:6–13
And other fell on good ground, and did yield fruit that sprang up and increased … (Mark 4:8).
What is the good ground in the parable of the sower? This good ground is the heart that is ready to receive the Word of God. Paul told King Agrippa that Jesus sent him to the Gentiles to “open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God” (Acts 26:18). But this alone was not salvation; their salvation came when they accepted Paul’s message and received the forgiveness of sins.
I wonder how many who shall read these lines have really proven “good ground” to God! The question of whether your spiritual yield will be one hundredfold, sixtyfold, or thirtyfold has nothing to do with it. Christ puts His Word into us, and we bring forth His fruit; and then He takes us and plants us and makes us what He pleases in this world.
The measure of my growth in grace is my growth in God’s sight, not in man’s sight. I wonder, do we listen to God’s Word and allow it to bear fruit?
PRAYER THOUGHT: Take my life, Lord, and make it what You want it to be.
SUGGESTED READING: MARK 4:14–20
And the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things entering in, choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful (Mark 4:19).
Many people are trying to live the life of a Christian, who have not been born again by the Spirit of God. My friend, if you are in this class, your difficulties will drive you insane. You cannot possibly live the Christian life unless you have received the strength of the Lord in the new birth. The thorns of life will choke you.
In the parable of the sower, thorns represent the cares of this life or anything that will hinder you spiritually. Remember, if you determine to go with God, you will have difficulties.
Paul did not say, “A great and effectual door is opened to us, and there is nothing to hinder”; but he said, “… There are many adversaries” (1 Cor. 16:9). Jesus says the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches are hindering many. In this sense, “riches” refers not to money alone, but to anything you treasure above the presence of the Son of God.
Oh, may the Lord help us to understand His truth!
PRAYER THOUGHT: Discipline my walk with You, Jesus, so that I can effectively overcome setbacks in life.
SUGGESTED READING: MATTHEW 14:22–33
But straightway Jesus spake into them, saying, Be of good cheer; it is I; be not afraid (Matt. 14:27).
Jesus knows everything about us. He knows about our surroundings and our conditions. He knows better than we how to manage our daily affairs, such as how to manage a fish boat. Peter, with his experience along this line, had to acknowledge that Jesus knew more than he. Jesus sees the typewriting, the shorthand, the cleaning, the scrubbing, the preaching, and the praying that we do.
Moreover, Jesus experiences all of these things with you. You cannot get hold of God unless you realize the glorious fact that Christ lives in you and is working through you by the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit.
PRAYER THOUGHT: Thank You, Lord, for Your comforting presence.
SUGGESTED READING: LUKE 8:4–15
But that on the good ground are they, which in an honest and good heart, having heard the word, keep it, and bring forth fruit with patience (Luke 8:15).
Have we let Jesus Christ have His way with us in all things?
Many will pay attention to what God says until it gets to one certain thing, and then they refuse to listen. Herod, you will remember, listened to John’s preaching until that preacher declared, “It is not lawful for thee to have her” (Matt. 14:4). Instantly, Herod would hear no more.
I pray that we may indeed listen and be “good ground” to the Son of God. Then can He truly work out His plans, His will, and His way through us. Then can He truly make of us broken bread and poured out wine to needy people.
Oh, have you received the Word of God in salvation? in entire sanctification? in the daily leadings of your life? Have you the Word dwelling richly in your heart? If not, will you not meet God’s conditions and become “good ground” to the Son of God?
PRAYER THOUGHT: O God, lead me correctly in the way of righteousness.
It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows: for so he giveth his beloved sleep (Ps. 127:2).
How many of us have considered the spiritual implications of sleep? When one considers the enormous proportion of human life that is spent in sleep, the question arises, “Why?” The usual answer is, “For physical recuperation.” But surely much less time than that would serve the physical purpose.
We read in Genesis 2:21 that God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and again in Genesis 15:12 that a deep sleep fell on Abraham. Marvelous new revelations were the outcome. In fact, all the dreams in the Bible sprang from a deeper center than common dreams; dreams are really the sign that we are awakening. But in the slumber of the body, God seems to take the souls of His servants into deeper communion.
Whether the dispensation of dreams and their ministry in this respect is past or not, I do not know. But I would like to suggest that God does great things for us and in us during our moments of sleep.
PRAYER THOUGHT: While I rest, Lord, keep Your protective hand upon me.
SUGGESTED READING: ROMANS 8:26–30
Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered (Rom. 8:26).
When a problem or perplexity harasses the mind and there seems no solution, how often, after a night’s rest, the solution is easy and the problem has no further terror. When some communication causes the heart to beat unnaturally with excitement or dread, a night’s sleep has such a wonderful effect that the pulse is quiet and the mind is clear. The answer to the communication becomes unmistakable.
We are not any different when we are born again of the Spirit of God. Our human nature remains the same, although its mainspring is altered. And in the deep subconscious realm of our soul’s life, I believe, the Spirit of God not only carries on profound prayers (Rom. 8:26), but profoundly develops our spiritual capacities. When the crises of life are reached, we are astonished at the sudden power within us to meet the new set of circumstances. And in looking back, the soul is amazed in gratitude to God as to how His grace performs.
Praise the Lord!
PRAYER THOUGHT: Thank You, Lord, for enabling me to rest in You—physically and spiritually.
SUGGESTED READING: EPHESIANS 6:10–20
Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth: my flesh also shall rest in hope (Ps. 16:9).
In modern psychology there is a great deal of talk about the subconscious mind or the subliminary consciousness. It is in this realm of our souls, beyond our conscious life, that God surely works during our hours of sleep as well as during our hours of waking.
A very important period in a saint’s life is the hour before sleep, to which few of us pay sufficient attention. The old heathen philosopher Plato said that he used to quiet his mind by devout and blessed thoughts before he slept. If we saints hurry to bed from work or from conversation, without having the “swelling emptiness” crushed from our lives by a time of communion with God, we deserve the horror of darkness and the unrefreshing slumber that awaits our subsequent hours. The instinct that made our parents teach us to pray each night before going to bed is a more profound one, I am sure, than can be stated. These sorts of habits can give a deeper capacity to our souls.
PRAYER THOUGHT: O God, I desire to slow down and prepare myself to be in Your presence as I sleep each night.
I will both lay me down in peace, and sleep: for thou, LORD, only makest me dwell in safety (Ps. 4:8).
When we have a burden of prayer for someone, we pray earnestly and strongly, and then comes a sense of answered prayer. We communicate with our friend and tell him that, at the time of prayer, we had the sense of relief. Was he conscious of any deliverance? He may answer no.
There is no need for misgiving, for dangers may have beset his soul in the regions in which he could not be conscious, in the regions which God alone guards. The Spirit of God led us to intercede for him, and God can minister to him, even during hours of sleep. If this points out the profound mystery of our individual souls, it points out on the other hand the marvelous security of our great God. These words are true:
Safe in the arms of Jesus
Safe on His gentle breast,
There by His love o’ershadowed,
Sweetly my soul shall rest.
PRAYER THOUGHT: I am safe in God’s providential care. To Him be praise and thanksgiving!
SUGGESTED READING: PSALM 34:1–8
The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear him, and delivereth them (Ps. 34:7).
In the subconscious realm of our lives, embraced by our sleep, is the ministry of angels. As so often is the case, our children’s hymns are nearer the truth than the speculations of philosophers. When we were taught that angels guarded our beds and watched over us and ministered to us, we were not being told a fairy story; we were being told a fact that has been revealed in the Bible: “Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?” (Heb. 1:14).
Angels nowadays rarely materialize; therefore, we do not see them with our bodily eyes or feel them with our bodily consciousness. But the ineffable refreshing and intuitive sense of security that merges around our lives at times surely rises from these garrison soldiers of God.
Can you imagine the unspeakable danger of a soul unguarded by God, to whom the unconscious hours of sleep are open to the subtle onslaught of Satan? Being guarded within and without by the Spirit of God, the terrors by night and the destruction that wasteth at noonday have no part in the life of the saint. The ungodly are not shielded from them by their unconsciousness, except by the prayers of their godly friends. This ought to awaken terror in the hearts of those who are living a self-satisfied life, unyielded to God.
PRAYER THOUGHT: Lord, I appreciate the ministry of Your angels and the protective care they are to Christians.
SUGGESTED READING: PROVERBS 3:21–26
When thou liest down, thou shalt not be afraid: yea, thou shalt lie down, and thy sleep shall be sweet (Prov. 3:24).
No spiritualist medium, no fortune teller, no mesmerist, or practitioner of the occult can have any effect over the soul of a Christian; because the marvelous mighty power of the Spirit of God within, and the garrison of God’s angels without, strike terror into the Devil. We are totally unconscious of anything which attempts to merge into the fringe of our consciousness by such things as spiritualism and theosophies.
Reader, as you retire to rest tonight, give your soul and God a time together; meditate on these things and commit with a conscious peace your life to God during the hours of sleep. Deep and profound alterations will occur in your spirit, soul, and body by the creative hand of our God. May God write over your heart and life tonight, “So He giveth to His beloved during sleep.”
Sleep is God’s celestial nurse that croons the consciousness away and deals with the unconscious life of the soul in places where only God and His angels have charge.
PRAYER THOUGHT: Minister to my inner spiritual needs tonight, Lord, and may Your peace invade my heart and soul.
SUGGESTED READING: PROVERBS 4:23–27
Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life (Prov. 4:23).
We must learn to harness our impulses. Thank God, we have the power to do this. We have the ability to fix the form of our choices either for good or bad.
Impulsiveness brings no glory to God. If you suddenly feel you ought to give money to a poor man, and do it, what credit does that give to God? Much of that sort of giving is done to relieve our feelings, not to indicate real generosity. So God does not value our gifts of impulsiveness.
More meaningful are the gifts we offer because we have determined in our heart what to do. Giving that is governed by a fixed determination is blessed and approved by God. He holds us responsible for using or not using the power to choose voluntarily what we shall do.
PRAYER THOUGHT: Father, captivate my thoughts and motives. Make them acceptable in Your sight, I pray.