WE SPEND ANOTHER day on, “For all the promises of God find their Yes in him” (2 Cor. 1:20). All the promises God makes in nature, in Scripture, in history, and in the longings of personal experience find their yes in Him. The New Testament speaks of “the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:14). Jesus is the upward call of God—calling us from the lower to the higher, the incomplete to the complete, the imperfect to the perfect. Everything in Jesus is upward. Everything outside Jesus is downward. An African, after he was converted, renamed himself “After.” Everything to him was “After”—after death, after sin, after sorrow, after frustration, after alienation. Now everything had promise in it—had a future. In sin there is no future—it is the way to decay and death.
Jesus is the Yes to all the promises of God made everywhere. There are thirty-three thousand promises in the Scriptures, and Jesus is the Yes to every one of them. He writes “Yes” in His own blood on every promise. If you come in His name, you can have them cashed in experience.
I visited a home for the poor—the dream of a young teacher. When he told his dream of such a home to the elders they were full of Nos. There was no money, no one to take charge of it. The young teacher said he would resign his teacher’s job and take care of it personally and he would raise the money. Out of that yes has come a wonderful home for the poor, and a thriving hospital for the general public. When that young man died of overwork, the community gave him a funeral no bishop ever received. His sister, a saint, died of cholera, infected from a poor patient. In both, the divine Yes sounded.
O Lord God, all our Nos become Yeses in Thee. We can do anything and be anything we ought to do and be when we are in Thee. The Yes of creation works in us. We feel the upward call, I thank Thee. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: If I am a yes and no person, hence a blur, from today I become a yes to His yes—affirmative in Him.
