Milo

December 14th

The great life

Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you.… Let not your heart be troubled. John 14:27.

Whenever a thing becomes difficult in personal experience, we are in danger of blaming God, but it is we who are in the wrong, not God, there is some perversity somewhere that we will not let go. Immediately we do, everything becomes as clear as daylight. As long as we try to serve two ends, ourselves and God, there is perplexity. The attitude must be one of complete reliance on God. When once we get there, there is nothing easier than living the saintly life; difficulty comes in when we want to usurp the authority of the Holy Spirit for our own ends.
Whenever you obey God, His seal is always that of peace, the witness of an unfathomable peace, which is not natural, but the peace of Jesus. Whenever peace does not come, tarry till it does or find out the reason why it does not. If you are acting on an impulse, or from a sense of the heroic, the peace of Jesus will not witness; there is no simplicity or confidence in God, because the spirit of simplicity is born of the Holy Ghost, not of your decisions. Every decision brings a reaction of simplicity.
My questions come whenever I cease to obey. When I have obeyed God, the problems never come between me and God, they come as probes to keep the mind awake and amazed at the revelation of God. Any problem that comes between God and myself springs out of disobedience; any problem, and there are many, that is alongside me while I obey God, increases my ecstatic delight, because I know that my Father knows, and I am going to watch and see how He unravels this thing.

December 14

“His disciples said unto him, Lord, teach us to pray … and he said unto them, When ye pray, say, … Thy kingdom come.” (Luke 11:1, 2.)

WHEN they said, “Teach us to pray,” the Master lifted His eyes and swept the far horizon of God. He gathered up the ultimate dream of the Eternal, and, rounding the sum of everything God intends to do in the life of man, He packed it all into these three terse pregnant phrases and said, “When you pray, pray after this manner.”
What a contrast between this and much praying we have heard. When we follow the devices of our own hearts, how runs it? “O Lord bless me, then My family, My church, My city, My country,” and away on the far fringe as we close up, there is a prayer for the extension of His Kingdom throughout the wide parish of the world.
The Master begins where we leave off. The world first, my personal needs second, is the order of this prayer. Only after my prayer has crossed every continent and every far-flung island of the sea, after it has taken in the last man in the last backward race, after it has covered the entire wish and purpose of God for the world, only then am I taught to ask for a piece of bread for myself.
When Jesus gave His all, Himself for us and to us in the holy extravagance of the Cross, is it too much if He asks us to do the same thing? No man or woman amounts to anything in the kingdom, no soul ever touches even the edge of the zone of power, until this lesson is learned that Christ’s business is the supreme concern of life and that all personal considerations, however dear or important, are tributary thereto.—Dr. Francis.
When Robert Moffat, the veteran African missionary and explorer, was asked once to write in a young lady’s album, he penned these lines:

  “My album is a savage breast,
  Where tempests brood and shadows rest,
  Without one ray of light;
  To write the name of Jesus there,
  And see that savage bow in prayer,
  And point to worlds more bright and fair,
  This is my soul’s delight.”

“And His Kingdom shall have no frontier.” (Luke 1:33, the old Moravian version.)

The missionary enterprise is not the Church’s afterthought; it is Christ’s forethought.—Henry van Dyke.

14 DECEMBER (PREACHED 13 DECEMBER 1767)

A refuge from the floods of sin

‘And a man shall be as an hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.’ Isaiah 32:2
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Nahum 1:1–15

The workings and overflowings of indwelling sin may be compared to a flood.
(i) A flood comes upon places that had been dry—where a stranger would not expect it. Frequently the power of divine things is so strong at first that corruption seems dried up—but sin, though kept down, is not slain. When these views abate, it will show itself again.
(ii) A flood is a great quantity. Sin is a great flood. The soul can say as Psalm 40:12 [For innumerable evils have compassed me about: mine iniquities have taken hold upon me, so that I am not able to look up; they are more than the hairs of mine head: therefore my heart faileth me].
(iii) A flood is violent. Many know the resemblance here—how long and sore the conflict, and how carried quite off their feet.
FOR MEDITATION:
Though small the drops of falling rain,
Thus sinners think their evil deeds,
If one be singly viewed;
Like drops of rain, are small;
Collected, they o’erspread the plain,
But it the power of thought exceeds,
And form a mighty flood.
To count the sum of all.

The house it meets with in its course,
One sin can raise, though small it seems,
Should not be built on clay;
A flood to drown the soul;
Lest, with a resistless force,
What then, when countless million streams
It sweep the whole away.
Shall join, to swell the whole!

Though for awhile it seemed secure,
Yet, while they think the weather fair,
It will not bear the shock;
If warned, they smile or frown;
Unless it has foundations sure,
But they will tremble and despair,
And stands upon a rock.
When the fierce flood comes down!

  Oh! then on JESUS ground your hope, That stone in Zion laid;
  Lest your poor building quickly drop, With ruin, on your head.

SERMON SERIES: ISAIAH 32:2, NO. 2 [2/3]

December 13th

What to pray for

Men ought always to pray, and not to faint. Luke 18:1.

You cannot intercede if you do not believe in the reality of the Redemption; you will turn intercession into futile sympathy with human beings which will only increase their submissive content to being out of touch with God. In intercession you bring the person, or the circumstance that impinges on you, before God until you are moved by His attitude towards that person or circumstance. Intercession means filling up “that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ,” and that is why there are so few intercessors. Intercession is put on the line of—‘Put yourself in his place.’ Never! Try to put yourself in God’s place.
As a worker, be careful to keep pace with the communications of reality from God or you will be crushed. If you know too much, more than God has engineered for you to know, you cannot pray, the condition of the people is so crushing that you cannot get through to reality.
Our work lies in coming into definite contact with God about everything, and we shirk it by becoming active workers. We do the things that can be tabulated, but we will not intercede. Intercession is the one thing that has no snares, because it keeps our relationship with God completely open.
The thing to watch in intercession is that no soul is patched up, a soul must get through into contact with the life of God. Think of the number of souls God has brought about our path and we have dropped them! When we pray on the ground of Redemption, God creates something He can create in no other way than through intercessory prayer.

December 13

“I will give thee the treasures of darkness.” (Isa. 45:3.)

IN the famous lace shops of Brussels, there are certain rooms devoted to the spinning of the finest and most delicate patterns. These rooms are altogether darkened, save for a light from one very small window, which falls directly upon the pattern. There is only one spinner in the room, and he sits where the narrow stream of light falls upon the threads of his weaving. “Thus,” we are told by the guide, “do we secure our choicest products. Lace is always more delicately and beautifully woven when the worker himself is in the dark and only his pattern is in the light.”
May it not be the same with us in our weaving? Sometimes it is very dark. We cannot understand what we are doing. We do not see the web we are weaving. We are not able to discover any beauty, any possible good in our experience. Yet if we are faithful and fail not and faint not, we shall some day know that the most exquisite work of all our life was done in those days when it was so dark.
If you are in the deep shadows because of some strange, mysterious providence, do not be afraid. Simply go on in faith and love, never doubting. God is watching, and He will bring good and beauty out of all your pain and tears.—J. R. Miller.

The shuttles of His purpose move
  To carry out His own design;
Seek not too soon to disapprove
  His work, nor yet assign
Dark motives, when, with silent tread,
  You view some sombre fold;
For lo, within each darker thread
  There twines a thread of gold.

  Spin cheerfully,
  Not tearfully,
He knows the way you plod;
  Spin carefully,
  Spin prayerfully,
But leave the thread with God.

—Canadian Home Journal.