Milo

November 13th

Faith and experience

The Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me. Gal. 2:20.

We have to battle through our moods into absolute devotion to the Lord Jesus, to get out of the hole-and-corner business of our experience into abandoned devotion to Him. Think Who the New Testament says that Jesus Christ is, and then think of the despicable meanness of the miserable faith we have—‘I haven’t had this and that experience!’ Think what faith in Jesus Christ claims—that He can present us faultless before the throne of God, unutterably pure, absolutely rectified and profoundly justified. Stand in implicit, adoring faith in Him, He is made unto us “wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.” How can we talk of making a sacrifice for the Son of God! Our salvation is from hell and perdition, and then we talk about making sacrifices!
We have to get out into faith in Jesus Christ continually; not a prayer meeting Jesus Christ, nor a book Jesus Christ, but the New Testament Jesus Christ, Who is God Incarnate, and Who ought to strike us to His feet as dead. Our faith must be in the One from Whom our experience springs. Jesus Christ wants our absolute abandon of devotion to Himself. We never can experience Jesus Christ, nor ever hold Him within the compass of our own hearts, but our faith must be built in strong emphatic confidence in Him.
It is along this line that we see the rugged impatience of the Holy Ghost against unbelief. All our fears are wicked, and we fear because we will not nourish ourselves in our faith. How can anyone who is identified with Jesus Christ suffer from doubt or fear! It ought to be an absolute psalm of perfectly irrepressible, triumphant belief.

November 13

“I know him, that he will command his children.” (Gen. 18:19.)

GOD wants people that He can depend upon. He could say of Abraham, “I know him, that he will command his children … that the Lord may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken.” God can be depended upon; He wants us to be just as decided, as reliable, as stable. This is just what faith means.
God is looking for men on whom He can put the weight of all His love and power and faithful promises. God’s engines are strong enough to draw any weight we attach to them. Unfortunately the cable which we fasten to the engine is often too weak to hold the weight of our prayer; therefore God is drilling us, disciplining us to stability and certainty in the life of faith. Let us learn our lessons and stand fast.
—A. B. Simpson.

God knows that you can stand that trial; He would not give it to you if you could not. It is His trust in you that explains the trials of life, however bitter they may be. God knows our strength, and He measures it to the last inch; and a trial was never given to any man that was greater than that man’s strength, through God, to bear it.

13 NOVEMBER

The fear of the Lord

‘Then they that feared the LORD spake often one to another: and the LORD hearkened, and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before him for them that feared the LORD, and that thought upon his name.’ Malachi 3:16
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Malachi 3:6–18

The prophet Malachi lived as we do now at a time when the words of many were stout against the Lord. They counted his service a burden and spoke well of them whom he abhorred. The priests and the people were in general going backward with one consent, and many severe threatenings are denounced against them both. Yet the Lord has a remnant, a few secret ones, who would not follow a multitude to do evil. To these this comfortable passage relates, and it is equally applicable in all times. It is always the lot of the Lord’s people to be comparatively a small number, and to live in the midst of those who are contrary to him and to them. It is both their duty and privilege to imitate these conscientious servants of God, to speak often one to another, and they have the same encouragement to hope the Lord will notice, accept and bless their communications.
Those who feared. This is a sufficient mark of distinction. Those who belong to the Lord fear him; those who truly fear him, assuredly belong to him, for if he had not put this fear in their hearts they would have continued regardless of him, as they were once. The general character of the unconverted is that there is no fear in God before their eyes. Their practice proves it. Observe them in their business, in their amusements, in their form of religion, in their common conversation (Luke 6:45). Those who are awakened and drawn by divine grace are different in all these respects. They have an habitual principle of the fear of God—not a slavish fear, though it begins perhaps with terror, but it grows brighter and clearer as their faith increases. It is connected with a hope in his mercy (Psalm 33:18). They are affected with a sense of his greatness, his goodness and their unworthiness.

FOR MEDITATION: ‘The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding’ (Proverbs 9:10).

SERMON: MALACHI 3:16–17 [1/5]

November 12th

The transfigured life

If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. 2 Cor. 5:17.

What idea have you of the salvation of your soul? The experience of salvation means that in your actual life things are really altered, you no longer look at things as you used to; your desires are new, old things have lost their power. One of the touchstones of experience is—Has God altered the thing that matters? If you still hanker after the old things, it is absurd to talk about being born from above, you are juggling with yourself. If you are born again, the Spirit of God makes the alteration manifest in your actual life and reasoning, and when the crisis comes you are the most amazed person on earth at the wonderful difference there is in you. There is no possibility of imagining that you did it. It is this complete and amazing alteration that is the evidence that you are a saved soul.
What difference has my salvation and sanctification made? For instance, can I stand in the light of 1 Corinthians 13, or do I have to shuffle? The salvation that is worked out in me by the Holy Ghost emancipates me entirely, and as long as I walk in the light as God is in the light, He sees nothing to censure, because His life is working out in every particular, not to my consciousness, but deeper than my consciousness.

November 12

“These were the potters, and those that dwelt among plants and hedges: there they dwelt with the king for his work.” (1 Chron. 4:23.)

ANYWHERE and everywhere we may dwell “with the king for his work.” We may be in a very unlikely and unfavorable place for this; it may be in a literal country life, with little enough to be seen of the “goings” of the King around us; it may be among the hedges of all sorts, hindrances in all directions; it may be furthermore, with our hands full of all manner of pottery for our daily task.
No matter! The King who placed us “there” will come and dwell there with us; the hedges are right, or He would soon do away with them. And it does not follow that what seems to hinder our way may not be for its very protection; and as for the pottery, why, that is just exactly what He has seen fit to put into our hands, and therefore it is, for the present, “His work”.—Frances Ridley Havergal.

“Go back to thy garden-plot, sweetheart!
  Go back till the evening falls,
And bind thy lilies and train thy vines,
  Till for thee the Master calls.

“Go make thy garden fair as thou canst,
  Thou workest never alone;
Perhaps he whose plot is next to thine
  Will see it and mend his own.”

The colored sunsets and starry heavens, the beautiful mountains and the shining seas, the fragrant woods and painted flowers, are not half so beautiful as a soul that is serving Jesus out of love, in the wear and tear of common, unpoetic life.
—Faber.
The most saintly spirits are often existing in those who have never distinguished themselves as authors, or left any memorial of themselves to be the theme of the world’s talk; but who have led an interior angelic life, having borne their sweet blossoms unseen like the young lily in a sequestered vale on the bank of a limpid stream.—Kenelm Digby.