Milo

November 6

“As many as I love I rebuke and chasten.” (Rev. 3:19.)

GOD takes the most eminent and choicest of His servants for the choicest and most eminent afflictions. They who have received most grace from God are able to bear most afflictions from God. Affliction does not hit the saint by chance, but by direction. God does not draw His bow at a venture. Every one of His arrows goes upon a special errand and touches no breast but his against whom it is sent. It is not only the grace, but the glory of a believer when we can stand and take affliction quietly.—Joseph Caryl.

If all my days were sunny, could I say,
“In His fair land He wipes all tears away”?

If I were never weary, could I keep
Close to my heart, “He gives His loved ones sleep”?

Were no graves mine, might I not come to deem
The Life Eternal but a baseless dream?

My winter, and my tears, and weariness,
Even my graves, may be His way to bless.

I call them ills; yet that can surely be
Nothing but love that shows my Lord to me!
—Selected.
“The most deeply taught Christians are generally those who have been brought into the searching fires of deep soul-anguish. If you have been praying to know more of Christ, do not be surprised if He takes you aside into a desert place, or leads you into a furnace of pain.”
Do not punish me, Lord, by taking my cross from me, but comfort me by submitting me to Thy will, and by making me to love the cross. Give me that by which Thou shalt be best served … and let me hold it for the greatest of all Thy mercies, that Thou shouldst glorify Thy name in me, according to Thy will.—A Captive’s Prayer.

6 NOVEMBER

Compassionate prayer

‘And he said, Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak yet but this once: Peradventure ten shall be found there. And he said, I will not destroy it for ten’s sake.’ Genesis 18:32
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Matthew 5:43–48

When the Lord had intimated to Abraham his purpose concerning Sodom, it prompted Abraham to pray for the place. The occasion, the manner and the force of this prayer are very instructive. The occasion, or rather the motive, was compassion to sinners. No doubt Abraham thought of Lot, but he does not directly mention him. He knew Lot’s character and hoped there were more like him. But he is not content to plead for the righteous only, but rather uses them as a plea for the preservation of the whole place. Though the men of Sodom were great sinners, Abraham prayed for them; though he was safe himself, he pitied them. This is a right spirit. May the Lord cause it to abound more in his people. We are by nature even as others and the grace that has saved us is able to save the vilest. We should not look on them with indifference, or give them up absolutely as reprobates. Secret things belong to the Lord, but it is our duty to pray and hope. We cannot be too much displeased with their sins; we cannot be too compassionate to their persons.
FOR MEDITATION: [for the Fast Day, Friday 13 December 1776]
His grace despised, his power defied,
The LORD, displeased, has raised his rod;
And legions of the blackest crimes,
Ah where are now the faithful few
Profaneness, riot, lust and pride,
Who tremble for the ark of GOD,
Are signs that mark the present times.
And know what Israel ought to do?

LORD, hear thy people everywhere, Who meet to mourn, confess and pray;
The nation and thy churches spare, And let thy wrath be turned away.

O may a blessing be on this day’s work throughout the kingdom. Lord, if thou awaken thy people to pray, thou wilt surely incline thy ear to hear. And we may expect more from the prayer of faith, than from fleets and armies, and all that politicians account wisdom.
Diary, 13 December 1776

SERMON SERIES: GENESIS, NO. 40 [1/3], GENESIS 18:32

November 5th

Partakers of His sufferings

Rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ’s sufferings. 1 Peter 4:13.

If you are going to be used by God, He will take you through a multitude of experiences that are not meant for you at all; they are meant to make you useful in His hands, and to enable you to understand what transpires in other souls so that you will never be surprised at what you come across. ‘Oh, I can’t deal with that person.’ Why not? God gave you ample opportunity to soak before Him on that line, and you ‘barged off’ because it seemed stupid to spend time in that way.
The sufferings of Christ are not those of ordinary men. He suffered “according to the will of God,” not from the point of view we suffer from as individuals. It is only when we are related to Jesus Christ that we can understand what God is after in His dealings with us. It is part of Christian culture to know what God’s aim is. In the history of the Christian Church the tendency has been to evade being identified with the sufferings of Jesus Christ; men have sought to procure the carrying out of God’s order by a short cut of their own. God’s way is always the way of suffering, the way of the ‘long, long trail.’
Are we partakers of Christ’s sufferings? Are we prepared for God to stamp our personal ambitions right out? Are we prepared for God to destroy by transfiguration our individual determinations? It will not mean that we know exactly why God is taking us that way; that would make us spiritual prigs. We never realize at the time what God is putting us through; we go through it more or less misunderstandingly; then we come to a luminous place and say—‘Why, God has girded me, though I did not know it!’

November 5

“Is there anything too hard for Jehovah?” (Gen. 18:14.)

HERE is God’s loving challenge to you and to me today. He wants us to think of the deepest, highest, worthiest desire and longing of our hearts, something which perhaps was our desire for ourselves or for someone is dear to us, yet which has been so long unfulfilled that we have looked upon it as only a lost desire, that which might have been but now cannot be, and so have given up hope of seeing it fulfilled in this life.
That thing, if it is in line with what we know to be His expressed will (as a son to Abraham and Sarah was), God intends to do for us, even if we know that it is of such utter impossibility that we only laugh at the absurdity of anyone’s supposing it could ever now come to pass. That thing God intends to do for us, if we will let Him.
“Is anything too hard for the Lord?” Not when we believe in Him enough to go forward and do His will, and let Him do the impossible for us. Even Abraham and Sarah could have blocked God’s plan if they had continued to disbelieve.
The only thing too hard for Jehovah is deliberate, continued disbelief in His love and power, and our final rejection of His plans for us. Nothing is too hard for Jehovah to do for them that trust Him.—Messages for the Morning Watch.

5 NOVEMBER

Living witnesses for God and his truth

‘… For no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him.’ John 3:2
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Philemon 8–21

Now if you ask who or where are these extraordinary persons [who experienced miraculous healings], I acknowledge they are comparatively but few. The subjects of our Lord’s miraculous power were but few likewise, and he has taught us to expect that his flock will be a little flock. I confess the best are subject to so many infirmities—so many things are still amiss (for this is but a begun work). I allow that too many are pretenders. This, likewise, we are taught to expect. But there are some, and not hard to be found and known … who are living witnesses for God and his truth, who are not ashamed of the gospel, nor a shame to it, but have found and do evidence that it is the power of God unto salvation, and whose lives and conversations too prove that they are different from what they once were, and from the generality of those about them.
On the other hand, we challenge any to produce instances of the same effects wrought by any other doctrine. How much is said and written to tell people what they should be and what they should do, yet where the gospel principles are not enforced there is nothing done, nothing attempted, beyond a formal round of dull and heartless service—a little something like religion on Sundays: to go to church when the bell tolls, to repeat words because other people do, to hear without attention and then to run full swing into the world again.
Or if here and there a person is truly touched, where they have no better helps, the consequence always is that they renounce the things they held for truths, are brought into that way of thinking which is agreeable to the gospel preaching, and receive it gladly whenever it comes in their way.

FOR MEDITATION: He can call the most unworthy persons, and bring them from the most unlikely places, to labour in his vineyard. Had it not been so, you would never have heard of me. Consider what I was, and where I was (in Africa) and you must acknowledge that I am a singular instance of the sovereignty and the riches of his mercy!
John Newton to John Ryland, 29 November 1799

SERMON SERIES: JOHN 3:1–2, NO. 2 [6/6]