Milo

October 14th

The key to the missionary

All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations. Matthew 28:18–20 .

The basis of missionary appeals is the authority of Jesus Christ, not the needs of the heathen. We are apt to look upon Our Lord as One Who assists us in our enterprises for God. Our Lord puts himself as the absolute sovereign supreme Lord over His disciples. He does not say the heathen will be lost if we do not go; He simply says—“Go ye therefore, and teach all nations.” Go on the revelation of My sovereignty; teach and preach out of a living experience of Me.
“Then the eleven disciples went … into a mountain where Jesus had appointed them” (v. 16). If I want to know the universal sovereignty of Christ, I must know Him for myself, and how to get alone with Him; I must take time to worship the Being Whose Name I bear. “Come unto Me”—that is the place to meet Jesus. Are you weary and heavy laden? How many missionaries are! We banish those marvellous words of the universal Sovereign of the world to the threshold of an after-meeting; they are the words of Jesus to His disciples.
“Go ye therefore.…” “Go” simply means live. Acts 1:8 is the description of how to go. Jesus did not say—Go into Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria, but, “Ye shall be witnesses unto Me” in all these places. He undertakes to establish the goings.
“If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you.…”—that is the way to keep going in our personal lives. Where we are placed is a matter of indifference; God engineers the goings. “None of these things move me …” That is how to keep going till you’re gone!

October 14

“The angel of the Lord came upon him (Peter) and a light shined in the prison; and he smote Peter on the side, and raised him up, saying, Arise up quickly. And his chains fell off.” (Acts 12:7.)
“And at midnight Paul and Silas prayed and sang praises unto God.… And suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and every one’s bands were loosed.” (Acts 16:25, 26.)

THIS is God’s way. In the darkest hours of the night, His tread draws near across the billows. As the day of execution is breaking, the angel comes to Peter’s cell. When the scaffold for Mordecai is complete, the royal sleeplessness leads to a reaction in favor of the favored race.
Ah, soul, it may have to come to the worst with thee ere thou art delivered; but thou wilt be delivered! God may keep thee waiting, but he will ever be mindful of His covenant, and will appear to fulfill His inviolable Word.
—F. B. Meyer.
There’s a simplicity about God in working out His plans, yet a resourcefulness equal to any difficulty, and an unswerving faithfulness to His trusting child, and an unforgetting steadiness in holding to His purpose. Through a fellow-prisoner, then a dream, He lifts Joseph from a prison to a premiership. And the length of stay in the prison prevents dizziness in the premier. It’s safe to trust God’s methods and to go by His clock.
—S. D. Gordon.
Providence hath a thousand keys to open a thousand sundry doors for the deliverance of His own, when it is even come to a desperate case. Let us be faithful; and care for our own part which is to suffer for Him, and lay Christ’s part on Himself, and leave it there.—George MacDonald.
Difficulty is the very atmosphere of miracle—it is miracle in its first stage. If it is to be a great miracle, the condition is not difficulty but impossibility.
The clinging hand of His child makes a desperate situation a delight to Him.

14 OCTOBER

Instruction begins at home

‘And ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.’ Ephesians 6:4
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: 2 Timothy 3:1–4:5

Maintain your authority over your children and endeavour to restrain the workings of those irregular passions and desires which begin early to show themselves. A false tenderness in indulging their humours, is often called spoiling them, and the expression is significant. Many are so entirely spoilt that they are good for nothing afterwards. No care can change the heart, but the Lord works by means—and these evils may be restrained. If you suffer them to be self-willed when they are three or four years of age, they will ordinarily be much more so when they are fourteen or fifteen. Many good people are grieved and bowed down with the perverseness of their children’s carriage as they grow up, but may not conscience say, Hast thou not procured this unto thyself? [Jeremiah 2:17] Be resolute in repressing them for, and restraining them from, things that are plainly sinful—the use of ill words, lying, pilfering, contempt of the Sabbath. Accustom them to a constant attendance upon the worship of God, and to a decent behaviour while they are there. It is a shame to think how many children are playing in the streets, or perhaps robbing orchards [or supermarkets?] instead of being in the house of God. And many come here who can hardly be kept from play in the church; it is a sign how little they are instructed at home.

Diary, 10 July 1777:
Met the children … perhaps I never speak more to the purpose than when the bulk of my auditory is under ten, and many of them under six years of age.… the power is thine also, therefore I may hope.

FOR MEDITATION: My mother was a pious, experienced Christian. I have some faint remembrance of her care and instructions. She stored my memory, which was then very retentive, with many valuable pieces, chapters, and portions of Scripture, catechisms, hymns and poems. Further, my dear mother often commended me with many prayers and tears to God; and I doubt not but I reap the fruits of these prayers to this hour.
Narrative, 1764, Letter 2 [Newton’s mother died when he was six]

SERMON SERIES: RELATIVE DUTIES, NO. 4 [3/4], EPHESIANS 6:4

October 13th

Individual discouragement and personal enlargement

Moses went unto his brethren, and looked on their burdens. Exodus 2:11.

Moses saw the oppression of his people and felt certain that he was the one to deliver them, and in the righteous indignation of his own spirit he started to right their wrongs. After the first strike for God and for the right, God allowed Moses to be driven into blank discouragement, He sent him into the desert to feed sheep for forty years. At the end of that time, God appeared and told Moses to go and bring forth His people, and Moses said—‘Who am I, that I should go?’ In the beginning Moses realized that he was the man to deliver the people, but he had to be trained and disciplined by God first. He was right in the individual aspect, but he was not the man for the work until he had learned communion with God.
We may have the vision of God and a very clear understanding of what God wants, and we start to do the thing; then comes something equivalent to the forty years in the wilderness, as if God had ignored the whole thing, and when we are thoroughly discouraged God comes back and revives the call, and we get the quaver in and say—‘Oh, who am I!’ We have to learn the first great stride of God—“I AM THAT I AM hath sent thee.” We have to learn that our individual effort for God is an impertinence; our individuality is to be rendered incandescent by a personal relationship to God (see Matthew 3:11). We fix on the individual aspect of things; we have the vision—‘This is what God wants me to do’; but we have not got into God’s stride. If you are going through a time of discouragement, there is a big personal enlargement ahead.

October 13

“In nothing be anxious.” (Phil. 4:6.)

NO anxiety ought to be found in a believer. Great, many and varied may be our trials, our afflictions, our difficulties, and yet there should be no anxiety under any circumstances, because we have a Father in Heaven who is almighty, who loves His children as He loves His only-begotten Son, and whose very joy and delight it is to succor and help them at all times and under all circumstances. We should attend to the Word, “In nothing be anxious, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.”
“In everything,” that is not merely when the house is on fire, not merely when the beloved wife and children are on the brink of the grave, but in the smallest matters of life, bring everything before God, the little things, the very little things, what the world calls trifling things—everything—living in holy communion with our Heavenly Father, and with our precious Lord Jesus all day long. And when we awake at night, by a kind of spiritual instinct again turning to Him, and speaking to Him, bringing our various little matters before Him in the sleepless night, the difficulties in connection with the family, our trade, our profession. Whatever tries us in any way, speak to the Lord about it.
“By prayer and supplication,” taking the place of beggars, with earnestness, with perseverance, going on and waiting, waiting, waiting on God.
“With thanksgiving.” We should at all times lay a good foundation with thanksgiving. If everything else were wanting, this is always present, that He has saved us from hell. Then, that He has given us His Holy Word—His Son, His choicest gift—and the Holy Spirit. Therefore we have abundant reason for thanksgiving. O let us aim at this!
“And the peace of God which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” And this is so great a blessing, so real a blessing, so precious a blessing, that it must be known experimentally to be entered into, for it passeth understanding. O let us lay these things to heart, and the result will be, if we habitually walk in this spirit, we shall far more abundantly glorify God, than as yet we have done.—George Mueller, in Life of Trust.
Twice or thrice a day, look to see if your heart is not disquieted about something; and if you find that it is, take care forthwith to restore it to calm.—Francis De Sales.