Milo

Imagine living in a earth where human death and sickness no longer exist forever and every evil thought gone forever, surely that is a picture of paradise come to earth. This is the life God has promised for all who believe in him through Christ. This is our eternal hope after having to live through this life that is filled with sin and everything that entails, so I guess as we enter another year, if we remember that this present earth is not our eternal home but with Jesus in heaven and his new heaven and earth that is yet to be created, that were Jesus is we will be also wether travelling the heavens or residing upon the new earth, without the Lord nothing is possible and with the Lord all things good are possible. Here hoping and praying that all dwell in the knowledge of our Lord and saviour Jesus Christ who is with us through this life and the life that is be created.

Just as Christian came up to the Cross, his burden loosed from off his shoulders, fell from off his back, and began to tumble down the hill, and so it continued to do till it came to the mouth of the sepulchre. There it fell in, and I saw it no more!

John Bunyan

October 4th

The vision and the verity

Called to be saints. 1 Cor. 1:2.

Thank God for the sight of all you have never yet been. You have had the vision, but you are not there yet by any means. It is when we are in the valley, where we prove whether we will be the choice ones, that most of us turn back. We are not quite prepared for the blows which must come if we are going to be turned into the shape of the vision. We have seen what we are not, and what God wants us to be, but are we willing to have the vision “batter’d to shape and use” by God? The batterings always come in commonplace ways and through commonplace people.
There are times when we do know what God’s purpose is; whether we will let the vision be turned into actual character depends upon us, not upon God. If we prefer to loll on the mount and live in the memory of the vision, we will be of no use actually in the ordinary stuff of which human life is made up. We have to learn to live in reliance on what we saw in the vision, not in ecstasies and conscious contemplation of God, but to live in actualities in the light of the vision until we get to the veritable reality. Every bit of our training is in that direction. Learn to thank God for making known His demands.
The little ‘I am’ always sulks when God says do. Let the little ‘I am’ be shrivelled up in God’s indignation—“I AM THAT I AM hath sent thee.” He must dominate. Is it not penetrating to realize that God knows where we live, and the kennels we crawl into! He will hunt us up like a lightning flash. No human being knows human beings as God does.

October 4

“So the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning.” (Job 42:12.)

THROUGH his griefs Job came to his heritage. He was tried that his godliness might be confirmed. Are not my troubles intended to deepen my character and to robe me in graces I had little of before? I come to my glory through eclipses, tears, death. My ripest fruit grows against the roughest wall. Job’s afflictions left him with higher conceptions of God and lowlier thoughts of himself. “Now,” he cried, “mine eye seeth thee.”
And if, through pain and loss, I feel God so near in His majesty that I bend low before Him and pray, “Thy will be done,” I gain very much. God gave Job glimpses of the future glory. In those wearisome days and nights, he penetrated within the veil, and could say, “I know that my Redeemer liveth.” Surely the latter end of Job was more blessed than the beginning.—In the Hour of Silence.
“Trouble never comes to a man unless she brings a nugget of gold in her hand.”
Apparent adversity will finally turn out to be the advantage of the right if we are only willing to keep on working and to wait patiently. How steadfastly the great victor souls have kept at their work, dauntless and unafraid! There are blessings which we cannot obtain if we cannot accept and endure suffering. There are joys that can come to us only through sorrow. There are revealings of Divine truth which we can get only when earth’s lights have gone out. There are harvests which can grow only after the plowshare has done its work.—Selected.
Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seamed with scars; martyrs have put on their coronation robes glittering with fire, and through their tears have the sorrowful first seen the gates of Heaven.
—Chapin.

I shall know by the gleam and glitter
Of the golden chain you wear,
By your heart’s calm strength in loving
Of the fire you have had to bear.
Beat on, true heart, forever;
Shine bright, strong golden chain;
And bless the cleansing fire
And the furnace of living pain!
—Adelaide Proctor.

4 OCTOBER

He sees from beginning to end

‘And the LORD said, Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do; seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him?’ Genesis 18:17–18
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Psalm 139:1–18

Leaving what is specially applicable to Abraham, let us inquire what observations we may draw for our own use from the reasons the Lord himself gives, why he would not hide this thing from Abraham. The reasons are two: the one suited to confirm our faith, the other [see 4/4] to animate us in our duty.
The first is, seeing that Abraham.… The Lord had in view all that he had intended to do for and by Abraham from the first. He was present to the Lord’s mind from the time of his calling, yea long before his birth, as the father of many nations, the father of the faithful. And he makes the full and final good he intended for him, an argument for the favour he was about to show him, that is to say, ‘This is not too much for the man whom I delight to honour.’ I believe some of you will easily perceive how this thought may be applied to the comfort of believers in general. When first awakened, they seem at an uncertainty, come to the Lord upon a peradventure, and meet with many a perplexing hour afterwards—but all this while the Lord sees the whole of their course from beginning to end, sees them as they will stand accepted before him in glory. He has given them his Son and appointed them a kingdom. Having designed them to such an end, what shall he withhold from them by the way (Romans 8:32)? [Do you] think you hear the Lord saying, ‘Shall I refuse that person bread, or leave him to sink in trouble, seeing he shall ere long see my face in glory?’ If he suffers you to meet with many trials, it is not for want of care, or power or compassion, because he has chosen you and designed great things for you; he will surely deliver you and you shall glorify him.

FOR MEDITATION: ‘He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?’ (Romans 8:32, NIV).

SERMON SERIES: GENESIS, NO. 38 [3/4], GENESIS 18:17–19

October 3rd

The sphere of ministration

This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer and fasting. Mark 9:29.

“Why could not we cast him out?” The answer lies in a personal relationship to Jesus Christ. This kind can come forth by nothing but by concentration and redoubled concentration on Him. We can ever remain powerless, as were the disciples, by trying to do God’s work not in concentration on His power, but by ideas drawn from our own temperament. We slander God by our very eagerness to work for Him without knowing Him.
You are brought face to face with a difficult case and nothing happens externally, and yet you know that emancipation will be given because you are concentrated on Jesus Christ. This is your line of service—to see that there is nothing between Jesus and yourself. Is there? If there is, you must get through it, not by ignoring it in irritation, or by mounting up, but by facing it and getting through it into the presence of Jesus Christ. Then that very thing, and all you have been through in connection with it, will glorify Jesus Christ in a way you will never know till you see Him face to face.
We must be able to mount up with wings as eagles; but we must also know how to come down. The power of the saint lies in the coming down and the living down. “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me,” said Paul, and the things he referred to were mostly humiliating things. It is in our power to refuse to be humiliated and to say—‘No, thank you, I much prefer to be on the mountain top with God.’ Can I face things as they actually are in the light of the reality of Jesus Christ, or do things as they are efface altogether my faith in Him, and put me into a panic?