Milo

September 30th

The commission of the call

Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for His body’s sake. Col. 1:24.

We make calls out of our own spiritual consecration, but when we get right with God He brushes all these aside, and rivets us with a pain that is terrific to one thing we never dreamed of, and for one radiant, flashing moment we see what He is after, and we say—“Here am I, send me.”
This call has nothing to do with personal sanctification, but with being made broken bread and poured-out wine. God can never make us wine if we object to the fingers He uses to crush us with. If God would only use His own fingers, and make me broken bread and poured-out wine in a special way! But when He uses someone whom we dislike, or some set of circumstances to which we said we would never submit, and makes those the crushers, we object. We must never choose the scene of our own martyrdom. If ever we are going to be made into wine, we will have to be crushed; you cannot drink grapes. Grapes become wine only when they have been squeezed.
I wonder what kind of finger and thumb God has been using to squeeze you, and you have been like a marble and escaped? You are not ripe yet, and if God had squeezed you, the wine would have been remarkably bitter. To be a sacramental personality means that the elements of the natural life are presenced by God as they are broken providentially in His service. We have to be adjusted to God before we can be broken bread in His hands. Keep right with God and let Him do what He likes, and you will find that He is producing the kind of bread and wine that will benefit His other children.

September 30

“As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings: so the Lord alone did lead him, and there was no strange God with him.” (Deut. 32:11, 12.)

OUR Almighty Parent delights to conduct the tender nestlings of His care to the very edge of the precipice, and even to thrust them off into the steeps of air, that they may learn their possession of unrealized power of flight, to be forever a luxury; and if, in the attempt, they be exposed to unwonted peril, He is prepared to swoop beneath them, and to bear them upward on His mighty pinions. When God brings any of His children into a position of unparalleled difficulty, they may always count upon Him to deliver them.—The Song of Victory.
“When God puts a burden upon you He puts His own arm underneath.”
There is a little plant, small and stunted, growing under the shade of a broad-spreading oak; and this little plant values the shade which covers it, and greatly does it esteem the quiet rest which its noble friend affords. But a blessing is designed for this little plant.
Once upon a time there comes along the woodman, and with his sharp axe he fells the oak. The plant weeps and cries, “My shelter is departed; every rough wind will blow upon me, and every storm will seek to uproot me!”
“No, no,” saith the angel of that flower; “now will the sun get at thee; now will the shower fall on thee in more copious abundance than before; now thy stunted form shall spring up into loveliness, and thy flower, which could never have expanded itself to perfection shall now laugh in the sunshine, and men shall say, ‘How greatly hath that plant increased! How glorious hath become its beauty, through the removal of that which was its shade and its delight!’ ”
See you not, then, that God may take away your comforts and your privileges, to make you the better Christians? Why, the Lord always trains His soldiers, not by letting them lie on feather-beds, but by turning them out, and using them to forced marches and hard service. He makes them ford through streams, and swim through rivers, and climb mountains, and walk many a long march with heavy knapsacks of sorrow on their backs. This is the way in which He makes them soldiers—not by dressing them up in fine uniforms, to swagger at the barrack gates, and to be fine gentlemen in the eyes of the loungers in the park. God knows that soldiers are only to be made in battle; they are not to be grown in peaceful times. We may grow the stuff of which soldiers are made; but warriors are really educated by the smell of powder, in the midst of whizzing bullets and roaring cannonades, not in soft and peaceful times. Well, Christian, may not this account for it all? Is not thy Lord bringing out thy graces and making them grow? Is He not developing in you the qualities of the soldier by throwing you into the heat of battle, and should you not use every appliance to come off conqueror?—Spurgeon.

30 SEPTEMBER (PREACHED NEW YEAR’S MORNING, 1770)

‘Very much better’

‘I protest by your rejoicing which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die daily.’ 1 Corinthians 15:31
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: 2 Corinthians 5:1–10

The second meaning [for the first, see from 2/6] of to die daily is practically to improve [grasp more fully] the doctrines of faith, to weaken and overcome the natural reluctance we have to death. The soul has a natural unwillingness to leave the body because it has hitherto been the instrument of all its operations. The bodily senses are the inlets of perception to the soul, therefore the thoughts of parting with them seem strange. There is nothing like this union in all the works of God. From death to the resurrection, only one part of our nature shall act. This is a great mystery. Now these difficulties must be opposed [withstood] by faith. To die daily is to consider the death of Jesus; this throws light upon darkness. We follow him. But O how different his death from ours! For a believer, to die is to be with Christ. Is not this far better? To die is to cease from sin. Cannot some of you say, ‘This alone would make me willing to depart?’ To die is to be free from all grief and infirmity. What can the coward flesh plead against such arguments as these? This is to die daily.

FOR MEDITATION: In short, only the man who upon scriptural grounds is prepared to die, is properly qualified to enjoy the life that now is. A sense of the evil of sin and of his own heart once greatly distressed him, till he was able to approve and accept God’s method of saving sinners by faith in the Son of his love. He has seen, with the eye of his mind, the necessity and the efficacy of the Saviour’s obedience unto death, even the death of the cross. Weary and heavy laden, he has complied with his gracious invitation to come to him for rest, and he has found it. And if sudden danger appears, he has a sure hiding place, and is warranted not to be afraid for himself, though the earth should be removed and the mountains cast into the sea. Thus he is glad to live while the Lord has any employment for him, and he is glad to think he shall not live here always, but in due time depart to be with Jesus, which is πολλᾦ μᾶλλον κρεῖσσον [very much better].
John Newton to William Wilberforce, 2 October 1794

SERMON: 1 CORINTHIANS 15:31 [5/6]

September 29th

The consciousness of the call

For necessity is laid upon me: yea, woe is unto me, if I preach not the gospel! 1 Cor. 9:16.

We are apt to forget the mystical, supernatural touch of God. If you can tell where you got the call of God and all about it, I question whether you have ever had a call. The call of God does not come like that, it is much more supernatural. The realization of it in a man’s life may come with a sudden thunder-clap or with a gradual dawning, but in whatever way it comes, it comes with the undercurrent of the supernatural, something that cannot be put into words, it is always accompanied with a glow. At any moment there may break the sudden consciousness of this incalculable, supernatural, surprising call that has taken hold of your life—“I have chosen you.” The call of God has nothing to do with salvation and sanctification. It is not because you are sanctified that you are therefore called to preach the gospel; the call to preach the gospel is infinitely different. Paul describes it as a necessity laid upon him.
If you have been obliterating the great supernatural call of God in your life, take a review of your circumstances and see where God has not been first, but your ideas of service, or your temperamental abilities. Paul said—“Woe is unto me, if I preach not the gospel!” He had realized the call of God, and there was no competitor for his strength.
If a man or woman is called of God, it does not matter how untoward circumstances are, every force that has been at work will tell for God’s purpose in the end. If you agree with God’s purpose He will bring not only your conscious life, but all the deeper regions of your life which you cannot get at, into harmony.

September 29

“I will give myself unto prayer.” (Psalm 109:4.)

WE are often in a religious hurry in our devotions. How much time do we spend in them daily? Can it not be easily reckoned in minutes? Who ever knew an eminently holy man who did not spend much of his time in prayer? Did ever a man exhibit much of the spirit of prayer, who did not devote much time in his closet?
Whitefield says, “Whole days and weeks have I spent prostrate on the ground, in silent or vocal prayer.” “Fall upon your knees and grow there,” is the language of another, who knew whereof he affirmed.
It has been said that no great work in literature or science was ever wrought by a man who did not love solitude. We may lay it down as an elemental principle of religion, that no large growth in holiness was ever gained by one who did not take time to be often, and long, alone with God.—The Still Hour.

“ ‘Come, come,’ He saith, ‘O soul oppressed and weary,
Come to the shadows of my desert rest;
Come walk with Me far from life’s babbling discords,
And peace shall breathe like music in thy breast.’ ”