Milo

September 11th

Missionary munitions

Ministering as Opportunity Surrounds us. If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one another’s feet. John 13:14.

Ministering as opportunity surrounds us does not mean selecting our surroundings, it means being very selectly God’s in any haphazard surroundings which He engineers for us. The characteristics we manifest in our immediate surroundings are indications of what we will be like in other surroundings.
The things that Jesus did were of the most menial and commonplace order, and this is an indication that it takes all God’s power in me to do the most commonplace things in His way. Can I use a towel as He did? Towels and dishes and sandals, all the ordinary sordid things of our lives, reveal more quickly than anything what we are made of. It takes God Almighty Incarnate in us to do the meanest duty as it ought to be done.
“I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you.” Watch the kind of people God brings around you, and you will be humiliated to find that this is His way of revealing to you the kind of person you have been to Him. Now, He says, exhibit to that one exactly what I have shown to you.
‘Oh,’ you say, ‘I will do all that when I get out into the foreign field.’ To talk in this way is like trying to produce the munitions of war in the trenches—you will be killed while you are doing it.
We have to go the ‘second mile’ with God. Some of us get played out in the first ten yards, because God compels us to go where we cannot see the way, and we say—‘I will wait till I get nearer the big crisis.’ If we do not do the running steadily in the little ways, we shall do nothing in the crisis.

September 11

“And so, after he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise.” (Heb. 6:15.)

ABRAHAM was long tried, but he was richly rewarded. The Lord tried him by delaying to fulfill His promise. Satan tried him by temptation; men tried him by jealousy, distrust, and opposition; Sarah tried him by her peevishness. But he patiently endured. He did not question God’s veracity, nor limit His power, nor doubt His faithfulness, nor grieve His love; but he bowed to Divine Sovereignty, submitted to Infinite Wisdom, and was silent under delays, waiting the Lord’s time. And so, having patiently endured, he obtained the promise.
God’s promises cannot fail of their accomplishment. Patient waiters cannot be disappointed. Believing expectation shall be realized.
Beloved, Abraham’s conduct condemns a hasty spirit, reproves a murmuring one, commends a patient one, and encourages quiet submission to God’s will and way. Remember, Abraham was tried; he patiently waited; he received the promise, and was satisfied. Imitate his example, and you will share the same blessing.—Selected.

11 SEPTEMBER

Put in tune

‘Now the God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep … make you perfect in every good work to do his will …’ Hebrews 13:20–21
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Psalm 40:1–8

Make you perfect in every good work. First, it is not an actual perfection intended—the word signifies to make you meet or fit, to give a right disposition, and might be applied to an instrument of music when it is put in tune. So David says, My heart is fixed [Psalm 57:7; 108:1]—made ready or in tune. It is of the Lord to give to his people this habitual disposition or meetness for his will. It consists of such things as these:
(i) humility, or a due sense of our own weakness and imperfections. Without this we cannot be rightly disposed for the exercise of duty.
(ii) faith—laying hold of the strength, grace and promise of the Lord Jesus. To know that we can do nothing will sink us in despondency, unless we can rely upon him to perfect his strength in our weakness.
(iii) love—that feeling his peace, and considering the means by which we obtain it, we may be animated to cheerful obedience.
Without these principles it is impossible to aim at any good work in an acceptable manner.
The object of this disposition is universal obedience. Every good work may be distributed as respecting: (i) the Lord—his worship, his will (ii) the church—walking in love (iii) the world—in the exercise of integrity, truth.

FOR MEDITATION: Methinks I may compare myself to a harpsichord—how often in tuning, how seldom in tune, and how soon put out of tune again. My imagination in particular is as an instrument which seems not in my own power. Happy am I when it is under a gracious influence. But at times it seems as if an evil genius had command of the keys. Then I am tortured with a medley of folly, discord and confusion, from which I cannot run; nor can I stop my ears against it for it is within me. Wonderful is the grace that can cause the voice of joy and melody to be heard when, but a little before, all was disorder and distress. If the Lord appears, the storm is hushed and calm succeeds.
John Newton to William Wilberforce, 15 November 1786

SERMON SERIES: HEBREWS 13:20–21, NO. 4 [1/2]

September 10th

Missionary munitions

Worshipping as Occasion serves. When thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee. John 1:48.

We imagine we would be all right if a big crisis arose; but the big crisis will only reveal the stuff we are made of, it will not put anything into us. ‘If God gives the call, of course I will rise to the occasion.’ You will not unless you have risen to the occasion in the workshop, unless you have been the real thing before God there. If you are not doing the thing that lies nearest, because God has engineered it, when the crisis comes instead of being revealed as fit, you will be revealed as unfit. Crises always reveal character.
The private relationship of worshipping God is the great essential of fitness. The time comes when there is no more ‘fig-tree’ life possible, when it is out into the open, out into the glare and into the work, and you will find yourself of no value there if you have not been worshipping as occasion serves you in your home. Worship aright in your private relationships, then when God sets you free you will be ready, because in the unseen life which no one saw but God you have become perfectly fit, and when the strain comes you can be relied upon by God.
‘I can’t be expected to live the sanctified life in the circumstances I am in; I have no time for praying just now, no time for Bible reading, my opportunity hasn’t come yet; when it does, of course I shall be all right.’ No, you will not. If you have not been worshipping as occasion serves, when you get into work you will not only be useless yourself, but a tremendous hindrance to those who are associated with you.
The workshop of missionary munitions is the hidden, personal, worshipping life of the saint.

September 10

“The Lord will perfect that which concerneth me.” (Psalm 138:8.)

THERE is a Divine mystery in suffering, a strange and supernatural power in it, which has never been fathomed by the human reason. There never has been known great saintliness of soul which did not pass through great suffering. When the suffering soul reaches a calm sweet carelessness, when it can inwardly smile at its own suffering, and does not even ask God to deliver it from suffering, then it has wrought its blessed ministry; then patience has its perfect work; then the crucifixion begins to weave itself into a crown.
It is in this state of the perfection of suffering that the Holy Spirit works many marvelous things in our souls. In such a condition, our whole being lies perfectly still under the hand of God; every faculty of the mind and will and heart are at last subdued; a quietness of eternity settles down into the whole being; the tongue grows still, and has but few words to say; it stops asking God questions; it stops crying, “Why hast thou forsaken me?”
The imagination stops building air castles, or running off on foolish lines; the reason is tame and gentle; the choices are annihilated; it has no choice in anything but the purpose of God. The affections are weaned from all creatures and all things; it is so dead that nothing can hurt it, nothing can offend it, nothing can hinder it, nothing can get in its way; for, let the circumstances be what they may, it seeks only for God and His will, and it feels assured that God is making everything in the universe, good or bad, past or present, work together for its good.
Oh, the blessedness of being absolutely conquered! of losing our own strength, and wisdom, and plans, and desires, and being where every atom of our nature is like placid Galilee under the omnipotent feet of our Jesus—Soul Food.
The great thing is to suffer without being discouraged.
—Fenelon.
“The heart that serves, and loves, and clings,
Hears everywhere the rush of angel wings.”