Milo

10 AUGUST

All upon the wing!

‘But thou, O LORD, art a shield for me; the glory and the lifter up of mine head.’ Psalm 3:3
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Psalm 42:1–11

The Lord … our shield. This is a glorious word, yet some other things are wanting to give us full comfort in it. The soul will desire:
(i) his presence and the light of his countenance: if it be so, why go I mourning?
(ii) power over sin: I cannot rejoice in my portion while I feel so many things in me contrary to thy will.
(iii) a lively spirit for his service: I am a debtor not to the flesh to live after the flesh. O give me so to feel my privileges, that I may be all upon the wing to show forth thy praise.
These and the like are petitions surely agreeable to his will. And it is a proof of sincerity not to rest satisfied with any comforts or experiences we have received, but to thirst after a fuller accomplishment of what he has bid us hope for. Too many fall sadly short here. They have been in distress for sin and the Lord has given them a hope in his mercy. They believe he has accepted them, and, by degrees, set down easy and contented, though there is little liveliness in their spirits, much amiss in their tempers, and a prevalent cleaving to the world in their conversation. Though their profession is known by little more than an outward attendance upon ordinances, they satisfy themselves with looking back to past times, when they think it was better with them, and rest in a doctrinal notion of his unchangeableness and the sure perseverance of his people. This is a bad sign. If such are the children of God, they may expect something to rouse them from their security.

FOR MEDITATION: Alas, I teach others but cannot teach myself. Thou knowest a want of taste for thy Scripture is one of my chief burdens. How often it is to me as a sealed book, How often do I read it as a mere task. How defective am I in searching into this inestimable mine and how seldom is it the medium of real intercourse between thee and my soul. O send forth thy light and shine upon thy truth that I may not only judge but taste it to be more sweet and desirable than my necessary food.
Diary, 16 October 1775

SERMON SERIES: GENESIS, NO. 30 [2/2], GENESIS 15:2

August 9th

Prayer in the Father’s hearing

Father, I thank Thee that thou hast heard Me. John 11:41.

When the Son of God prays, He has only one consciousness, and that consciousness is of His Father. God always hears the prayers of His Son, and if the Son of God is formed in me the Father will always hear my prayers. I have to see that the Son of God is manifested in my mortal flesh. “Your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost,” the ‘Bethlehem’ of the Son of God. Is the Son of God getting His chance in me? Is the direct simplicity of the life of God’s Son being worked out exactly as it was worked out in His historic life? When I come in contact with the occurrences of life as an ordinary human being, is the prayer of God’s Eternal Son to His Father being prayed in me? “In that day ye shall ask in My name.…” What day? The day when the Holy Ghost has come to me and made me effectually one with my Lord.
Is the Lord Jesus Christ being abundantly satisfied in your life or have you got a spiritual ‘strut’ on? Never let common sense obtrude and push the Son of God on one side. Common sense is a gift which God gave to human nature; but common sense is not the gift of His Son. Supernatural sense is the gift of His Son; never enthrone common sense. The Son detects the Father; common sense never yet detected the Father and never will. Our ordinary wits never worship God unless they are transfigured by the indwelling Son of God. We have to see that this mortal flesh is kept in perfect subjection to Him and that He works through it moment by moment. Are we living in such human dependence upon Jesus Christ that His life is being “manifested in our mortal flesh”?

August 9

“Blessed is the man whose strength is in thee … who passing through the valley of weeping, make it a well.” (Psalm 84:5, 6.)

COMFORT does not come to the light-hearted and merry. We must go down into “depths” if we would experience this most precious of God’s gifts—comfort, and thus be prepared to be co-workers together with Him.
When night—needful night—gathers over the garden of our souls, when the leaves close up, and the flowers no longer hold any sunlight within their folded petals, there shall never be wanting, even in the thickest darkness, drops of heavenly dew—dew which falls only when the sun has gone.

“I have been through the valley of weeping,
The valley of sorrow and pain;
But the ‘God of all comfort’ was with me,
At hand to uphold and sustain.

“As the earth needs the clouds and sunshine,
Our souls need both sorrow and joy;
So He places us oft in the furnace,
The dross from the gold to destroy.

“When he leads thro’ some valley of trouble,
His omnipotent hand we trace;
For the trials and sorrows He sends us,
Are part of His lessons in grace.

“Oft we shrink from the purging and pruning,
Forgetting the Husbandman knows
That the deeper the cutting and paring,
The richer the cluster that grows.

“Well He knows that affliction is needed;
He has a wise purpose in view,
And in the dark valley He whispers,
‘Hereafter Thou’lt know what I do.’

“As we travel thro’ life’s shadow’d valley,
Fresh springs of His love ever rise;
And we learn that our sorrows and losses,
Are blessings just sent in disguise.

“So we’ll follow wherever He leadeth,
Let the path be dreary or bright;
For we’ve proved that our God can give comfort;
Our God can give songs in the night.”

9 AUGUST

Bless the Lord, O my soul!

‘And Abram said, Lord GOD, what wilt thou give me, seeing I go childless, and the steward of my house is this Eliezer of Damascus?’ Genesis 15:2
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Psalm 103:1–22

These words sound very strange from the father of the faithful. Was this a suitable answer to the promise he had just received? If we take them in their first and immediate sense, they answer to what many believers have felt and what I suppose Abraham himself was not wholly free from: a spirit of impatience and unbelief, which makes it well for us that the grace of God is free and his love unchangeable, or we might expect to be cast off for our perversity. The psalmist charges his soul, forget not all his benefits [Psalm 103:2]. There are seasons when we are liable to forget not only one or a few, but to forget them all, as:
(i) in a time of sharp affliction. Then too often a believer is like other men. The Lord has saved him from hell and appointed him to glory, but the trouble so fixes the attention that everything else seems forgot.
(ii) when the heart is keenly set upon creature good. O then a depraved nature shows itself. If we cannot have what we want, all that we have seems useless and tasteless and the sun shines upon us in vain.
From hence we may observe that a constant meditation upon the mercies of God to us, especially to our souls, is an excellent means to keep our hearts in a right frame, to make trouble sit easy and to teach us how to seek or to use the good things of this world as becomes Christians

FOR MEDITATION:
His love in time past
Forbids me to think
He’ll leave me at last
In trouble to sink;
Each sweet Ebenezer
I have in review,
Confirms his good pleasure
To help me quite through.

SERMON SERIES: GENESIS, NO. 30 [1/2], GENESIS 15:2

August 8th

Prayer in the Father’s honour

That holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. Luke 1:35.

If the Son of God is born into my mortal flesh, is His holy innocence and simplicity and oneness with the Father getting a chance to manifest itself in me? What was true of the Virgin Mary in the historic introduction of God’s Son into this earth is true in every saint. The Son of God is born into me by the direct act of God; then I as a child of God have to exercise the right of a child, the right of being always face to face with my Father. Am I continually saying with amazement to my commonsense life—‘Why do you want to turn me off here? Don’t you know that I must be about my Father’s business?’ Whatever the circumstances may be, that Holy, Innocent, Eternal Child must be in contact with His Father.
Am I simple enough to identify myself with my Lord in this way? Is He getting His wonderful way in me? Is God realizing that His Son is formed in me, or have I carefully put Him on one side? Oh the clamour of these days! Everyone is clamouring—for what? For the Son of God to be put to death. There is no room here for the Son of God just now, no room for quiet holy communion with the Father.
Is the Son of God praying in me or am I dictating to Him? Is He ministering in me as He did in the days of His flesh? Is the Son of God in me going through His passion for His own purposes? The more one knows of the inner life of God’s ripest saints, the more one sees what God’s purpose is—“filling up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ.” There is always something to be done in the sense of “filling up.”