Milo

One got out for the 2nd time in a few months but thankfully his homing instinct has improved:)

June 26th

Always now

We … beseech you that ye receive not the grace of God in vain. 2 Cor. 6:1.

The grace you had yesterday will not do for to-day. Grace is the overflowing favour of God; you can always reckon it is there to draw upon. “In much patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses”—that is where the test for patience comes. Are you failing the grace of God there? Are you saying—‘Oh, well, I won’t count this time?’ It is not a question of praying and asking God to help you; it is taking the grace of God now. We make prayer the preparation for work, it is never that in the Bible. Prayer is the exercise of drawing on the grace of God. Don’t say—‘I will endure this until I can get away and pray.’ Pray now; draw on the grace of God in the moment of need. Prayer is the most practical thing, it is not the reflex action of devotion. Prayer is the last thing in which we learn to draw on God’s grace.
“In stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labours,”—in all these things manifest a drawing upon the grace of God that will make you a marvel to yourself and to others. Draw now, not presently: The one word in the spiritual vocabulary is Now. Let circumstances bring you where they will, keep drawing on the grace of God in every conceivable condition you may be in. One of the greatest proofs that you are drawing on the grace of God is that you can be humiliated without manifesting the slightest trace of anything but His grace.
“Having nothing …” Never reserve anything. Pour out the best you have, and always be poor. Never be diplomatic and careful about the treasure God gives. This is poverty triumphant.

June 26

“For what if some did not believe? shall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect?” (Rom. 3:3.)

I THINK that I can trace every scrap of sorrow in my life to simple unbelief. How could I be anything but quite happy if I believed always that all the past is forgiven, and all the present furnished with power, and all the future bright with hope because of the same abiding facts which do not change with my mood, do not stumble because I totter and stagger at the promise through unbelief, but stand firm and clear with their peaks of pearl cleaving the air of Eternity, and the bases of their hills rooted unfathomably in the Rock of God. Mont Blanc does not become a phantom or a mist because a climber grows dizzy on its side.—James Smetham.
Is it any wonder that, when we stagger at any promise of God through unbelief, we do not receive it? Not that faith merits an answer, or in any way earns it, or works it out; but God has made believing a condition of receiving, and the Giver has a sovereign right to choose His own terms of gift.
—Rev. Samuel Hart.
Unbelief says, “How can such and such things be?” It is full of “hows”; but faith has one great answer to the ten thousand “hows,” and that answer is—GOD!—C. H. M.
No praying man or woman accomplishes so much with so little expenditure of time as when he or she is praying.
If there should arise, it has been said—and the words are surely true to the thought of our Lord Jesus Christ in all His teaching on prayer—if there should arise ONE UTTERLY BELIEVING MAN, the history of the world might be changed.
Will YOU not be that one in the providence and guidance of God our Father?—A. E. McAdam.
Prayer without faith degenerates into objectless routine, or soulless hypocrisy. Prayer with faith brings Omnipotence to back our petitions. Better not pray unless and until your whole being responds to the efficacy of your supplication. When the true prayer is breathed, earth and heaven, the past and the future, say Amen. And Christ prayed such prayers.—P. C. M.
“Nothing lies beyond the reach of prayer except that which lies outside the will of God.”

26 JUNE (PREACHED 23 JUNE 1776)

A Shepherd’s heart

‘Brethren, pray for us.’ 1 Thessalonians 5:25
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Isaiah 49:8–23

We are, we must be, sharply tried by the cases of our hearers.
With respect to the congregations at large, I must have a heart like a stone if I could look seriously round this congregation without being affected. To see so many who are stumbling in the broad day, still under the power of sin, after long enjoying such uncommon advantages as the Lord has been pleased to favour this town with. To see them from week to week, from year to year, still careless and hardening under the means of grace.… often I shrink at the thought lest I am unfaithful. I fear I am not faithful, earnest or importunate enough, though I seem not to know how to be more so. I am a debtor to all, I bear a love to every soul that hears me.
But there are among you a number who not only hear but profess the truth; to these I bear a more immediate relation. I am more acquainted with them, I feel more for them. I may say without boasting, the Lord has given me, at least in a little measure, the heart of a shepherd. I feel for the distresses of many. As I am much among the people, I know a good deal of their personal and their family troubles. My heart sinks at the trials of some here before me and of others whose afflictions detain them at home. Perhaps no one in the parish knows so much of these things as I do. And I could relate cases which would, I am persuaded, draw tears from many eyes. I know likewise something of the spiritual distresses of those whom I endeavour to comfort but cannot.

FOR MEDITATION: My time and thoughts much engrossed today by an affecting and critical dispensation at Orchard Side [William Cowper attempted suicide]. I was sent for in the morning early and returned astonished and grieved. Could hardly attend to anything else.
Diary, 2 January 1773

The first temptation the enemy assaulted him with was to offer up himself as Abraham his son. He verily thought he ought to do it. We were obliged to watch with him night and day. I, my dear wife and Mrs Unwin with whom he lived, left him not an hour for seven years.
John Newton’s Funeral Sermon for William Cowper, May 1800

SERMON: 1 THESSALONIANS 5:25 [4/6]

June 25th

Receiving one’s self in the fires of sorrow

What shall I say? Father, save me from this hour? But for this cause came I unto this hour. Father, glorify Thy name. John 12:27–29 (R.V.).

My attitude as a saint to sorrow and difficulty is not to ask that they may be prevented, but to ask that I may preserve the self God created me to be through every fire of sorrow. Our Lord received Himself in the fire of sorrow, He was saved not from the hour, but out of the hour.
We say that there ought to be no sorrow, but there is sorrow, and we have to receive ourselves in its fires. If we try and evade sorrow, refuse to lay our account with it, we are foolish. Sorrow is one of the biggest facts in life; it is no use saying sorrow ought not to be. Sin and sorrow and suffering are, and it is not for us to say that God has made a mistake in allowing them.
Sorrow burns up a great amount of shallowness, but it does not always make a man better. Suffering either gives me my self or it destroys my self. You cannot receive your self in success, you lose your head; you cannot receive your self in monotony, you grouse. The way to find your self is in the fires of sorrow. Why it should be so is another matter, but that it is so is true in the Scriptures and in human experience. You always know the man who has been through the fires of sorrow and received himself, you are certain you can go to him in trouble and find that he has ample leisure for you. If a man has not been through the fires of sorrow, he is apt to be contemptuous, he has no time for you. If you receive yourself in the fires of sorrow, God will make you nourishment for other people.