Milo

May 26th

Think as Jesus taught

Pray without ceasing. 1 Thess. 5:17.

We think rightly or wrongly about prayer according to the conception we have in our minds of prayer. If we think of prayer as the breath in our lungs and the blood from our hearts, we think rightly. The blood flows ceaselessly, and breathing continues ceaselessly; we are not conscious of it, but it is always going on. We are not always conscious of Jesus keeping us in perfect joint with God, but if we are obeying Him, He always is. Prayer is not an exercise, it is the life. Beware of anything that stops ejaculatory prayer. “Pray without ceasing,” keep the childlike habit of ejaculatory prayer in your heart to God all the time.
Jesus never mentioned unanswered prayer; He had the boundless certainty that prayer is always answered. Have we by the Spirit the unspeakable certainty that Jesus had about prayer, or do we think of the times when God does not seem to have answered prayer? “Every one that asketh receiveth.” We say—‘But …, but …’ God answers prayer in the best way, not sometimes, but every time, although the immediate manifestation of the answer in the domain in which we want it may not always follow. Do we expect God to answer prayer?
The danger with us is that we want to water down the things that Jesus says and make them mean something in accordance with common sense; if it were only common sense, it was not worth while for him to say it. The things Jesus says about prayer are supernatural revelations.

May 26

“Spring up, O well; sing ye unto it.” (Num. 21:17.)

THIS was a strange song and a strange well. They had been traveling over the desert’s barren sands, no water was in sight and they were famishing with thirst. Then God spake to Moses and said:
“Gather the people together, and I will give them water,” and this is how it came.
They gathered in circles on the sands. They took their staves and dug deep down into the burning earth and as they dug, they sang,
“Spring up, O well, sing ye unto it,” and lo, there came a gurgling sound, a rush of water and a flowing stream which filled the well and ran along the ground.
When they dug this well in the desert, they touched the stream that was running beneath, and reached the flowing tides that had long been out of sight.
How beautiful the picture given, telling us of the river of blessing that flows all through our lives, and we have only to reach by faith and praise to find our wants supplied in the most barren desert.
How did they reach the waters of this well? It was by praise. They sang upon the sand their song of faith, while with their staff of promise they dug the well.
Our praise will still open fountains in the desert, when murmuring will only bring us judgment, and even prayer may fail to reach the fountains of blessing.
There is nothing that pleases the Lord so much as praise. There is no test of faith so true as the grace of thanksgiving. Are you praising God enough? Are you thanking Him for your actual blessings that are more than can be numbered, and are you daring to praise Him even for those trials which are but blessings in disguise? Have you learned to praise Him in advance for the things that have not yet come?—Selected.

“Thou waitest for deliverance!
  O soul, thou waitest long!
Believe that now deliverance
  Doth wait for thee in song!

“Sigh not until deliverance
  Thy fettered feet doth free:
With songs of glad deliverance
  God now doth compass thee.”

26 MAY

Room for the exercise of faith

‘And the LORD appeared unto Abram, and said, Unto thy seed will I give this land …’ Genesis 12:7
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Romans 4:13–25

God’s promises still leave room for the exercise of faith. So Abraham found it. The land which he saw was for his seed, which was cause of rejoicing, but attended with two abatements.
(i) Though it was given to his seed, he himself had no possession, but was a sojourner in tents all his days. Yet he was not disappointed as to his own best interests; he was taught to consider this earthly inheritance as a type of a better [one], that is, an heavenly (Hebrews 11:10, 13–14). So the promises run to believers: all things are theirs; they shall inherit the earth. In the meanwhile many of them are destitute and in want of all things. Here sense is ready to complain, but faith takes up the best meaning. All things are mine so far as the Lord sees good, and I shall have his blessing with them, but my great inheritance is on high, therefore none of these things move me.
(ii) His chief [abatement] was that the promise was made to his seed, when as yet he had no child and little prospect of any, for his wife was barren and he himself advancing in years. This difficulty grew harder every day as he and his wife grew older, and though his faith surmounted it, yet it was not without conflicts, as we may gather from 15:2. In this instance the faith of Abraham is especially commended to our imitation (Romans 4:18–22). Great things believers expect in their walk with God: peace, joy, strength and sweet communion. Nor shall they be disappointed if they believe. But when they are acquainted with the evil of their own hearts and the temptations belonging to their warfare, they are in much the same situation as Abraham, who could never have had a comfortable hope of a child, if he had given way to the reasonings of flesh and blood. He waited twenty-five years and when at last it seemed impossible, then his desire was fulfilled.

FOR MEDITATION: Two considerations supported the Word and the power of God: he had promised, and he was able to perform. Apply this to yourself, poor soul. Are you saying, Can these dry bones live? [Ezekiel 37:3] Can grace and comfort ever dwell in this heart? Yes. The Lord has spoken, and therefore you may rejoice, for he who has promised is able also to perform.

SERMON SERIES: GENESIS, NO. 24 [1/4], GENESIS 12:7

May 25th

The test of self-interest

If thou wilt take the left hand, then I will go to the right; or if thou depart to the right hand, then I will go to the left. Genesis 13:9.

As soon as you begin to live the life of faith in God, fascinating and luxurious prospects will open up before you, and these things are yours by right; but if you are living the life of faith you will exercise your right to waive your rights, and let God choose for you. God sometimes allows you to get into a place of testing where your own welfare would be the right and proper thing to consider if you were not living a life of faith; but if you are, you will joyfully waive your right and leave God to choose for you. This is the discipline by means of which the natural is transformed into the spiritual by obedience to the voice of God.
Whenever right is made the guidance in the life, it will blunt the spiritual insight. The great enemy of the life of faith in God is not sin, but the good which is not good enough. The good is always the enemy of the best. It would seem the wisest thing in the world for Abraham to choose, it was his right, and the people around would consider him a fool for not choosing. Many of us do not go on spiritually because we prefer to choose what is right instead of relying on God to choose for us. We have to learn to walk according to the standard which has its eye on God. “Walk before Me.”

May 25

“I endure all things for the sake of God’s own people; so that they also may obtain salvation … and with it eternal glory.” (2 Tim. 2:10.) (Weymouth.)

IF Job could have known as he sat there in the ashes, bruising his heart on this problem of Providence—that in the trouble that had come upon him he was doing what one man may do to work out the problem for the world, he might again have taken courage. No man lives to himself. Job’s life is but your life and mine written in larger text. … So, then, though we may not know what trials wait on any of us, we can believe that, as the days in which Job wrestled with his dark maladies are the only days that make him worth remembrance, and but for which his name had never been written in the book of life, so the days through which we struggle, finding no way, but never losing the light, will be the most significant we are called to live.—Robert Collyer.
Who does not know that our most sorrowful days have been amongst our best? When the face is wreathed in smiles and we trip lightly over meadows bespangled with spring flowers, the heart is often running to waste.
The soul which is always blithe and gay misses the deepest life. It has its reward, and it is satisfied to its measure, though that measure is a very scanty one. But the heart is dwarfed; and the nature, which is capable of the highest heights, the deepest depths, is undeveloped; and life presently burns down to its socket without having known the resonance of the deepest chords of joy.
“Blessed are they that mourn.” Stars shine brightest in the long dark night of winter. The gentians show their fairest bloom amid almost inaccessible heights of snow and ice.
God’s promises seem to wait for the pressure of pain to trample out their richest juice as in a wine-press. Only those who have sorrowed know how tender is the “Man of Sorrows.”
—Selected.

Thou hast but little sunshine, but thy long glooms are wisely appointed thee; for perhaps a stretch of summer weather would have made thee as a parched land and barren wilderness. Thy Lord knows best, and He has the clouds and the sun at His disposal.—Selected.

“It is a gray day.” “Yes, but dinna ye see the patch of blue?”—Scotch Shoemaker.