Milo

May 13

“We know not what we should pray for as we ought.”
(Rom. 8:26)

MUCH that perplexes us in our Christian experience is but the answer to our prayers. We pray for patience, and our Father sends those who tax us to the utmost; for “tribulation worketh patience.”
We pray for submission, and God sends sufferings; for “we learn obedience by the things we suffer.”
We pray for unselfishness, and God gives us opportunities to sacrifice ourselves by thinking on the things of others, and by laying down our lives for the brethren.
We pray for strength and humility, and some messenger of Satan torments us until we lie in the dust crying for its removal.
We pray, “Lord, increase our faith,” and money takes wings; or the children are alarmingly ill; or a servant comes who is careless, extravagant, untidy or slow, or some hitherto unknown trial calls for an increase of faith along a line where we have not needed to exercise much faith before.
We pray for the Lamb-life, and are given a portion of lowly service, or we are injured and must seek no redress; for “he was led as a lamb to the slaughter and … opened not his mouth.”

We pray for gentleness, and there comes a perfect storm of temptation to harshness and irritability. We pray for quietness, and every nerve is strung to the utmost tension, so that looking to Him we may learn that when He giveth quietness, no one can make trouble.
We pray for love, and God sends peculiar suffering and puts us with apparently unlovely people, and lets them say things which rasp the nerves and lacerate the heart; for love suffereth long and is kind, love is not impolite, love is not provoked. LOVE BEARETH ALL THINGS, believeth, hopeth and endureth, love never faileth. We pray for likeness to Jesus, and the answer is, “I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction.” “Can thine heart endure, or can thine hands be strong?” “Are ye able?”
The way to peace and victory is to accept every circumstance, every trial, straight from the hand of a loving Father; and to live up in the heavenly places, above the clouds, in the very presence of the Throne, and to look down from the Glory upon our environment as lovingly and divinely appointed.—Selected.

I prayed for strength, and then I lost awhile
  All sense of nearness, human and divine;
The love I leaned on failed and pierced my heart,
  The hands I clung to loosed themselves from mine;
But while I swayed, weak, trembling, and alone,
The everlasting arms upheld my own.

I prayed for light; the sun went down in clouds,
  The moon was darkened by a misty doubt,
The stars of heaven were dimmed by earthly fears,
  And all my little candle flames burned out;
But while I sat in shadow, wrapped in night,
The face of Christ made all the darkness bright.

I prayed for peace, and dreamed of restful ease,
  A slumber drugged from pain, a hushed repose;
Above my head the skies were black with storm,
  And fiercer grew the onslaught of my foes;
But while the battle raged, and wild winds blew,
I heard His voice and perfect peace I knew.

I thank Thee, Lord, Thou wert too wise to heed.
  My feeble prayers, and answer as I sought,
Since these rich gifts Thy bounty has bestowed
  Have brought me more than all I asked or thought;
Giver of good, so answer each request
With Thine own giving, better than my best.

—Annie Johnson Flint.

13 MAY (PREACHED 1770)

The true meaning of Scripture

‘And, behold, there talked with him two men, which were Moses and Elijah: who appeared in glory, and spake of his decease which he should accomplish at Jerusalem.’ Luke 9:30–31
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: 1 Corinthians 1:17–31

Why were there any witnesses summoned from the heavenly world? Why saints rather than angels? Why only two? And why these two, preferable to the cloud of witnesses who had lived upon earth? Some of these questions are perhaps best referred to the divine will. God does not see fit to acquaint us with all the reasons of his proceedings. We may safely rest in a persuasion that all his appointments are wise and expedient, and hereafter, perhaps, we shall clearly know what at present is not revealed. To give the disciples and to give us, from their testimony, a confirmation that there is a blessed state beyond the present life, two persons who had once been partakers of our afflictions and infirmities, now appeared with Jesus in glory. I know not that there is any stress to be laid upon the number two. These two were selected, and we may observe concerning Moses and Elijah, their resemblance. There had been a resemblance in several parts of their history, in which they had been particularly differenced from all other servants of God. Both had seen the glory of God in the Mount, both had been supernaturally sustained without food, forty days and nights. Both had been eminent instruments in their day. By Moses the law had been given—by Elijah the knowledge and practice of it had been restored in a very degenerate time. The Scriptures which were then known, were generally summarized by two sections—the law and the prophets. Moses the lawgiver and Elijah as a representative of the prophets appeared, to signify that all that was written in the law and the prophets terminated in Jesus. The Jews professed a great regard to the writings of Moses and the prophets, yet they rejected their testimony in favour of Christ. The disciples, by this interview, were convinced how little their professed teachers knew of the true meaning of the Scriptures.

FOR MEDITATION: ‘And he said unto them … all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me. Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the Scriptures’ (Luke 24:44–45).

SERMON SERIES: ON THE TRANSFIGURATION, NO. 5 [1/3], LUKE 9:30–31

May 12th

Make a habit of having no habits

For if these things are yours and abound, they make you to be not idle nor unfruitful. 2 Peter 1:8 (R.V.).

When we begin to form a habit we are conscious of it. There are times when we are conscious of becoming virtuous and patient and godly, but it is only a stage; if we stop there we shall get the strut of the spiritual prig. The right thing to do with habits is to lose them in the life of the Lord, until every habit is so practised that there is no conscious habit at all. Our spiritual life continually resolves into introspection because there are some qualities we have not added as yet. Ultimately the relationship is to be a completely simple one.
Your god may be your little Christian habit, the habit of prayer at stated times, or the habit of Bible reading. Watch how your Father will upset those times if you begin to worship your habit instead of what the habit symbolizes—‘I can’t do that just now, I am praying; it is my hour with God.’ No, it is your hour with your habit. There is a quality that is lacking in you. Recognize the defect, and then look for the opportunity of exercising yourself along the line of the quality to be added.
Love means that there is no habit visible, you have come to the place where the habit is lost, and by practice you do the thing unconsciously. If you are consciously holy, there are certain things you imagine you cannot do, certain relationships in which you are far from simple; that means there is something to be added. The only supernatural life is the life the Lord Jesus lived, and He was at home with God anywhere. Is there anywhere where you are not at home with God? Let God press through in that particular circumstance until you gain Him, and life becomes the simple life of a child.

May 12

“All things are possible to him that believeth.”
(Mark 9:23)

THE “all things” do not always come simply for the asking, for the reason that God is ever seeking to teach us the way of faith, and in our training in the faith life there must be room for the trial of faith, the discipline of faith, the patience of faith, the courage of faith, and often many stages are passed before we really realize what is the end of faith, namely, the victory of faith.
Real moral fibre is developed through discipline of faith. You have made your request of God, but the answer does not come. What are you to do?
Keep on believing God’s Word; never be moved away from it by what you see or feel, and thus as you stand steady, enlarged power and experience is being developed. The fact of looking at the apparent contradiction as to God’s Word and being unmoved from your position of faith make you stronger on every other line.
Often God delays purposely, and the delay is just as much an answer to your prayer as is the fulfillment when it comes.
In the lives of all the great Bible characters, God worked thus. Abraham, Moses and Elijah were not great in the beginning, but were made great through the discipline of their faith, and only thus were they fitted for the positions to which God had called them.
For example, in the case of Joseph whom the Lord was training for the throne of Egypt, we read in the Psalms:
“The word of the Lord tried him.” It was not the prison life with its hard beds or poor food that tried him, but it was the word God had spoken into his heart in the early years concerning elevation and honor which were greater than his brethren were to receive; it was this which was ever before him, when every step in his career made it seem more and more impossible of fulfillment, until he was there imprisoned, and all in innocency, while others who were perhaps justly incarcerated, were released, and he was left to languish alone.
These were hours that tried his soul, but hours of spiritual growth and development, that, “when his word came” (the word of release), found him fitted for the delicate task of dealing with his wayward brethren, with a love and patience only surpassed by God Himself.
No amount of persecution tries like such experiences as these. When God has spoken of His purpose to do, and yet the days go on and He does not do it, that is truly hard; but it is a discipline of faith that will bring us into a knowledge of God which would otherwise be impossible.

12 MAY

Stand fast in the battle

‘And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.… And Adam called his wife’s name Eve; because she was the mother of all living. Unto Adam also and to his wife did the LORD God make coats of skins, and clothed them.’ Genesis 3:15, 20–21
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Exodus 14:10–31

Notice two things that follow in the chapter:
(i) an intimation of Adam’s faith in this promise, in the name he gave his wife (verse 20). He called her Eve, which is derived from a word signifying life. The reason is given: because, in her seed, the true life, the dead in sin should live to God and thus she was to be the mother of all living.
(ii) the seal of this promise on the Lord’s part—clothing them with skins—the skins, without doubt, of beasts slain for sacrifice and thus I doubt not the imputation of the righteousness of the great sacrifice was typically set forth to their faith.
We may preach the gospel to poor sinners. Jesus is here revealed as set apart of God from the beginning to destroy the works of the devil. Believe in him and you shall be saved. We may remind believers of the nature of their calling—think not of stable peace and rest here—the serpent and his seed are in close conspiracy against you; pray therefore for the whole armour of God that you may stand fast in the evil day.
FOR MEDITATION:
Begone unbelief,
Why should I complain
My Saviour is near,
Of want or distress,
And for my relief
Temptation or pain?
Will surely appear:
He told me no less:
By prayer let me wrestle,
By prayer let me wrestle,
By prayer let me wrestle,
The heirs of salvation,
And he will perform,
I know from his Word,
With CHRIST in the vessel,
Through much tribulation
I smile at the storm.
Must follow their LORD.

SERMON SERIES: GENESIS, NO. 10 [4/4], GENESIS 3:15