Milo

May 20th

The realm of the real

In your patience possess ye your souls. Luke 21:19.

When a man is born again, there is not the same robustness in his thinking or reasoning for a time as formerly. We have to make an expression of the new life, to form the mind of Christ. “Acquire your soul with patience.” Many of us prefer to stay at the threshold of the Christian life instead of going on to construct a soul in accordance with the new life God has put within. We fail because we are ignorant of the way we are made, we put things down to the devil instead of our own undisciplined natures. Think what we can be when we are roused!
There are certain things we must not pray about—moods, for instance. Moods never go by praying, moods go by kicking. A mood nearly always has its seat in the physical condition, not in the moral: It is a continual effort not to listen to the moods which arise from a physical condition; never submit to them for a second. We have to take ourselves by the scruff of the neck and shake ourselves, and we will find that we can do what we said we could not. The curse with most of us is that we won’t. The Christian life is one of incarnate spiritual pluck.

May 20

“Shall I refuse to drink the cup of sorrow which the Father has given me to drink?” (John 18:11.) (Weymouth.)

GOD takes a thousand times more pains with us than the artist with his picture, by many touches of sorrow, and by many colors of circumstance, to bring us into the form which is the highest and noblest in His sight, if only we receive His gifts of myrrh in the right spirit.
But when the cup is put away, and these feelings are stifled or unheeded, a greater injury is done to the soul that can ever be amended. For no heart can conceive in what surpassing love God giveth us this myrrh; yet this which we ought to receive to our souls’ good we suffer to pass by us in our sleepy indifference, and nothing comes of it.
Then we come and complain: “Alas, Lord! I am so dry, and it is so dark within me!” I tell thee, dear child, open thy heart to the pain, and it will do thee more good than if thou wert full of feeling and devoutness.—Tauler.

“The cry of man’s anguish went up to God,
‘Lord take away pain:
The shadow that darkens the world Thou hast made,
The close-coiling chain
That strangles the heart, the burden that weighs
On the wings that would soar,
Lord, take away pain from the world Thou hast made,
That it love Thee the more.’

“Then answered the Lord to the cry of His world:
‘Shall I take away pain,
And with it the power of the soul to endure,
Made strong by the strain?
Shall I take away pity, that knits heart to heart
And sacrifice high?
Will ye lose all your heroes that lift from the fire
White brows to the sky?
Shall I take away love that redeems with a price
And smiles at its loss?
Can ye spare from your lives that would climb unto Me
The Christ on His cross?”

20 MAY

The call of God

‘Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will show thee.’ Genesis 12:1
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Hebrews 11:8–16

The command was to leave his family and country and to go to an unknown land which God would show him. The calling of Abraham is supposed to have been less than 400 years after the flood. In this space of time it seems the knowledge of God was again almost lost upon the earth, and Abraham’s family, as well as others, was sinking into idolatry. The Lord was now about to fulfil his purpose of selecting a particular people to himself, by whom he would be known and worshipped, and amongst whom the types and prophecies concerning the Messiah should be revealed and perpetuated till, in the fullness of time, the Messiah should come of that nation, to be a light and salvation to the ends of the earth. He who has a right to do what he will with his own, as the potter over the clay, chose Abraham to be the head and origin of this nation, and marked out, long before they were a people, the land in which they should be fixed. And in the meanwhile he permitted, by his providence, that the land allotted to his own people should be settled by that branch of Noah’s family who, at his appointed season, should be cut off for their wickedness, and thereby make room for Abraham’s posterity. Thus Abraham is to be considered in a twofold light: as a public person—the head of the Israel of God—and likewise personally as a believer, and a pattern of the life of faith.
FOR MEDITATION:
If he his will reveal,
His saints should stand prepared
Let us obey his call;
In duty’s path to run;
And think whate’er the flesh may feel,
Nor count their greatest trials hard,
His love deserves our all.
So that his will be done.

We should maintain in view
With JESUS for our guide,
His glory, as our end;
The path is safe though rough
Too much we cannot bear, or do,
The promise says, ‘I will provide’,
For such a matchless friend.
And faith replies, ‘Enough!’

SERMON SERIES: GENESIS, NO. 22 [1/3], GENESIS 12:1ff.

May 19th

“Out of the wreck I rise”

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Romans 8:35.

God does not keep a man immune from trouble; He says—“I will be with him in trouble.” It does not matter what actual troubles in the most extreme form get hold of a man’s life, not one of them can separate him from his relationship to God. We are “more than conquerors in all these things.” Paul is not talking of imaginary things, but of things that are desperately actual; and he says we are super-victors in the midst of them, not by our ingenuity, or by our courage, or by anything other than the fact that not one of them affects our relationship to God in Jesus Christ. Rightly or wrongly, we are where we are, exactly in the condition we are in. I am sorry for the Christian who has not something in his circumstances he wishes was not there.
“Shall tribulation …?” Tribulation is never a noble thing; but let tribulation be what it may—exhausting, galling, fatiguing, it is not able to separate us from the love of God. Never let cares or tribulations separate you from the fact that God loves you.
“Shall anguish …?”—can God’s love hold when everything says that His love is a lie, and that there is no such thing as justice?
“Shall famine …?”—can we not only believe in the love of God but be more than conquerors, even while we are being starved?
Either Jesus Christ is a deceiver and Paul is deluded, or some extraordinary thing happens to a man who holds on to the love of God when the odds are all against God’s character. Logic is silenced in the face of every one of these things. Only one thing can account for it—the love of God in Christ Jesus. “Out of the wreck I rise” every time.

May 19

“And it came to pass, before he had done speaking … and he said, Blessed be Jehovah … who hath not forsaken his lovingkindness and his truth.” (Gen. 24:15, 27.)

EVERY right prayer is answered before the prayer itself is finished—before we have “done speaking.” This is because God has pledged His Word to us that whatsoever we ask in Christ’s name (that is, in oneness with Christ and His will) and in faith, shall be done.
As God’s Word cannot fail, whenever we meet those simple conditions in prayer, the answer to our prayer has been granted and completed in Heaven as we pray, even though its showing forth on earth may not occur until long afterward.
So it is well to close every prayer with praise to God for the answer that He has already granted; He who never forsakes His loving-kindness and His truth. (See Daniel 9:20––27 and 10:12.)—Messages for the Morning Watch.
When we believe for a blessing, we must take the attitude of faith; and begin to act and pray as if we had the blessing. We must treat God as if He had given us our request. We must lean our weight over upon Him for the thing that we have claimed, and just take it for granted that He gives it, and is going to continue to give it. This is the attitude of trust.

When the wife is married, she at once falls into a new attitude, and acts in accordance with the fact; and so when we take Christ as our Savior, as our Sanctifier, as our Healer, or as our Deliverer, He expects us to fall into the attitude of recognizing Him in the capacity that we have claimed, and expect Him to be to us all that we have trusted Him for.—Selected.

“The thing I ask when God doth bid me pray,
Begins in that same act to come my way.”