Milo

April 13th

What to do under the conditions

Cast thy burden upon the Lord. Psalm 55:22.

We must distinguish between the burden-bearing that is right and the burden-bearing that is wrong. We ought never to bear the burden of sin or of doubt, but there are burdens placed on us by God which He does not intend to lift off, He wants us to roll them back on Him. “Cast that He hath given thee upon the Lord.” (R.V. marg.) If we undertake work for God and get out of touch with Him, the sense of responsibility will be overwhelmingly crushing; but if we roll back on God that which He has put upon us, He takes away the sense of responsibility by bringing in the realization of Himself.
Many workers have gone out with high courage and fine impulses, but with no intimate fellowship with Jesus Christ, and before long they are crushed. They do not know what to do with the burden, it produces weariness, and people say—‘What an embittered end to such a beginning!’
“Roll thy burden upon the Lord”—you have been bearing it all; deliberately put one end on the shoulders of God. “The government shall be upon His shoulder.” Commit to God “that He hath given thee”; not fling it off, but put it over on to Him and yourself with it, and the burden is lightened by the sense of companionship. Never dissociate yourself from the burden.

April 13

“And the hand of the Lord was there upon me; and he said unto me, Arise, go forth unto the plain, and I will there talk with thee.” (Ezek. 3:22)

DID you ever hear of any one being much used for Christ who did not have some special waiting time, some complete upset of all his or her plans first; from St. Paul’s being sent off into the desert of Arabia for three years, when he must have been boiling over with the glad tidings, down to the present day?

You were looking forward to telling about trusting Jesus in Syria; now He says, “I want you to show what it is to trust Me, without waiting for Syria.”

My own case is far less severe, but the same in principle, that when I thought the door was flung open for me to go with a bound into literary work, it is opposed, and doctor steps in and says, simply, “Never! She must choose between writing and living; she can’t do both.”

That was in 1860. Then I came out of the shell with “Ministry of Song” in 1869, and saw the evident wisdom of being kept waiting nine years in the shade. God’s love being unchangeable, He is just as loving when we do not see or feel His love. Also His love and His sovereignty are co-equal and universal; so He withholds the enjoyment and conscious progress because He knows best what will really ripen and further His work in us.—Memorials of Frances Ridley Havergal.

I laid it down in silence,
  This work of mine,
And took what had been sent me—
  A resting time.
The Master’s voice had called me
  To rest apart;
“Apart with Jesus only,”
  Echoed my heart.

I took the rest and stillness
  From His own Hand,
And felt this present illness
  Was what He planned.
How often we choose labor,
  When He says “Rest”—
Our ways are blind and crooked;
  His way is best.

The work Himself has given,
  He will complete.
There may be other errands
  For tired feet;
There may be other duties
  For tired hands,
The present, is obedience
  To His commands.

There is a blessed resting
  In lying still,
In letting His hand mould us,
  Just as He will.
His work must be completed.
  His lesson set;
He is the higher Workman:
  Do not forget!

It is not only “working.”
  We must be trained;
And Jesus “learnt” obedience,
  Through suffering gained.
For us, His yoke is easy,
  His burden light.
His discipline most needful,
  And all is right.

We are but under-workmen;
  They never choose
If this tool or if that one
  Their hands shall use.
In working or in waiting
  May we fulfill
Not ours at all, but only
  The Master’s will!

—Selected.

God provides resting places as well as working places. Rest, then, and be thankful when He brings you, wearied to a wayside well.

13 APRIL

Kingdoms shaken

‘For thus saith the LORD of hosts; Yet once, it is a little while, and I will shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land.’ Haggai 2:6
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Jeremiah 9:7–16

The effects of Messiah’s appearance: shaking the heavens and the earth. The prophecy was, in a measure, fulfilled literally: at his birth—a new star; at his death—the sun withdrew its shining, the earth quaked, the rocks rent, and the dead arose. In his life, he often suspended and overruled the usual laws of nature and exercised supreme power over the visible and invisible world. He shook the kingdom of darkness, spoiled principalities and powers. He shook the kingdoms of the earth—the idols trembled and disappeared before his gospel, till at length the Roman Empire renounced heathenism and embraced the Christian name. But the language of prophecy is highly figurative. Mountains and trees, land and water, sun and moon, heaven and earth, often signify nations, peoples and states. And particularly heaven and earth are used to denote the religious and political establishment of Israel—or, as we say, their constitution of Church and State. This, without doubt, is the primary sense here. The appearance of the Messiah shall be accompanied with the total dissolution of the Jewish economy. The whole of their Levitical institution was fulfilled, superseded and abrogated by the Messiah. Before he died he said, It is finished [John 19:30]; the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom. And in a few years the temple itself was destroyed and therefore their former worship rendered utterly impracticable. Their civil state likewise was dissolved, they were extirpated from the promised land and sifted as with a sieve among all nations. Though in one view they are preserved a distinct people, in another view they are not a people—having neither settlement nor government, but living dispersed as strangers and foreigners among the nations (Hosea 3:4).

FOR MEDITATION: Nothing like this ever happened to any people. It is a striking, obvious and perpetual proof of the truth of the Scriptures. What was foretold by Moses and the succeeding prophets, is fulfilled to a demonstration in our eyes. How unlikely that it should be so, yet it must be so because the mouth of the Lord had spoken it.

SERMON SERIES: MESSIAH, NO. 3 [4/5], HAGGAI 2:6–7

April 12th

Moral dominion

Death hath no more dominion over Him … in that He liveth, He liveth unto God. Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God. Romans 6:9–11 .

Co-Eternal Life. Eternal life was the life which Jesus Christ exhibited on the human plane, and it is the same life, not a copy of it, which is manifested in our mortal flesh when we are born of God. Eternal life is not a gift from God, eternal life is the gift of God. The energy and the power which were manifested in Jesus will be manifested in us by the sheer sovereign grace of God when once we have made the moral decision about sin.
“Ye shall receive the power of the Holy Ghost”—not power as a gift from the Holy Ghost; the power is the Holy Ghost, not something which He imparts. The life that was in Jesus is made ours by means of his Cross when once we make the decision to be identified with Him. If it is difficult to get right with God, it is because we will not decide definitely about sin. Immediately we do decide, the full life of God comes in. Jesus came to give us endless supplies of life: “that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.” Eternal Life has nothing to do with Time, it is the life which Jesus lived when He was down here. The only source of Life is the Lord Jesus Christ.
The weakest saint can experience the power of the Deity of the Son of God if once he is willing to ‘let go.’ Any strand of our own energy in ourselves will blur the life of Jesus. We have to keep letting go, and slowly and surely the great full life of God will invade us in every part, and men will take knowledge of us that we have been with Jesus.

April 12

“And Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost returned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, being forty days tempted of the devil.” (Luke 4:1, 2)

JESUS was full of the Holy Ghost, and yet He was tempted. Temptation often comes upon a man with its strongest power when he is nearest to God. As someone has said, “The devil aims high.” He got one apostle to say he did not even know Christ.

Very few men have such conflicts with the devil as Martin Luther had. Why? Because Martin Luther was going to shake the very kingdom of hell. Oh, what conflicts John Bunyan had!

If a man has much of the Spirit of God, he will have great conflicts with the tempter. God permits temptation because it does for us what the storms do for the oaks—it roots us; and what the fire does for the paintings on the porcelain—it makes them permanent.

You never know that you have a grip on Christ, or that He has a grip on you, as well as when the devil is using all his force to attract you from Him; then you feel the pull of Christ’s right hand.—Selected.

Extraordinary afflictions are not always the punishment of extraordinary sins, but sometimes the trial of extraordinary graces. God hath many sharp-cutting instruments, and rough files for the polishing of His jewels; and those He especially loves, and means to make the most resplendent, He hath oftenest His tools upon.—Archbishop Leighton.

I bear my willing witness that I owe more to the fire, and the hammer, and the file, than to anything else in my Lord’s workshop. I sometimes question whether I have ever learned anything except through the rod. When my schoolroom is darkened, I see most.—C. H. Spurgeon.