Milo

April 9th

Have I seen Him?

After that He appeared in another form unto two of them. Mark 16:12.

Being saved and seeing Jesus are not the same thing. Many are partakers of God’s grace who have never seen Jesus. When once you have seen Jesus, you can never be the same, other things do not appeal as they used to do:
Always distinguish between what you see Jesus to be, and what He has done for you. If you only know what He has done for you, you have not a big enough God; but if you have had a vision of Jesus as He is, experiences can come and go, you will endure, “as seeing Him Who is invisible.” The man blind from his birth did not know Who Jesus was until He appeared and revealed Himself to him. Jesus appears to those for whom he has done something; but we cannot dictate when He will come. Suddenly at any turn He may come—‘Now I see Him!’
Jesus must appear to your friend as well as to you; no one can see Jesus with your eyes. Severance takes place where one and not the other has seen Jesus. You cannot bring your friend unless God brings him. Have you seen Jesus? Then you will want others to see Him too. “And they went and told it unto the residue, neither believed they them.” You must tell, although they do not believe.

‘O could I tell, ye surely would believe it!
O could I only say what I have seen!
How should I tell or how can ye receive it,
How, till He bringeth you where I have been?’

April 9

“All these things are against me.” (Gen. 42:36.) “All things work together for good to them that love God.” (Rom. 8:28)

MANY people are wanting power. Now how is power produced? The other day we passed the great works where the trolley engines are supplied with electricity. We heard the hum and roar of the countless wheels, and we asked our friend,

“How do they make the power?”

“Why,” he said, “just by the revolution of those wheels and the friction they produce. The rubbing creates the electric current.”

And so, when God wants to bring more power into your life, He brings more pressure. He is generating spiritual force by hard rubbing. Some do not like it and try to run away from the pressure, instead of getting the power and using it to rise above the painful causes.

Opposition is essential to a true equilibrium of forces. The centripetal and centrifugal forces acting in opposition to each other keep our planet in her orbit. The one propelling, and the other repelling, so act and re-act, that instead of sweeping off into space in a pathway of desolation, she pursues her even orbit around her solar centre.

So God guides our lives. It is not enough to have an impelling force—we need just as much a repelling force, and so He holds us back by the testing ordeals of life, by the pressure of temptation and trial, by the things that seem against us, but really are furthering our way and establishing our goings.

Let us thank Him for both, let us take the weights as well as the wings, and thus divinely impelled, let us press on with faith and patience in our high and heavenly calling.
—A. B. Simpson.
In a factory building there are wheels and gearings,
There are cranks and pulleys, beltings tight or slack—
Some are whirling swiftly, some are turning slowly,
Some are thrusting forward, some are pulling back;
Some are smooth and silent, some are rough and noisy,
Pounding, rattling, clanking, moving with a jerk;

In a wild confusion in a seeming chaos,
Lifting, pushing, driving—but they do their work.
From the mightiest lever to the tiniest pinion,
All things move together for the purpose planned;
And behind the working is a mind controlling,
And a force directing, and a guiding hand.

So all things are working for the Lord’s beloved;
Some things might be hurtful if alone they stood;
Some might seem to hinder; some might draw us backward;
But they work together, and they work for good,
All the thwarted longings, all the stern denials,
All the contradictions, hard to understand.
And the force that holds them, speeds them and retards them,
Stops and starts and guides them—is our Father’s hand.
—Annie Johnson Flint.

9 APRIL

His name like ointment

‘Thy name is as ointment poured forth.’ Song of Solomon 1:3
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Luke 10:29–37

This name is compared to ointment. These were more frequent in use, and many of more costly composition, than common amongst us.
Some were healing, applied to wounds and bruises and putrefying sores. Now the sinner, when he is awakened and comes to himself, finds himself like the man (Luke 10) stripped and wounded and half dead. Jesus, like the good Samaritan, comes with an eye of pity to pour in the ointment of his name. This is a certain and the only cure for the wounds of sin. Many can witness to this. How, when they began to feel their misery and see their danger, they made use of many means, but found them all physicians of no value. Like the woman in the Gospel, when they had spent all their time and strength in this way, they were no better but rather grew worse. But this ointment made them whole.
Some were cordial and reviving. The believing soul is subject to fainting—it has but little strength and meets many discouragements—but is relieved from time to time by the good savour of this ointment. The name of Christ refreshes it with new strength under the remains of sin, assaults of Satan and troubles of life.

FOR MEDITATION: O the name of Jesus—indeed it is as ointment poured forth.
[John Newton to Thomas Haweis, Liverpool, May 1763]

How sweet the name of JESUS sounds
It makes the wounded spirit whole,
In a believer’s ear!
And calms the troubled breast;
It soothes his sorrows, heals his wounds,
’Tis manna to the hungry soul,
And drives away his fear.
And to the weary rest.

SERMON: SONG OF SOLOMON 1:3 [2/5]

April 8th

His resurrection destiny

Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into His glory? Luke 24:26.

Our Lord’s Cross is the gateway into His life: His Resurrection means that He has power now to convey His life to me. When I am born again from above, I receive from the risen Lord His very life.
Our Lord’s Resurrection destiny is to bring “many sons unto glory.” The fulfilling of His destiny gives Him the right to make us sons and daughters of God. We are never in the relationship to God that the Son of God is in; but we are brought by the Son into the relation of sonship. When Our Lord rose from the dead, He rose to an absolutely new life, to a life He did not live before He was incarnate. He rose to a life that had never been before; and His resurrection means for us that we are raised to His risen life, not to our old life. One day we shall have a body like unto His glorious body, but we can know now the efficacy of His resurrection and walk in newness of life. “I would know Him in the power of His resurrection.”
“As Thou hast given Him power over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as Thou hast given Him.” “Holy Spirit” is the experimental name for Eternal Life working in human beings here and now. The Holy Spirit is the Deity in proceeding power Who applies the Atonement to our experience. Thank God it is gloriously and majestically true that the Holy Ghost can work in us the very nature of Jesus if we will obey Him.

April 8

“Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ’s sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong.” (2 Cor. 12:10)

THE literal translation of this verse gives a startling emphasis to it, and makes it speak for itself with a force that we have probably never realized. Here it is: “Therefore I take pleasure in being without strength, in insults, in being pinched, in being chased about, in being cooped up in a corner for Christ’s sake; for when I am without strength, then am I dynamite.”

Here is the secret of Divine all-sufficiency, to come to the end of everything in ourselves and in our circumstances. When we reach this place, we will stop asking for sympathy because of our hard situation or bad treatment, for we will recognize these things as the very conditions of our blessing, and we will turn from them to God and find in them a claim upon Him.
—A. B. Simpson.

George Matheson, the well-known blind preacher of Scotland, who recently went to be with the Lord, said: “My God, I have never thanked Thee for my thorn. I have thanked Thee a thousand times for my roses, but not once for my thorn. I have been looking forward to a world where I shall get compensation for my cross; but I have never thought of my cross as itself a present glory.

“Teach me the glory of my cross; teach me the value of my thorn. Show me that I have climbed to Thee by the path of pain. Show me that my tears have made my rainbows.”

“Alas for him who never sees
The stars shine through the cypress trees.”