Milo

March 21st

Interest or identification?

I have been crucified with Christ. Gal. 2:20.

The imperative need spiritually is to sign the death-warrant of the disposition of sin, to turn all emotional impressions and intellectual beliefs into a moral verdict against the disposition of sin, viz., my claim to my right to myself. Paul says—“I have been crucified with Christ”; he does not say, ‘I have determined to imitate Jesus Christ,’ or, ‘I will endeavour to follow Him,’ but, ‘I have been identified with Him in His death.’ When I come to such a moral decision and act upon it, then all that Christ wrought for me on the Cross is wrought in me. The free committal of myself to God gives the Holy Spirit the chance to impart to me the holiness of Jesus Christ.
“… nevertheless I live …” The individuality remains, but the mainspring, the ruling disposition, is radically altered. The same human body remains, but the old satanic right to myself is destroyed.
“And the life which I now live in the flesh …,” not the life which I long to live and pray to live, but the life I now live in my mortal flesh, the life which men can see, “I live by the faith of the Son of God.” This faith is not Paul’s faith in Jesus Christ, but the faith that the Son of God has imparted to him—“the faith of the Son of God.” It is no longer faith in faith, but faith which has overleapt all conscious bounds, the identical faith of the Son of God.

March 22

“And when forty years were expired, there appeared to him in the wilderness of Mount Sinai an angel of the Lord in a flame of fire in a bush … saying … I have seen the affliction of my people which is in Egypt, and I have heard their groaning, and am come down to deliver them. And now come, I will send thee into Egypt.” (Acts 7:30, 32, 34)

THAT was a long wait in preparation for a great mission. When God delays, He is not inactive. He is getting ready His instruments, He is ripening our powers; and at the appointed moment we shall arise equal to our task. Even Jesus of Nazareth was thirty years in privacy, growing in wisdom before He began His work.—Dr. Jowett.

God is never in a hurry but spends years with those He expects to greatly use. He never thinks the days of preparation too long or too dull.

The hardest ingredient in suffering is often time. A short, sharp pang is easily borne, but when a sorrow drags its weary way through long, monotonous years, and day after day returns with the same dull routine of hopeless agony, the heart loses its strength, and without the grace of God, is sure to sink into the very sullenness of despair. Joseph’s was a long trial, and God often has to burn His lessons into the depths of our being by the fires of protracted pain. “He shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver,” but He knows how long, and like a true goldsmith He stops the fires the moment He sees His image in the glowing metal. We may not see now the outcome of the beautiful plan which God is hiding in the shadow of His hand; it yet may be long concealed; but faith may be sure that He is sitting on the throne, calmly waiting the hour when, with adoring rapture, we shall say, “All things have worked together for good.” Like Joseph, let us be more careful to learn all the lessons in the school of sorrow than we are anxious for the hour of deliverance. There is a “need-be” for every lesson, and when we are ready, our deliverance will surely come, and we shall find that we could not have stood in our place of higher service without the very things that were taught us in the ordeal. God is educating us for the future, for higher service and nobler blessings; and if we have the qualities that fit us for a throne, nothing can keep us from it when God’s time has come. Don’t steal tomorrow out of God’s hands. Give God time to speak to you and reveal His will. He is never too late; learn to wait.—Selected.

“He never comes too late; He knoweth what is best;
Vex not thyself in vain; until He cometh—REST.”

Do not run impetuously before the Lord; learn to wait His time: the minute-hand as well as the hour-hand must point the exact moment for action.

March 21

“According to your faith be it unto you.” (Matt. 9:29)

PRAYING through” might be defined as praying one’s way into full faith, emerging while yet praying into the assurance that one has been accepted and heard, so that one becomes actually aware of receiving, by firmest anticipation and in advance of the event, the thing for which he asks.
Let us remember that no earthly circumstances can hinder the fulfillment of His Word if we look steadfastly at the immutability of that Word and not at the uncertainty of this ever-changing world. God would have us believe His Word without other confirmation, and then He is ready to give us “according to our faith.”

When once His Word is past,
  When He hath said, ‘I will,’ (Heb. 13:5)
The thing shall come at last;
  God keeps His promise still.” (2 Cor. 1:20)

The prayer of the Pentecostal age was like a cheque to be paid in coin over the counter.—Sir R. Anderson.

“And God said … and it was so.” (Gen. 1:9)

22 MARCH (PREACHED 21 MARCH 1773)

The chief sinner

‘Howbeit for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might show forth all longsuffering, for a pattern to them which should hereafter believe on him to life everlasting.’ 1 Timothy 1:16
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: 3 John 1–14

The Lord in showing mercy to Paul had a farther view than to himself. He designed him to stand as a pattern how he would deal with others. Had all the apostles and ministers been like Nathaniel, they might have preached the gospel, but could not have been such striking instances of its power, as Paul and those who, like him, have been stopped and changed in the height of open rebellion.
The words in me first should rather be in me the chief—the expression is the same as in the former verse—a pattern of patience to sinners should be taken from a chief sinner. But how is it he says, I obtained mercy because I did it ignorantly? It should seem then that he was not the chief—his ignorance and unbelief were some excuse. But surely the Apostle could not mean to lessen his faults—this ignorance was wilful, his unbelief obstinacy, he had means of being informed. It can only mean that he did not act against the conviction of his conscience that Jesus was the Christ. This makes a great difference between common sinners and apostates; those who have felt the power of the Word of God, and afterwards absolutely renounce the gospel are in a deplorable condition indeed. This Paul who is a pattern of longsuffering to others, tells us that it is impossible to renew them to repentance. Ignorance and unbelief when the means of grace are afforded is an aggravation of sin rather [than] an excuse. However, the case of Paul is left to assure us that the state of such is not yet desperate. I likewise sinned with a high hand and against great advantages and warnings, yet I stand here this day to tell other sinners there is forgiveness with him.

FOR MEDITATION: How wonderful the mercy I then received, how wonderful the mercies that led to it. What rich various accumulated mercies have followed it. And yet, alas, what a poor unprofitable servant I am still. O Lord, poor as I am, I am thine; thou hast chosen, called, accepted me and made me willing and desirous to devote myself to thee. Confirm thine own good work and keep me near to thyself. Diary, 21 March 1773

SERMON: 1 TIMOTHY 1:16 [2/4]

St Columb’s Cathedral in the walled city of Derry, Northern Ireland, is the cathedral church and episcopal see of the Church of Ireland’s Diocese of Derry and Raphoe. It is also the parish church of Templemore. It is dedicated to Saint Columba, the Irish monk who established a Christian settlement in the area before being exiled from Ireland and introducing Christianity to Scotland and northern England. Built after the Reformation in Ireland, St Columb’s is the first Anglican cathedral to have been built in the British Isles after the Reformation and was the first non-Roman Catholic cathedral to be built in Western Europe.