The most notorious false prophet in the world is the vain hope, which men take up for their salvation. It prophesies peace, pardon, and heaven as the portion of one who was never God’s heir. But the day is coming, and soon, when this false prophet will be confounded. Then the hypocrite will confess he never had any real hope for salvation except an idol of his own imagination; and the religious man will throw off his profession, by which he deceived himself, and appear naked in his sinfulness. It is enough to make us carefully search our own hearts and find out what our hope is built upon.
Now hope of the right kind is well grounded. “Be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you” (1 Peter 3:15). All Christians, no matter how weak, have grounded their hearts in Scripture for the hope they profess. What entitles you to inherit God’s kingdom without a promise from Him? If someone should say that your house and land was his, would you give him your property just because he demanded it? Yet many hope to be saved who can give no better reason than this.
Just as a saint conquers fear by asking his soul why it is disquieted, a similar question can throw the bold sinner from his prancing hopes. “What reason do you find in the whole Bible for you to hope for salvation, when you live in the ignorance of God?” Certainly his soul would be as speechless as the man without the wedding garment was at Christ’s question. This is why some dare not let themselves think about salvation—they know this thought would make a disturbance in their conscience that will not be stilled quickly. Or if they do ask, it would be like Pilate, who asked Christ what was truth but had no intention of waiting for His answer.
—William Gurnall
We need prayer from a person for a person. Scripture and God’s spirit teach us to pray for all society, for the Church with which we are associated, for nations, and for special spheres of work. Most needful and blessed. But somehow more is needed—to take of those with whom we come into contact, one by one, and make them the subjects of our intercession. The larger supplications must have their place, but it is difficult to know when our prayers are answered. But nothing will bring God so near, will test and strengthen our faith, and make us know we are fellow workers with God, as when we receive an answer to our prayers for individuals. It will quicken in us the new and blessed consciousness that we indeed have power with God. Let every worker seek to exercise this grace of taking up and praying for individual souls.
Count upon an answer. He shall ask, and God will give him (the one who prays) life. The words follow on those in which John had spoken about the confidence we have of being heard, if we ask anything according to His will. There is often complaint made of not knowing God’s will. But here there is no difficulty. ‘He willeth that all men should be saved.’ If we rest our faith on this will of God, we shall grow strong and grasp the promise. ‘He should pray and God will give him life.’ The Holy Spirit will lead us, if we yield ourselves to be led by Him, to the souls God would have us take as our special care, and for which the grace of faith and persevering prayer will be given us. Let the wonderful promise: God will give him life, stir us and encourage us to our priestly ministry of personal and definite intercession, as one of the most blessed among the good works in which we can serve God and man. Praying and working are inseparable.
Let all who work learn to pray well. Let all who pray learn to work well.
—Andrew Murray
The sinner who is thoroughly convicted by the Spirit sees himself like a condemned prisoner held by so many irons that escape is impossible. It is not their disease but their physician that kills sinners. They think to cure themselves; and this deception leaves them incurable. If you cling to the self-confidence of repentance and reformation, they will betray you into the hands of God’s justice and wrath. But if you have turned away from this religious self-confidence, you have escaped one of the finest snares that the wit of hell can weave.
Not only is the convicted sinner so convicted that he knows he is helpless, but he welcomes the full provision laid up in Christ for him. And this attitude is necessary prior to faith. Without it the soul convicted of sin is more likely to go to the gallows with Judas, or fall on the sword of the law, than to run to Christ.
The Spirit powerfully but sweetly renovates the rebellious will so it can deliberately choose Christ as Lord and Savior. During a storm a person may run under an enemy’s shelter he would not have even glanced at in fair weather. Do you take pleasure in choosing Christ? Do you go to Him not only for safety but also for delight? As the lover said of her bridegroom, “I sat down under his shadow with great delight” (Song of Songs 2:3). This must be a deliberate choice; wherein the soul seriously weighs the covenant Christ offers and then chooses Him. Even when Naomi spoke the worst she could to discourage her daughter-in-law, Ruth enjoyed her mother’s company too much to give it up regardless of the potential hardships involved in her decision.
—William Gurnall
Never shall I forget how it was with our Sister Claudia. Only thirty-five years old, bubbling over with life, never sick, filled with a contagious joy and a fervent love for Jesus, she was suddenly afflicted with a severe blood disease during her ministry in Italy. She returned to the Mother House and was then sent to a specialist clinic. A few days later we heard that there was nothing more the doctors could do for Sister Claudia. Her days were numbered. We were filled with apprehension at having to break the news to her. But what did Mother Martyria and I experience when we entered her sickroom? (Actually she already knew especially after a hint from the doctor.) She looked up at us with a radiant smile that was not of this world. The Lord Jesus had come to greet her and the glory of heaven rested on her features. It had happened during her return trip from Rome, as she recorded in her diary:
“The plane flew towards the sun. All at once it seemed to me as though the Lord Jesus were asking me, ‘And if this illness should lead to death?’ O Jesus, in this moment You have filled my heart with such infinite longing that I can scarcely restrain the surging joy, soon, to see You, soon, soon to embrace You! Will this flight home be a flight into the arms of my Lord? Will it be the bridal flight for me?”
It is incomprehensible that the suffering cause by fear of death can be changed into the most blissful and heavenly joy. What a wonderful God we have! What miracles He works, transforming deepest suffering into supreme joy! Death brings us home to God and His kingdom of everlasting happiness.
—Basilea Schlink
God has given to man some things in common with animals, such as: his outward senses, his bodily appetites, a capacity of bodily pleasure and pain, and other animal faculties: and some things he’s given him superior to the beasts, the chief of which is an ability of understanding and reason. Now God never gave man these capabilities to be subject to those which he has in common with the animals.
This would be great confusion, and equivalent to making man to be a servant to the beasts. On the contrary, he has given those inferior powers to be employed in subserviency to man’s understanding; and therefore it must be a great part of man’s principal business to improve his understanding by acquiring knowledge. If so, then it will follow, that it should be a main part of his business to improve his understanding in acquiring divine knowledge, or the knowledge of the things of divinity: for the knowledge of these things is the principal end of this capability. God gave man the faculty of understanding, chiefly, that he might understand divine things.
—Jonathan Edwards
The Philistines were in full flight. The Israelites followed hard at their heels through the wood. It was there that the honey dropped in rich abundance on the ground, and there Jonathan tasted a little, dipping the end of his rod into it. It made all the difference to him, warding off the excessive exhaustion which paralysed the rest of the army.
The Word of God is sweeter than the honeycomb. Luscious to the sanctified taste; enlightening to the dimming eyes; strength-giving to the weary. It drops in abundance to the ground, as though inviting the hand of the Christian warrior or wayfarer to take it freely. If there is no taste for the written Word, it may be assumed that the living Word has not been enthroned in the heart; for where He reigns supreme, there is a longing for the food which alone can fit us for the Christian life.
Where we cannot take much, let us take some. There was not time for Jonathan to sit down and take his fill. He could only catch up some as he hastily passed through the forest-glade; but that little made all the difference to him. So, in the early morning, or at mid-day, if we cannot fill our hearts with Scripture, we may catch up a morsel, which will minister untold refreshment, and clear our spiritual vision.
—F.B. Meyer
Young men who are beginning life, it is well that you should be urged to be diligent, but it is better that you should be led to be righteous! Worldlings would have you industrious, but saints would have you righteous. You can be made righteous in state through faith in Jesus Christ, and righteous in character through the renewal of your heart by the Holy Ghost. Mind this.
The text leads us to make another observation which repeats its very words: namely, that a slothful man’s way is like a hedge of thorns. Here we enlarge. The idler’s way is not a desirable way. Unthinking persons suppose that the sluggard lives a happy life and travels an easy road. It is not so. Many believe in “the sweet doing of nothing,” but it is a sheer fiction. Surface appearances are not the truth: though it may seem that idleness is rest, it is not so: though sloth promises ease, it cheats its followers. Of all unrest there is none more wearisome than that of having nothing whatever to do. The severest toil is far more endurable than utter sloth. I have heard of retired business men going back to the counter from absolute weariness of idleness. It is far more desirable to be righteous than it is to be at ease. Labour of a holy sort has ten thousand times more joy in it than purposeless leisure.
—Charles H. Spurgeon
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Go about the world seeking the good of people. It does not always mean that you should give them a tract, or a little book. It is much easier to do this than to sacrifice your own good in order to seek theirs. You may be quite sure that some little act of self-sacrifice or thoughtfulness for a weary mother, or crying child, for a sick friend, or for some person who is always maligning and injuring you, would do a great deal in the way of preparing an entrance for the Gospel message. It is thus that the genial spring loosens the earth and prepares the way for the germination of multitudinous life. Count the day lost in which you have not sought to promote the good of some one. Adopt as your own the pious motto, “Do all the good you can, to all the people you can, in all the ways you can.”
Speak peace to people—soothe agitated and irritated souls. Throw oil on troubled waters. There are worried and anxious hearts all around us; a word of sympathy and earnest prayer with them will often remove the heavy load, and smooth out the wrinkles of care. Let the law of kindness be on your lip. Do not say sharp or unkind things of the absent, or allow your lips to utter words that will lead to bitterness or wrath. Seek peace and pursue it. And in order to this, let the peace of God that passeth all understanding keep your mind and heart.
—F.B. Meyer
We find the reason as well as the power for self-denial in the little word Me. “If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and follow Me.” The old life is in ourselves. The new life is in Jesus. The new life cannot rule without driving out the old. Once one’s own self had everything to say, now it must be nothing. But it would rather not be this.
Because of this there must be denial of one’s self and imitation of Jesus all day long. He, with His teaching, His will, His honour, and His interests, must fill the heart. But he who has and knows Him willingly denies himself. Christ is so precious to him that he sacrifices everything, even himself, to win Him.
This is the true life of faith. Not according to what nature sees or thinks to be acceptable, do I live, but according to what Jesus says and would have. Every day and every hour I confirm the wonderful thought, “Not I, but Christ” (Galatians 2:20). I am nothing, Christ is everything. “You are dead,” and no longer have power, or will, or honour, “your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3). Christ’s power and will alone prevail. Christians, cheerfully deny that sinful wretched self so that the glorious Christ may dwell in you.
—Andrew Murray
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2 Kings 2:2 Elijah said to Elisha, “Stay here; the LORD has sent me to Bethel.” But Elisha said, “As surely as the LORD lives and as you live, I will not leave you.” So they went down to Bethel.