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February 9 The Holy Spirit: Some Other Time Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do, because I go to My Father. --John 14:12 "You will receive power" (Acts 1:8a). "Eagerly desire the greater gifts" (1 Corinthians 12:31a). Anything that God has ever done for a soul He will do for anyone else, if the conditions are met. The Lord who blessed these men that I spoke about, and the thousands who followed them but whose names are not known,...

February 8 The Holy Spirit: He Can Be Grieved And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. --Ephesians 4:30 Because He is loving and kind and friendly, the Holy Spirit may be grieved.... He can be grieved because He is loving, and there must be love present before there can be grief. Suppose you had a 17-year-old son who began to go bad. He rejected your counsel and wanted to take things into his own hands. Suppose that he joined up with a young stranger from another part of...

February 5 The Holy Spirit: Preachers Without Power Now the purpose of the commandment is love from a pure heart, from a good conscience, and from sincere faith, from which some, having strayed, have turned aside to idle talk, desiring to be teachers of the law, understanding neither what they say nor the things which they affirm. --1 Timothy 1:5-7 Another thing that greatly hinders God's people is a hardness of heart caused by hearing men without the Spirit constantly preaching about the Spirit. There is no doctrine so chilling as the doctrine of the Spirit when held in cold...

February 4 The Holy Spirit: The Need for Illumination But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. --1 Corinthians 2:14 The doctrine of the inability of the human mind and the need for divine illumination is so fully developed in the New Testament that it is nothing short of astonishing that we should have gone so far astray about the whole thing. Fundamentalism has stood aloof from the Liberal in self-conscious superiority and has on its own part...

February 3 The Holy Spirit: Sending Something Better However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come. --John 16:13 Our trouble is that we are trying to confirm the truth of Christianity by an appeal to external evidence. We are saying, "Well, look at this fellow. He can throw a baseball farther than anybody else and he is a Christian, therefore Christianity must be true." "Here is a great...

February 2 The Holy Spirit: Moratorium on Activity Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my anxieties; and see if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. --Psalm 139:23-24 I suppose my suggestion will not receive much serious attention, but I should like to suggest that we Bible-believing Christians announce a moratorium on religious activity and set our house in order preparatory to the coming of an afflatus from above. So carnal is the body of Christians which composes the conservative wing of the Church, so shockingly irreverent...

February 1 The Holy Spirit: The Eternal Spirit But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth. --Acts 1:8 You know, the Church started out with a Bible, then it got a hymnbook, and for years that was it--a Bible and a hymnbook. The average church now certainly wouldn't be able to operate on just a hymnbook and the Bible. Now we have to have all kinds of truck. A lot of people couldn't...

January 29 Personal Life: Seeking Approval Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching. --2 Timothy 4:2 I cannot believe in the spirituality of any Christian man who keeps an eye open for the approval of others, whoever they may be. The man after God's own heart must be dead to the opinion of his friends as well as his enemies. He must be as willing to cross important persons as obscure ones. He must be ready to rebuke his superior as quickly as those who may be beneath...

January 27 Personal Life: The Habit of Holy Thought Casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. --2 Corinthians 10:5 What we think about when we are free to think about what we will-- that is what we are or will soon become.... Anyone who wishes to check on his true spiritual condition may do so by noting what his voluntary thoughts have been over the last hours or days. What has he thought about when free to think of what he pleased?...

January 26 Personal Life: Your Thoughts a Sanctuary For thus says the High and Lofty One Who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: "I dwell in the high and holy place, with him who has a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones." --Isaiah 57:15 I have been thinking recently about how important my thoughts are. I don't have to do wrong to get under blistering conviction and repent. I can lose the fellowship of God and sense of His presence and a sense of spirituality by...

January 25 Personal Life: People Are What They Think About Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life. --Proverbs 4:23 Every person is really what he or she secretly admires. If I can learn what you admire, I will know what you are, for people are what they think about when they are free to think about what they will. Now, there are times when we are forced to think about things that we do not care to think about at all. All of us have to think about income taxes, but income...

January 22 Personal Life: Be Thou Exalted The Lord lives! Blessed by my Rock! Let God be exalted, the Rock of my salvation! --2 Samuel 22:47 O God, be Thou exalted over my possessions. Nothing of earth's treasures shall seem dear unto me if only Thou art glorified in my life. Be Thou exalted over my friendships. I am determined that Thou shalt be above all, though I must stand deserted and alone in the midst of the earth. Be Thou exalted above my comforts. Though it mean the loss of bodily comforts and the carrying of heavy crosses, I...

January 21 Personal Life: Dependence on God Not that I speak in regard to need, for I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content. I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound. Everywhere and in all things I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. --Philippians 4:11-12 We can learn important lessons by considering God's disciplines in dealing with Elijah. As Elijah fled to the wilderness following his first confrontation with King Ahab, God said to him, "Elijah, go to the brook Cherith,...

January 20 Personal Life: Personal Discipline Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may obtain it. And everyone who competes for the prize is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a perishable crown, but we for an imperishable crown. --1 Corinthians 9:24-25 Another trap into which the preacher is in danger of falling is that he may do what comes naturally and just take it easy. I know how ticklish this matter is and, while my writing this...

January 19 Personal Life: Stay in the Secret Place My voice You shall hear in the morning, O Lord; in the morning I will direct it to You, and I will look up. --Psalm 5:3 Retire from the world each day to some private spot, even if it be only the bedroom (for a while I retreated to the furnace room for want of a better place). Stay in the secret place till the surrounding noises begin to fade out of your heart and a sense of God's presence envelops you. Deliberately tune out the unpleasant sounds and come out...

January 18 Personal Life: Healing Silence And when He had sent them away, He departed to the mountain to pray. --Mark 6:46 Very few of us know the secret of bathing our souls in silence. It was a secret our Lord Jesus Christ knew very well. There were times when He had to send the multitudes away so He could retire alone into the silence of the mountainside. There He would turn the God-ward side of His soul toward heaven and for a long time expose Himself to the face of His Father in heaven.... My eyes and ears and...

January 15 Personal Life: Hearing From God Now John himself was clothed in camel's hair, with a leather belt around his waist; and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then Jerusalem, all Judea, and all the region around the Jordan went out to him and were baptized by him in the Jordan, confessing their sins. --Matthew 3:4-5 Let me give you some reasons why I believe God could honor John the Baptist in that day in which he lived. First, John had the ability to live and meditate in solitude. He knew the meaning of quietness. He was in...

January 13 Personal Life: The Knowledge of God For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God; and you have come to need milk and not solid food. --Hebrews 5:12 Probably the most widespread and persistent problem to be found among Christians is the problem of retarded spiritual progress. Why, after years of Christian profession, do so many persons find themselves no farther along than when they first believed?... The causes of retarded growth are many. It would not be accurate to ascribe the...

January 12 Personal Life: To Think God's Thoughts But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night. --Psalm 1:2 To think God's thoughts requires much prayer. If you do not pray much, you are not thinking God's thoughts. If you do not read your Bible much and often and reverently, you are not thinking God's thoughts.... There also has to be a lot of meditation. We ought to learn to live in our Bibles. Get one with print big enough to read so it does not punish your eyes. Look...

January 11 Personal Life: Longing for God As the deer pants for the water brooks, so pants my soul for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? --Psalm 42:1-2 O God, I have tasted Thy goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more. I am painfully conscious of my need of further grace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire. O God, the Triune God, I want to want Thee; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be...

January 8 Personal Life: People Follow Leaders Imitate me, just as I also imitate Christ. --1 Corinthians 11:1 The history of Israel and Judah points up a truth taught clearly enough by all history, viz., that the masses are or soon will be what their leaders are. The kings set the moral pace for the people.... Whatever sort of man the king turned out to be the people were soon following his leadership. They followed David in the worship of Jehovah, Solomon in the building of the Temple, Jeroboam in the making of a calf and Hezekiah in the restoration...

January 7 Personal Life: The Call of God Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. --Hebrews 12:11 "Your calling," said Meister Eckhart to the clergy of his day, "cannot make you holy; but you can make it holy. No matter how humble that calling may be, a holy man can make it a holy calling. A call to the ministry is not a call to be holy, as if the fact of his being a minister would sanctify...

January 6 Personal Life: The Compelling Call For if I preach the gospel, I have nothing to boast of, for necessity is laid upon me; yes, woe is me if I do not preach the gospel! --1 Corinthians 9:16 The true minister is one not by his own choice but by the sovereign commission of God. From a study of the Scriptures one might conclude that the man God calls seldom or never surrenders to the call without considerable reluctance. The young man who rushes too eagerly into the pulpit at first glance seems to be unusually spiritual, but he...

January 5 Personal Life: Let God Alone But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing. --James 1:4 God is saying, "I stand ready to pour a little liquid fire into your heart, into your spiritual being!" We respond: "No, Lord, please excuse me. That sounds like fanaticism--and I would have to give up some things!" So we refuse His desire, even though we want all the benefits of His cross. There is this thoughtful phrase in The Cloud of Unknowing: "He wills thou do but look on Him and let Him alone."...

January 4 Personal Life: A Friend of God And the Scripture was fulfilled which says, "Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness." And he was called the friend of God. --James 2:23 After all, what higher privilege and experience is granted to mankind on earth than to be admitted into the circle of the friends of God?... It is well for us to remember that Divine-human friendship originated with God. Had God not first said "You are My friends," it would be inexcusably brash for any man to say, "I am a friend of God." But...

December 30 Trials and Pain: Moses' Prayer So teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom. --Psalm 90:12 A few days after these words appear in print the old year of our Lord will have gone to join the long procession of years and centuries that move on into the shadows of a past that can come no more. In the year just gone the world has been writing history, not with ink only but with blood and tears; not in the quiet of the study but in violence, terror and death in city...

December 29 Trials and Pain: Underneath Are the Everlasting Arms The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms; He will thrust out the enemy from before you, and will say, "Destroy!" --Deuteronomy 33:27 Surely Bible-reading Christians should be the last persons on earth to give way to hysteria. They are redeemed from their past offenses, kept in their present circumstances by the power of an all-powerful God, and their future is safe in His hands. God has promised to support them in the flood, protect them in the fire, feed them in famine, shield them against...

December 28 Trials and Pain: Nothing to Fear You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You. --Isaiah 26:3 The only fear I have is to fear to get out of the will of God. Outside of the will of God, there's nothing I want, and in the will of God there's nothing I fear, for God has sworn to keep me in His will. If I'm out of His will, that is another matter. But if I'm in His will, He's sworn to keep me. And He's able to do...

December 23 Trials and Pain: Happiness is Not the Goal You therefore must endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. No one engaged in warfare entangles himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who enlisted him as a soldier. --2 Timothy 2:3-4 That we are born to be happy is scarcely questioned by anyone. No one bothers to prove that fallen men have any moral right to happiness, or that they are in the long run any better off happy. The only question before the house is how to get the most happiness...

December 22 Trials and Pain: Heartache or Happiness My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing. --James 1:2-4 From the trials and triumphs of Paul, we gather, too, that happiness is really not indispensable to a Christian. There are many ills worse than heartaches. It is scarcely too much to say that prolonged happiness may actually weaken us, especially if we insist upon being happy as the Jews insisted upon flesh...

December 21 Trials and Pain: Ordered By the Lord The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord, and He delights in his way. Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down; for the Lord upholds him with His hand. --Psalm 37:23-24 To the child of God, there is no such thing as accident. He travels an appointed way. The path he treads was chosen for him when as yet he was not, when as yet he had existence only in the mind of God. Accidents may indeed appear to befall him and misfortune stalk his...

December 18 Trials and Pain: We May Expect Troubles These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world. --John 16:33 We are all idealists. We picture to ourselves a life on earth completely free from every hindrance, a kind of spiritual Utopia where we can always control events, where we can move about as favorites of heaven, adjusting circumstances to suit ourselves. This we feel would be quite compatible with the life of faith and in keeping with...

December 17 Trials and Pain: God Send Us Tears For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ: whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame-who set their mind on earthly things. --Philippians 3:18-19 The Bible was written in tears and to tears it will yield its best treasures. God has nothing to say to the frivolous man.... The psalmists often wrote in tears, the prophets could hardly conceal their heavyheartedness, and the apostle Paul...

December 16 Trials and Pain: He Puts Me Flat Down Now it came to pass at the end of seven days that the word of the Lord came to me, saying, "Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel; therefore hear a word from My mouth, and give them warning from Me." --Ezekiel 3:16-17 I once heard a brother preach on the fact that the church should be without spot or wrinkle. To get the wrinkles out of a sack, he said, you fill it. To get a wrinkle out of a rug, you...

December 15 Trials and Pain: The Back Side of the Desert Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian. And he led the flock to the back of the desert, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. --Exodus 3:1 We should quickly review here the kinds of preparation Moses had gone through for his leadership role under God. Reared in Pharaoh's palace, he had been educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. He had the prerequisites for almost any kind of career. In our day a man with his qualifications would be...

December 14 Trials and Pain: The Necessity of Wounds Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep Your word....It is good for me that I have been afflicted, that I may learn Your statutes. --Psalm 119:67,71 It is amazing to me! There are people within the ranks of Christianity who have been taught and who believe that Christ will shield His followers from wounds of every kind. If the truth were known, the saints of God in every age were only effective after they had been wounded. They experienced the humbling wounds that brought contrition, compassion and...

December 8 Trials and Pain: The Labor of Self-love For do I now persuade men, or God? Or do I seek to please men? For if I still pleased men, I would not be a bondservant of Christ. --Galatians 1:10 The labor of self-love is a heavy one indeed. Think for yourself whether much of your sorrow has not arisen from someone speaking slightingly of you. As long as you set yourself up as a little god to which you must be loyal there will be those who will delight to offer affront to your idol. How then can you...

December 7 Trials and Pain: Criticism and Abuse But as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, even so we speak, not as pleasing men, but God who tests our hearts. --1 Thessalonians 2:4 "Let not thy peace depend on the tongues of men," said the wise old Christian mystic, Thomas a Kempis; "for whether they judge well or ill, thou art not on that account other than thyself." One of the first things a Christian should get used to is abuse.... To do nothing is to get abused for laziness, and to do anything...

December 4 Trials and Pain: Good In Thy Sight Then Samuel told him everything, and hid nothing from him. And he said, "It is the Lord. Let Him do what seems good to Him." --1 Samuel 3:18 A determination to know what cannot be known always works harm to the Christian heart. Ignorance in matters on our human level is never to be excused if there has been opportunity to correct it. But there are matters which are obviously "too high for us." These we should meet in trusting faith and say as Jesus said, "Even so, Father: for so...

December 3 Trials and Pain: He Knows For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. --Hebrews 4:15-16 Don't pity yourself. Don't be afraid to tell God your troubles. He knows all about your troubles. There is a little song that says, "Nobody knows the trouble I've seen," but there's Somebody who knows, all right. And our Fellow Sufferer...

December 2 Trials and Pain: Piles of Ashes Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. --Hebrews 12:11 If God has singled you out to be a special object of His grace you may expect Him to honor you with stricter discipline and greater suffering than less favored ones are called upon to endure.... If God sets out to make you an unusual Christian He is not likely to be as gentle as He is usually pictured by the...

December 1 Trials and Pain: The Dark Night of the Soul How long, O Lord? Will You forget me forever? How long will You hide Your face from me? --Psalm 13:1 Some of you know something of that which has been called "the dark night of the soul." Some of you have spiritual desire and deep longing for victory but it seems to you that your efforts to go on with God have only brought you more bumps and more testings and more discouragement. You are tempted to ask, "How long can this go on?"... Yes, there is a dark...

November 30 Spiritual Warfare and Sin: The Cleansed Conscience Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. --Hebrews 10:22 What a relief to find the writer to the Hebrews encouraging us to "draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience" (Hebrews 10:22). A sprinkled conscience-surely this is a gracious thing for men and women in the world to know! One of the most relieving,...

November 25 Spiritual Warfare and Sin: My Kingdom Go Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. --Matthew 6:10 It may surprise you that Aldous Huxley, often a critic of orthodox and evangelical Christianity, has been quoted as saying: "My kingdom go is the necessary correlary to Thy kingdom come."... Certainly His kingdom can never be realized in my life until my own selfish kingdom is deposed. It is when I resign, when I am no longer king of my domain that Jesus Christ will become king of my life. Now, brethren, in confession,...

November 24 Spiritual Warfare and Sin: Seek God's Remedy My little children, these things I write to you, so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. --1 John 2:1 I wish it were possible to anoint the head of every Christian preacher so that he would never sin again while the world stands. Perhaps some would consider that a happy way to deal with the subject. But, in fact, if any person can be removed from the possibility of sin, he or she can only be some...

November 23 Spiritual Warfare and Sin: Mediocre Christianity Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. --Romans 6:12-13 It is disheartening to those who care, and surely a great grief to the Spirit, to see how many Christians are content to settle for less than the best. Personally I have for years carried a burden of sorrow as...

Spiritual Warfare and Sin: Examine Yourself Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my anxieties; and see if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. --Psalm 139:23-24 The philosopher Socrates said, "An unexamined life is not worth living." If a common philosopher could think that, how much more we Christians ought to listen to the Holy Spirit when He says, "Examine yourself." An unexamined Christian lies like an unattended garden. Let your garden go unattended for a few months, and you will not have roses and tomatoes but...

Spiritual Warfare and Sin: No Private Sin Your glorying is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Therefore purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened.... --1 Corinthians 5:6-7 No sin is private. It may be secret but it is not private. It is a great error to hold, as some do, that each man's conduct is his own business unless his acts infringe on the rights of others. "My liberty ends where yours begins," is true, but that is not all the truth....

Spiritual Warfare and Sin: The Erotic Age It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and such sexual immorality as is not even named among the Gentiles-that a man has his father's wife! --1 Corinthians 5:1 The period in which we now live may well go down in history as the Erotic Age. Sex love has been elevated into a cult. Eros has more worshipers among civilized men today than any other god. For millions the erotic has completely displaced the spiritual.... Now if this god would let us Christians alone I for one would let his...

Spiritual Warfare and Sin: Resentment Looking carefully lest anyone fall short of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble, and by this many become defiled. --Hebrews 12:15 In the course of scores of conferences and hundreds of conversations I have many times heard people say, "I resent that." But I repeat: I have never heard the words used by a victorious man. Resentment simply cannot dwell in a loving heart. Before resentfulness can enter, love must take its flight and bitterness take over. The bitter soul will compile a list of slights at which...