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Daily Light on the Daily Path
August 22

Morning

None of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself.

If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.—Let no one seek his own good, but the good of his neighbor.—You were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.

Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.

Through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Rom. 14:7; Rom. 14:8; 1 Cor. 10:24; 1 Cor. 6:20; Phil. 1:20-23; Gal. 2:19, 20

http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/o/j/c/ojcgtime.htm

O Jesus Christ, grow Thou in me,
And all things else recede!
My heart be daily nearer Thee,
From sin be daily freed.

More of Thy glory let me see,
Thou Holy, Wise and True!
I would Thy living image be,
In joy and sorrow, too.

Fill me with gladness from above,
Hold me by strength divine;
Lord, make the glow of Thy great love
Through my whole being shine.

Make this poor self grow less and less,
Be Thou my life and aim;
O make me daily through Thy grace,
More meet to bear Thy Name!
— Johann C. Lavater, 1780

Joh 3:30 He must increase, but I must decrease.”

“God’s aim in all His doings of grace is to ‘hide pride from man’; to hinder boasting; to keep the sinner humble. All ‘confidence in the flesh’ (Phil 3:1,3), all trust in self, all reliance on the creature, are set aside by that great work of the Divine Substitute, who did all for us, and left us nothing to do, out of which it would be possible to extract a boast (2 Cor 12:9; Gal 6:14; Isa 41:16; 45:25). Let us fling away self-esteem and high-mindedness, for it is the very essence of unbelief. Be meek, be poor in spirit, be humble; be teachable, be gentle, and easy to be entreated; putting away all high thoughts and lofty imaginations, either about what we are or what we can do; content to take the obscurest corner and the lowest seat; and this, not to indulge in a false lowliness, or in ‘the pride that apes humility,’ feeding our vanity with the thought that we are martyrs, and puffing up our fleshly mind with the idea of our wonderful condescension, or by brooding over our supposed wrongs and trials. Let us be truly humble, as was the Son of God: content to live unknown, and to do our work unnoticed, as a work not for the eye of man, but of God.”.....
Horatius Bonar, From “Follow the Lamb”,