DEVOTIONAL COLUMN

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 230, 28 August 1937, Page 12

DEVOTIONAL COLUMN

PRAYER. Thou Who hast provided for man’s spiritual thirsts the living Water which Thou alone canst give, we come to Thee, as thirsty souls to-day. We are not satisfied, with what the world offers. We would drink of that water of life, offered so freely to us. Lord Jesus, search our hearts. Beveal to us our needs, and may we turn to Thee for their satisfying. In Thy dear name. Amen. MEASURING THE IMMEASURABLE.

A well of water springing up unto eternal life. An old Primitive Methodist preacher tells how, in boyhood, he used to see many people going to draw water from the village well, and he feared that the supply might fail. To find out if the water were getting less and less, one morning he descended the well steps and placed a mark on the brickwork, just above the water line. In the evening he went down again, happily to find just as much water in the well, though people had been drawing all day. A perennial spring beneath the woll continually replenished the supply. So Jesus Christ, the Well-spring, of salvation, supplies every believer’s need. He is “a well of water springing up into everlasting life.”

REMOVING THE PROPS. A boy often forgets that he has. a home until a cut or a bruise sends him crying to his mother’s side for the bandage or the medicine. God often strikes away our props to bring us down upon His mighty arms. —T)r. T. L. Cuyler, in the Keswick Calendar. HEALING WATERS. (Ezekiel 47: 1-10.) Old Testament prophecies declare that when our coming Lord personally sets up His millennial kingdom, the deserts of earth shall blossom as the rose. No doubt the North and South Pole snows will melt into watered garden. This river that flows out of the east side of the restored kingdomtime Temple will heal the salt waters of the Head Sea and transform the Arabian desert even unto the Persian Gulf into a fertile Paradise. The interpretation is literal. —Anon. WHY SHE WAS POPULAR. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour. A decent and honest old woman, who had for more than forty years earned a livelihood by taking in washing, was asked how it was she was so well liked by those who came in contact with her. She replied: “I make it a practice never to sav in one house what I hear in another.”—“Thou shalt not go up and down as a talebearer among thy people.”—Anon. DIVINE READJUSTMENT.

It may be that God will tell you there must be less activity and more quiet in your life. “But,” you say. “there is so much spiritual work needs doing.” Wherever you go it seems as though duties crowd in upon you. It is not the amount of work, but the quality of it that tells. There may be, for each of us, need of readjustment oi our spiritual time-table. To use another figure, it may be that you have forgotten Him. He made that complaint years ago. “My people have forgotten Me days without number.” It may be that you and I have been so busy that we ‘have had little time for His companionship. —W. W. Martin, M.A. LET US~GO HENCE. And must we go? go from this quiet place, This paschal Chamber, where we listening rest. And hear Thy blessed voice and see Thy face, And" lean upon Thy breast? Go to that awful Garden? to these throngs Of midnight violence? to the unjust bar ? To all the dreadful world’s insulting wrongs An impious war? Yes, we can go, arising at Thy word; — Our sacred Place goes too, our vast Defence; For Thou hast said, Companion. Leader, Lord, “Let Us go hence.” —Bishop Monle. Surely the simple words embrace all common errands, in and. out of our homes, in His Name; all journeys too. —Sophia M. Nugent. THE ACCEPTABLE WORSHIP. Seeking the face of God glorifies God when the soul is in communion with God. To be acceptable to God, worship is required to be actually rendered to Christ. The worship of the Lord Jesus Christ is the distinguishing mark of Christianity. Pray that the troublous times wo are in may lead God’s people everywhere to look more fully to the Lord Jesus Christ. THE PATH OF BLESSING. There never has been a spiritual revival which did not begin with an acute sense of sin. We are never prepared for a spiritual advance until we see the necessity of getting, rid of that which has been hindering it, and that in the sight of God is sin. And with this consciousness the soul will cry out for Christ, for Christ in all His fullness as Pardoner, Cleanser, Enricher, as Lord and Lover; and He is made all this to us, and much more, by the Holy Spirit. Out of such an experience of Christ will grow every other experience, and no Christian who is living in the will of God will ever fail to fulfil all the obligations in the outlaying fields of life. —l)r. W. Graham .Scroggie.