Devotional Column

Manawatu Times, Volume 59, Issue 222, 22 September 1934, Page 15

Devotional Column

Precept, liot your conversation be without eovetonsnoss. Hob. 13, 5. Promise. Hs shall give thee the desires of thine heart. * Psalm 13, 5. Prayer. Incline my heart, unto Thy testimonies and not to covetousness. Psalm 119, 36. £~VE r JSTKS TO GOD. Give thanks to God And humbly pray To serve Him well This precious day. Give thanks to God For friends and flowers, For sunny days, And cooling showers. Give thanks to God; Fill well your part; Let Love Divine ■ Possess your heart. Give thanks to God; His bounty see; Be still and know; Just grateful be. —Grenville Kleiser. “SHE DOVE IN THE HEART.” So long as one inch of doubtful or disputed territory remains, Satan has a foothold and vantage ground. There is no greater peril to a believer than the neutral territory where doubtful indulgeneies lie, where duty and inclination dispute for supremacy, where no final decisive battle has yet been fought that makes no longer neutral ground. Here comes i.i the power of self-denial ' - Christ. It settles doubtfnl matters: no more parleying with selfishness and worldly amusement; no more compromise with conscience. Henceforth, as Edwards said, “I will do nothing of which I so much doubt the propriety as that I intend at the same time afterwards to consider whether it be proper or not, unless I equally donibt the propriety of not doing it.” —A. T. Pierson, D.D.

THE LORD HIMSELF, JJfc io not for a sign we are watching, For wonders above and below, JHie pouring of vials of judgment, The sounding of trumpets of woe; R is not for a day we are looking, Not even a timo yet to he JThen the earth shall be filled with God’s glory,, {An the waters cover the sea; 2$ is not for a King vo are longing, To make the world-kingdom His own; ]$ is not for a Judge who shall summon The nations ox earth to His throne. for these, though we know they are coming; For they are but adjuncts of Him Before whom all glory is clouded, Beside whom all splendour grows dim. We wait for tho Lord, our Beloved, Our Comforter, Master and Friend, The Substance of all that we hope for, Beginning of faith and its end; % watch for our Saviour and Bridegroom, Who loved ns and made us His own; Bar Him we are looking and longing— For Jesus, and Jesus alone. —Annie Johnson Flint.

not say; nor did Paul ask, but started on the way. If Paul had asked, and if the Lord had said; If Paul had known the long, hard road, ahead; if with the heavenly vision Paul had seen stark Poverty with cold and hungry mien, black fetid prisons with their chains and stocks, fierce robbers lurking amid tumbled rocks, tho raging of the mob, the crashing stones, the aching eyes, hot fever in the bones, perils of mountain passes wild and steep, perils of tempests in the angry deep, the drag of loneliness, the curse of lies, mad bigotry’s suspicious, peering eyes, tho bitter foe, the weakly blundering friend, the whirling sword of Caesar at the end—would Paul have turned him back with shuddering moan and settled down in Tarsus, had he known? Nol And a thousand times the thundering No! Whore Jesus went, there Paul rejoiced to go. Prisons were palaces where Jesus stayed; with Jesus near he asked no other aid; the love of Jesus kept him glad and warm, bold before kings and safe in any storm. Whither, O Christ? The vision did not say. Paul did not care. Ho started on the way.

GET THROUGH TO THE CENTRE. “The natural man rccoiveth not tho things of the Spirit of God.” 1 Cor. ii. 14. “And I, brethren, could not. speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, as unto babes in Christ.” —1 Cor. iii. I. To be in Jesus Christ in the most intimate way possible for us means that our inner personal life will ho profoundly affected. There comes the quiet assurance for all situations in life, “I can do all things in him that strengtheneth me” (Phil. iv. 13). It brings a right adjustment of all the elemental stuff of our personal lives. Paul contrasts the spiritual man with less spiritual saints, described as carnal. He has spoken also of the “'natural man,” a soul-governed person. He is outside the ring altogether. “He does not receive the things/of the Spirit of God.” It is not some outward brand that makes the difference between these three kinds of men. It is an inward condition. The spiritual man has been re-constituted by divine grace. The law that was working in his members, constantly annulling the law of the mind, has been abolished. A new blessed force pours in from God’s Spirit through his own spirit, and becomes the divine working energy of all his nature. There is real divine sovereignty operative over all his inner and outer life. This is the man who has gained Christ, and is found in Him, not having a righteousness of his own, that which is of the law, hut that which is through the faith of Christ. It is ho who truly knows Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship- of His suffering, having become conformed unto His death (Phil. iii. 9, 10).

BIBLE SINGERS. Paul —“I will sing unto Tliy Name.” —Rom. xv. 9. Mary—“My soul doth magnify the Lord; my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savious.” —St. Luke i. 46. David—“l will sing of Thy mercy.” —Psa. lix. 16. The song of Moses, the servant of God—“ Great and marvellous aro Thy works, 0 Lord God, tho Almighty.”— Rev, xv. 3. The song of ’the heavenly choir — “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men.”— St. Luke ii. 14.