Meditation: Jonah 4:10,11
To think of the
Communists as the executors of God's judgment should not strike us as strange
if we have read our Bibles. The same study should free us from the assumption
that God will always be on our side whatever we do, will always protect
His Church from temporal evil; or that He is only concerned with the faithful
believers. It was precisely His concern for the wicked Ninevites that so
distressed the prophet Jonah.
... David
M. Paton, Christian Missions and
the Judgment of God
Meditation: 1 Thessalonians 5:17
I have quitted
all forms of devotion and set prayers but those to which my state obliges
me. And I make it my business only to persevere in His holy presence, wherein
I keep myself by a simple attention and a general fond regard to God, which
I may call an actual presence of God -- or, to speak better, an habitual,
silent, and secret conversation of the soul with God, which often causes
in me joys and raptures inwardly, and sometimes also outwardly, so great,
that I am forced to use means to moderate them, and to prevent their appearance
to others.
... Brother
Lawrence
Meditation: Matthew 5:8
Purity of heart
and simplicity are of great force with Almighty God, who is in purity most
singular, and of nature most simple.
... St.
Gregory the Great
Meditation: James 4:8
Prayer is the preface
to the book of Christian living; the test of the new life sermon; the girding
on of armor for battle; the pilgrim's preparation for his journey. It must
be supplemented by action or it amounts to nothing.
... Arthur
Stevens Phelps
Meditation: Matthew 6:16-18
Study always to
have Joy, for it befits not the servant of God to show before his brother
or another sadness or a troubled face.
... St.
Francis of Assisi
Meditation: 1 Corinthians 1:2
In this Body of
Christ, Paul sees "the ecclesia of God". Ecclesia is a Greek
word with a splendid history. It was used in the old free commonwealths
of Greece for the general assembly of all free citizens, by which their
common life was governed. When political liberty went, the name still survived
in the restricted municipal self-government which the Roman State allowed.
It was taken over by the brotherhoods and guilds which in some measure
superseded the old political associations. Among the Jews who spoke Greek,
this word seemed the appropriate one to describe the commonwealth of Israel
as ruled by God -- the historical Theocracy. Our translation of it is "Church".
That word, however, has undergone such transformations of meaning that
it is often doubtful in what sense it is being used. Perhaps for ecclesia
we may use the word -- simpler, more general, and certainly nearest to
its original meaning -- "commonwealth". [Continued tomorrow]
... C.
Harold Dodd, The Meaning of Paul
for Today
Meditation: 1 Corinthians 8:1
We have spoken
throughout of the Divine Commonwealth. That phrase represents Paul's "ecclesia
of God". It is a community of loving persons, who bear one another's burdens,
who seek to build up one another in love, who "have the same thoughts in
relation to one another that they have in their communion with Christ".
It is all this because it is the living embodiment of Christ's own Spirit.
This is a high and mystical doctrine, but a doctrine which has no meaning
apart from loving fellowship in real life. A company of people who celebrate
a solemn sacrament of Christ's Body and Blood, and all the time are moved
by selfish passions -- rivalry, competition, mutual contempt -- is not
for Paul a Church or Divine Commonwealth at all, no matter how lofty their
faith or how deep their mystical experience; for all these things may "puff
up"; love alone "builds up". In the very act, therefore, of attaining its
liberty to exist, the Divine Commonwealth has transcended the great divisions
of men. In principle, it has transcended them all, and by seriously living
out that which its association means, it is on the way to comprehending
the whole race. Short of that its development can never stop. This is the
revealing of the sons of God for which the whole creation is waiting.
... C.
Harold Dodd, The Meaning of Paul
for Today
Meditation: 1 Peter 2:4-8
Whoever has Christ
in his heart, so that no earthly or temporal things -- not even those that
are legitimate and allowed -- are preferred to Him, has Christ as a foundation.
But if these things be preferred, then even though a man seem to have faith
in Christ, yet Christ is not the foundation to that man.
... St.
Augustine, The City of God
Meditation: Romans 8:29
This is our great
need, to be more like Christ, that His likeness may be seen in our lives;
and this is just what is promised to us as we yield ourselves in full surrender
to the working of His Spirit. Then, as we draw nearer to Christ, we shall
be drawn nearer to His people; and in our search for unity with the members
we shall be drawn closer to the Head.
... G.
T. Manley, Christian Unity
Meditation: 1 Kings 19:18
The work of God in converting souls out
of the hands of Satan, was begun soon after the fall of man, has been carried on in the world ever
since to this day, and will be to the end of the world. God has always, ever since erecting of the
church of the redeemed after the fall, had such a church in the world. Though oftentimes it has been
reduced to a very narrow compass and to low circumstances; yet it has never wholly failed.
... Jonathan Edwards,
A History of the Work of Redemption [1773]
Meditation: John 6:44,45
That faith alone
will never forsake Christ which springs out of or is built upon a conviction
of the need for Him.
... John Owen
Meditation: Psalm 22:1
The Creed sets
forth what Christ suffered in the sight of men, and then appositely speaks
of that invisible and incomprehensible judgment which he underwent in the
sight of God in order that we might know not only that Christ's body was
given as the price of our redemption, but that he paid a greater and more
excellent price in suffering in his soul the terrible torments of a condemned
and forsaken man.
... John
Calvin
Meditation: John 14:15
The surest symbol
of a heart not yet fully subdued to God and His will is going to be found
in the areas of money, sex, and power: in wanting these things for ourselves.
The surest symbol of spiritual earnestness will be the checkbook, the affections,
and the ego-drive surrendered to Him. A disciple must have discipline.
He must not be afraid of being asked by God for some of the time, the money,
and the pleasure he has been in the habit of calling his "own". This does
not mean that there will not be time for the family, and time for some
healthy diversion. But it does mean that we are never -- on vacation, or
wherever we may be -- exempt from our primary commitment to Him.
... Samuel
M. Shoemaker, The Experiment
of Faith
Meditation: Luke 6:28
When you hear someone
saying unworthy and hard words of you, then it is given to you to drink
medicine for your soul from the cup of the Lord.
... Thomas
à Kempis
Meditation: 1 Corinthians 13:4-7
We need at times,
some of us at most times, that Charity from others which, being Love Himself
in them, loves the unlovable. But this, though a sort of love we need,
is not the sort we want. We want to be loved for our cleverness, beauty,
generosity, fairness, usefulness. The first hint that anyone is offering
us the highest love of all is a terrible shock.
... C.
S. Lewis, The Four Loves
Meditation: Hebrews 4:16
God desires and
is pleased to communicate with us through the avenues of our minds, our
wills, and our emotions. The continuous and unembarrassed interchange of
love and thought between God and the souls of the redeemed men and women
is the throbbing heart of the New Testament.
... A.
W. Tozer
Meditation: John 12:42-43
Seducers we, they
say; but they lead men astray. Oh, what a noble seduction ours, that men
should change from dissolute to sober living -- or towards it; to justice
from injustice -- or tending that way; to wisdom from being foolish --
or becoming such; and from cowardice, meanness and timidity, show courage
and fortitude, not least in this struggle for the sake of our religion.
... Origen
Meditation: Matthew 6:11-12
Consider what two
petitions Christ couples together in His prayer: when my body, which every
day is hungry, can live without God's giving it daily bread, then and no
sooner shall I believe that my soul, which daily sinneth, can spiritually
live without God's forgiving it its trespasses.
... Thomas
Fuller
Meditation: Isaiah 9:2
To pass from estrangement
from God to be a son of God is the basic fact of conversion. That altered
relationship with God gives you an altered relationship with yourself,
with your brother man, with nature, with the universe. You are no longer
working against the grain of the universe; you're working with it... You
have been forgiven by God and now you can forgive yourself. All self hate,
self-despising, self-rejection, drop away, and you accept yourself in God,
respect yourself, and love yourself... You cease to move into yourself,
away from others. You give up your antagonism. You begin to move toward
others in love. God moved toward you in gracious, outgoing love, and you
move toward others in that same outgoing love.
... E.
Stanley Jones, Conversion
Meditation: Colossians 3:17
For the power Thou hast given me to lay hold of things unseen:
For the strong sense I have that this is not my home:
For my restless heart which nothing finite can satisfy:
I give Thee thanks, O God.
For the invasion of my soul by Thy Holy Spirit:
For all human love and goodness that speak to me of Thee:
For the fullness of Thy glory outpoured in Jesus Christ
I give Thee thanks, O God.
... John Baillie
Meditation: Isaiah 52:7
He is the true
Gospel-bearer that carries it in his hands, in his mouth, and in his heart...
A man does not carry it in his heart that does not love it with all his
soul; and nobody loves it as he ought, that does not conform to it in his
life.
... Desiderius
Erasmus
Meditation: John 1:29
A system of doctrine
has risen up during the last three centuries, in which faith or spiritual-mindedness
is contemplated and rested on as the end of religion, instead of Christ.
I do not mean to say that Christ is not mentioned as the author of all
good, but that stress is laid on the believing rather than on the object
of belief, on the comfort and persuasiveness of the doctrine than on the
doctrine itself. And in this way religion is made to consist of contemplating
ourselves, instead of Christ; not simply in looking to Christ, but in seeing
that we look to Christ; not in His divinity and atonement, but in our conversion
and faith in Him... [Continued tomorrow]
... John
Henry Newman
Meditation: Hebrews 12:1,2
The fashion of
the day has been to attempt to convert by insisting on conversion; to exhort
men to be converted; to tell them to be sure they look at Christ instead
of simply holding up Christ; to tell them to have faith rather than to
supply its object; to lead them to work up their minds, instead of impressing
upon them the thought of Him who can savingly work in them; to bid them
to be sure their faith is justifying, that it is not dead, formal, self-righteous,
or merely moral, instead of delineating Him whose image, fully delineated,
destroys deadness, formality, self-righteousness; to rely on words, vehemence,
eloquence, and the like, rather than to aim at conveying the one great
idea, whether in words or not.
... John
Henry Newman
Meditation: 1 Kings 19:11-13
There is hardly
ever a complete silence in our soul. God is whispering to us well-nigh
incessantly. Whenever the sounds of the world die out in the soul, or sink
low, then we hear these whisperings of God. He is always whispering to
us, only we do not always hear, because of the noise, hurry, and distraction
which life causes as it rushes on.
... Frederick
W. Faber
Meditation: Colossians+1:3-6
The one great fear
which is a holy fear is, I think, lest you make your adventure too small,
too easy, too self-full, too mediocre. Christianity fails because people
will keep on the surface too much, they will not go down to face these
deep inner obediences; and that is ultimately to be beaten by themselves.
We talk big and play so small. And the world has found it out --the great
bulk have discarded Christianity as the way of Hope and put their hope
in other things.
... The Notebooks
of Florence Allshorn
Meditation: Matthew 13:22
Even those of us
who are inside it will agree that, in the main, the Church and all for
which it stands occupy a palpably smaller place in the life of the average
member than it did in former days. We explain it on the ground that life
has become fuller, and that, of necessity, our attention nowadays has to
percolate over a wide area instead of rushing foam-flecked down a narrower
channel -- which is to say, in other words, that Christ is getting lost
to us in the crush and throng of things, does not loom up as arresting,
as unique, as all-important, as He did to our forefathers. Yet that, when
you come to think of it, is no bad definition of unspirituality.
... A.
J. Gossip, From the Edge of the Crowd
Meditation: 1 Peter 1:6-7
If you have failings,
ask God often whether it be His honour and pleasure to take them away from
you; for without Him you can do nothing. If he takes them away, thank Him;
but if He does not do that, you will bear it no more, however, as the defect
of a sin, but as a great trial with which you are to gain merit and practice
patience. You should be content, whether or not He accords you His gift.
... Meister
Eckhart, Spiritual Instructions
Meditation: Romans 8:26
The religious desire
and effort of the soul to relate itself and all its interest to God and
his will, is prayer in the deepest sense. This is essential prayer: uttered
or unexpressed, it is equally prayer. It is the soul's desire after God
going forth in a manifestation, ... the soul striving after God. This is
a prayer that may exist without ceasing, consisting, as it does, not in
doing or saying this or that, but in temper and attitude of the spirit.
... P.
B. Brown
Meditation: 2 Corinthians 13:4
The nominal Christian,
then, will see Jesus as a name, a representative, a symbol, a personification,
a prototype, a figure, a model, an exemplar for something else. The nominal
Christian pays homage to something about Jesus, rather than worshipping
the man himself. For this reason, nominal Christians will extol the moral
teachings of Jesus, the faith of Jesus, the personality of Jesus, the compassion
of Jesus, the world view of Jesus, the self-understanding of Jesus, etc.
None of these worships Jesus as the Christ, but only something about him,
something peripheral to the actual flesh-and-blood man. This is why when
the almighty God came into the world in Jesus, he came as the lowest of
the low, as weakness itself, as a complete and utter nothing, in order
that men would be forced into the crucial decision about him alone and
would not be able to worship anything about him.
... Robert
L. Short, The Parables of Peanuts
Meditation: Luke 18:1
There is a communion
with God that asks for nothing, yet asks for everything... He who seeks
the Father more than anything He can give, is likely to have what he asks,
for he is not likely to ask amiss.
... George
Macdonald
Compilation Copyright, 1996-2008, by Robert McAnally Adams,
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