The Bow In The Cloud

 The Bow In The Cloud

By Oswald Chambers

      'I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between Me and the earth.'
      Genesis 9:13

      It is the Will of God that human beings should get into moral relationship with Him, and His covenants are for this purpose. Why does not God save me? He has saved me, but I have not entered into relationship with Him. 

Why does not God do this and that? He has done it, the point is - Will I step into covenant relationship? All the great blessings of God are finished and complete, but they are not mine until I enter into relationship with Him on the basis of His covenant.

      Waiting for God is incarnate unbelief, it means that I have no faith in Him; I wait for Him to do something in me that I may trust in that. God will not do it, because that is not the basis of the God-and-man relationship. 

Man has to go out of himself in his covenant with God as God goes out of Himself in His covenant with man. It is a question of faith in God - the rarest thing; we have faith only in our feelings. I do not believe God unless He will give me something in my hand whereby I may know I have it, then I say - "Now I believe." There is no faith there. "Look unto Me, and be ye saved."

      When I have really transacted business with God on His covenant and have let go entirely, there is no sense of merit, no human ingredient in it at all, but a complete overwhelming sense of being brought into union with God, and the whole thing is transfigured with peace and joy.

Pray for São Tomé and Príncipe

 

Encouragements to Prayer (Psalm 81:10) - Charles Spurgeon Sermon

Understanding Your Standing

 Understanding Your Standing

By Theodore Epp

      Romans 5:1-5

      Our standing before God is in the grace to which we have constant access (Rom. 5:2).

 We do not need new credentials each time we come to God, because our standing is constant since we come by means of what Jesus Christ accomplished for us. God does not accept us as we are, but as we are in Christ Jesus. God makes His grace abound toward us (2 Cor. 9:8), and we are able to come boldly into His immediate presence (Heb. 10:19). 

All of this is available to us; our responsibility is simply to act on the basis of what God has made available. We need to follow the principle stated by Jesus: "If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink" (John 7:37).

 Through grace, God has made all the benefits available to us; we now need simply to appropriate them or to act on the basis of what God extends to us.

      God's grace is what He is; therefore, our standing is as sure as God is. Inasmuch as justification is by faith, it is already securely ours when we trust Jesus Christ as our personal Saviour.

 The benefits, or blessings, that accompany justification are also ours, but in order to enjoy them we must appropriate them for ourselves. 

To fail in appropriating these benefits is like having money in the bank but refusing to use it or having water immediately available but refusing to drink it. Wonderful as these blessings are, they benefit us personally only as we appropriate them.

      "Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free" (Gal. 5:1).

What Am I Looking At?

 What Am I Looking At?

By Oswald Chambers

      'Look unto Me, and be ye saved.'
      Isaiah 14:22

      Do we expect God to come to us with His blessings and save us? He says - Look unto Me, and be saved. The great difficulty spiritually is to concentrate on God, and it is His blessings that make it difficult. Troubles nearly always make us look to God; His blessings are apt to make us look elsewhere. The teaching of the Sermon on the Mount is, in effect - Narrow all your interests until the attitude of mind and heart and body is concentration on Jesus Christ. "Look unto Me."

      Many of us have a mental conception of what a Christian should be, and the lives of the saints become a hindrance to our concentration on God. There is no salvation in this way, it is not simple enough. "Look unto Me" and - not "you will be saved," but "you are saved." 

The very thing we look for, we shall find if we will concentrate on Him. We get preoccupied and sulky with God, while all the time He is saying - "Look up and be saved." The difficulties and trials - the casting about in our minds as to what we shall do this summer, or to-morrow, all vanish when we look to God.

      Rouse yourself up and look to God. Build your hope on Him. No matter if there are a hundred and one things that press, resolutely exclude them all and look to Him. "Look unto Me," and salvation is, the moment you look.

Not my will, but thine

 Not my will, but thine

By A.B. Simpson

      Jesus who once suffered in Gethsemane will be our strength and our victory, too. We may fear, we may also sink, but let us not be dismayed, and we shall yet praise Him and look back from a finished course and say, Not one thing hath failed of all the good things which the Lord [our] God spake concerning [us] (Joshua 23:14). 

But in order to do this, we must, like Jesus, meet the conflict, not with a defiant but with a submissive spirit. He had to say, Not my will, but thine be done, but in saying it He gained the very thing He surrendered. 

The submission of Gethsemane is not a blind and dead submission of a heart that abandons all its hope, but it is the free submission that bows the head in order to get double strength through faith and prayer. We let go in order that we may take a firmer hold. We give up in order that we may more fully receive. 

We lay our Isaac on Mount Moriah, and we receive him back, no longer our Isaac, but God's Isaac and infinitely more secure because he is returned to us in resurrection life.

Loved And Laved (Revelation 1:5,6) - Charles Spurgeon

The Man Behind the Ministry | Derek Prince