The Determination To Serve By Oswald Chambers

By Oswald Chambers

      'The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister.'
      Matthew 20:28

      Paul's idea of service is the same as Our Lord's: "I am among you as He that serveth;" "ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake." 

We have the idea that a man called to the ministry is called to be a different kind of being from other men. According to Jesus Christ, he is called to be the "door-mat" of other men; their spiritual leader, but never their superior. "I know how to be abased," says Paul. This is Paul's idea of service - "I will spend myself to the last ebb for you; you may give me praise or give me blame, it will make no difference." 

So long as there is a human being who does not know Jesus Christ, I am his debtor to serve him until he does. The mainspring of Paul's service is not love for men, but love for Jesus Christ. If we are devoted to the cause of humanity, we shall soon be crushed and broken-hearted, for we shall often meet with more ingratitude from men than we would from a dog; but if our motive is love to God, no ingratitude can hinder us from serving our fellow men.

      Paul's realization of how Jesus Christ had dealt with him is the secret of his determination to serve others. "I was before a perjurer, a blasphemer, an injurious person" - no matter how men may treat me, they will never treat me with the spite and hatred with which I treated Jesus Christ. 

When we realize that Jesus Christ has served us to the end of our meanness, our selfishness, and sin, nothing that we meet with from others can exhaust our determination to serve men for His sake.

When God Laughs By Warren Wiersbe

By Warren Wiersbe

      Read Psalm 2:1-12 

      Are you surprised that God laughs? "He who sits in the heavens shall laugh; the Lord shall hold them in derision" (v. 4). God has a sense of humor, but His laughter is the kind that is born of judgment. It's the laughter of derision, the laughter of irony. 

What is God laughing at? He's laughing at puny little kings and rulers who have united to shake their fists at His throne and tell Him they don't want Him to rule over them (vv. 2,3). 

God laughs at them because He knows man cannot survive without submitting to His authority. Man is made in the image of God, and if he fights against Him, he fights against himself. Man, in his rebellion, tries to make God in his own image. He thinks God can be treated with disdain and disobedience. And God laughs.

      We can laugh when we read the headlines or watch TV reports. We see a world in turmoil, a world united against God, but we laugh because He is still on the throne. "Yet I have set My King on My holy hill of Zion" (v. 6). Jesus Christ is God's King, and He is on the throne. 

Therefore, we can look at the nations as they are in turmoil, as they unite against God, and we can smile--in fact, we can laugh. They are fighting a losing battle. Jesus Christ is on the throne of the universe, and we who are Christians are seated with Him on that throne.

      As believers, we are to be witnesses for Christ. Reaching a world that rebels against God's authority can be difficult. Be encouraged, for your efforts will not be wasted. 

God is in control and one day will bring all governments and earthly powers into submission. Pray that He will use your life to reach others and glorify Himself.

Love of the World By Elisabeth Elliot

By Elisabeth Elliot

      John tells us in his first letter that anyone who loves the world is a stranger to the Father's love. We are not to set our hearts on the world or anything in it. 

These words have been interpreted in many strange ways by different varieties of Christians, and I have puzzled much over them. The word used in the original is cosmos, which means the whole created order. 

Is there nothing here that I am allowed to love? 

What about the thundering, flashing sea that I see from my window? What about the rose on my desk, or even this house where I live with its warmth and pleasantness, the cup of tea in mid-afternoon, the books on my shelves? They are not going to last forever. If I love them, am I then a stranger to my heavenly Father's love?

      It has helped me to think of John's words in this manner: To love the world in the wrong way is to love it without knowing the Father's love. 

It is when a man knows Him and receives everything from his hand that the world is redeemed for him, no longer a snare and in opposition to the love of God. We must love the world only through and because of the Father, not instead of. Our ultimate concern must be God Himself. He is eternal. His gifts are not always so.

      Lord, may no gift of yours ever take your place in my heart. Help me to hold them lightly in an open palm, that the supreme object of my desire may always be You and You alone. Purify my heart--I want to love You purely.

The Befriended Orphans By John MacDuff

By John MacDuff

                            

                 THE
      WORDS OF JESUS.       by the author of
      "THE MORNING AND NIGHT WATCHES,"
      "THE FAITHFUL PROMISER," ETC.
      Taken from the last London Edition.      New York:
      STANFORD & DELISSER,
      No. 508, BROADWAY.
      1858.

"Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how He said"--

      "I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you."--John xiv. 18.

      

      Does the Christian's path lie all the way through Beulah? Nay, he is forewarned it is to be one of "much tribulation." He has his Marahs as well as his Elims--his valleys of Baca as well as his grapes of Eschol. Often is he left unbefriended to bear the brunt of the storm--his gourds fading when most needed--his sun going down while it is yet day--his happy home and happy heart darkened in a moment with sorrows with which a stranger (with which often a brother) cannot intermeddle. There is One Brother "born for adversity," who can. How often has that voice broken with its silvery accents the muffled stillness of the sick-chamber or death-chamber! "'I will not leave you comfortless:' the world may, friends may, the desolations of bereavement and death may; but I will not; you will be alone, yet not alone, for I your Saviour and your God will be with you!"

      Jesus seems to have an especial love and affection for His orphaned and comfortless people. A father loves his sick and sorrowing child most; of all his household, he occupies most of his thoughts. Christ seems to delight to lavish His deepest sympathy on "him that hath no helper." It is in the hour of sorrow His people have found Him most precious; it is in "the wilderness" He speaks most "comfortably unto them;" He gives them "their vineyards from thence:" in the places they least expected, wells of heavenly consolation break forth at their feet. As Jonathan of old, when faint and weary, had his strength revived by the honey he found dropping in the tangled thicket: so the faint and woe-worn children of God find "honey in the wood"--everlasting consolation dropping from the tree of life, in the midst of the thorniest thickets of affliction.

      Comfortless ones, be comforted! Jesus often makes you portionless here, to drive you to Himself, the everlasting portion. He often dries every rill and fountain of earthly bliss, that He may lead you to say, "All my springs are in Thee." "He seems intent," says one who could speak from experience, "to fill up every gap love has been forced to make; one of his errands from heaven was to bind up the broken-hearted." How beautifully in one amazing verse does he conjoin the depth and tenderness of his comfort with the certainty of it--"As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you, and ye SHALL be comforted!"

      Ah, how many would not have their wilderness-state altered, with all its trials, and gloom, and sorrow, just that they might enjoy the unutterable sympathy and love of this Comforter of the comfortless, one ray of whose approving smile can dispel the deepest earthly gloom? As the clustering constellations shine with intensest lustre in the midnight sky, so these "words of Jesus" come out like ministering angels in the deep dark night of earthly sorrow. We may see no beauty in them when the world is sunny and bright; but He has laid them up in store for us for the dark and cloudy day.

      "THESE THINGS HAVE I TOLD YOU, THAT WHEN THE TIME COMETH, YE MAY REMEMBER THAT I TOLD YOU OF THEM."

THE LONELY HUMAN By A.W. Tozer

By A.W. Tozer

      There is a strange contradiction in human nature all around us: the fact that a person can reek with pride, display a swollen ego and strut like a peacock-and yet be the loneliest and most miserable person in the world! We find these people everywhere-pretending and playing a game. 

Deep within their beings, they are almost overwhelmed by their great loneliness, by their sense of being orphans in the final scheme of things. 

The result of this strange, aching human sense of loneliness and cosmic orphanage is the inward, groping question: "What good is it to be a human being? No one cares about me!" 

In the garden, Eve believed Satan's lie-the lie that God was not concerned about her and that God had no emotional connection with her life and being. 

This is where the unregenerate person is in today's world. It is only sin and defeat that can bring this sense of orphanage, this sense of having been put out of the father's house, and the feeling that follows when the house is burned down and the father is dead.

Quit you like men (I. Cor. xvi. 13). By A.B. Simpson

Days of Heaven Upon Earth Devotional        "Quit you like men" (I. Cor. xvi. 13).            Be brave. Cowards always get hurt. Brave men generally come out unharmed. Jeremiah was a hero. He shrank from nothing. He faced his king and countrymen with dauntless bravery, and the result was he suffered no harm, but came through the siege of Jerusalem without a hair being injured. Zedekiah, the cowardly king, was always afraid to obey God and be true, and the result was that he at last met the most cruel punishment that was ever inflicted on human heart.            The men and women that stand from the beginning true to their convictions have the fewest tests. When God gives to you a good trial, if you can stand the strain, He is not always repeating it. When Abraham offered up his son Isaac at Mount Moriah, it was a final testing for the rest of his life. Do not let Satan see that you are afraid of him, for he will pursue to the death if he thinks that he has a chance of getting you.            Be true, be true,       Whether friends be false or few,       Whatsoe'er betide, ever at His side,           Let Him always find you true.

The Evening and the Morning By F.B. MEYER

Our Daily Homily Devotional        The Evening and the Morning were the First Day. Genesis 1:5             How different is God's method from man's! The creature works from day to night, his best is first; but darkness overshadows his fairest hopes and best-concerted schemes. The Creator's days begin with the preceding eve. He reckons the evenings and nights into the days, because out of them the day is born; they usher in the light, and recreate body and brain for the busy hours that follow.             Art thou disappointed in Christian work? - Remember that God wrought on through long dark ages, ere His schemes were evolved in order and beauty. Human schemes begin with blare of trumpet and roll of drum, but are soon plunged in darkness. The heavenly seed is sown in autumn shadows; the foundation-stone of redemption was laid amid the gloom of Calvary; the work that lasts generally begins amid disappointment, difficulty, and heart-break, but inevitably passes into the day.             Art thou passing through the bitterness of soul-trouble? - For weeks there has been no ray of comfort, no sign of deliverance. Yet every dark hour is hastening toward the dawn. Thou shalt see thy Beloved walking toward thee in the morning light.             Art thou in despair for the worm? - The times are dark, and threaten to get darker. But if the first creation began in the dark, can it be wondered at that the second must begin there to? But as the one emerged in daylight, so shall the other. The morning cometh; see the star of day standing sentry! Time, is bearing us to a day that shall never go down to night, but shall mount ever toward its meridian.

The Three Ananiases By Andrew Bonar

By Andrew Bonar

      The Acts of the Apostles, Chapters 23;5;9.

      It is sometimes useful to put in juxtaposition separate facts and characters. The three Crosses--how instructive! the three Marys, the three Centurions. Here we have the three Ananiases. Their name means 'Jehovah is gracious.' Their parents thought it a lucky name, and all professed to rejoice in what it expresses. Many make this a pillow. Let us not be deceived by names or profession, for even devoutness is not faith, and profession is not principle.

      I. Ananias, the enemy of the Cross.--He was the son of Nebadaeas and succeeded Joseph, who succeeded Annas and Caiaphas. You find him with the Bible in his hands from his birth, as a Levite and a priest. He had to do with the highest forms of religion, with its rites day by day at the altar. Once a year he would be in the Holy of Holies, and see the mercy-seat, and gaze on the blood,--yea, sprinkle it. Every holy thing in word and ordinance was familiar to him. And yet he was a 'whited wall,' --only externally comely, all formalism and externalism. He hated vital religion and grew wroth at every manifestation of it. His bosom friends were Roman governors and such as Tertullus (24:1). The world, even the same pleasures that heathenism relished, was still in his heart. Josephus tells that before the last siege of the city, he hid in an aqueduct and was dragged out to die. Even so shall he try to hide under the rocks or cry, 'Mercy, O Lord!' according to his name, but shall not find it.

      In our community there are many such as Ananias, persons brought up with the Bible in their hand, familiar with ordinances, with the routine of the prayer-book, or family worship, or worship in church. Nay, they go to the Lord's Table, lifting up solemn hands, gazing on the blood on the mercy-seat, and saying 'We take it.' Yet their bosom friends are men like Felix or Tertullus, they are at home with them in pleasure and trifling gaieties. They instinctively shrink from true vital godliness and the men who have it, bid them 'hold their peace'--smite them on the mouth. They never knew the new birth. Union to Christ is to them cant or nonsense. And so they die! But on the day of Christ, lo! they are dragged from the covert of the rocks and hills.

      II. Ananias the apparent believer.--He was a hollow-hearted man, yet he seemed sound. It was a revival time when the tide was high. He joined the true believers at a time when faith was strong in them, when they were accustomed to live each day looking into glory and were on the wing above earth. Feeling a secret conviction that they were right, he threw in his lot with them, separated himself from former friends, took the godly as his companions, praised and admired the Apostle, and became quite zealous. But he was not really born again, the Spirit was not in him, as soon appeared. For either from a wish to be less obscure, or from partial conviction that self-denial was right, he sold part and pretended to give all. And so we see he had never quietly rested on Christ and been content with His Nazareth obscurity of obedience. He died an awful death. His name availed not, there was no 'grace' for him. He sank down--what an awful surprise !--from the very midst of the believers.

      There are some such among us still. They have a secret conviction that it is safe and right to be believers, so they imitate others, attend meetings, separate themselves from the world. You may detect in yourselves a likeness to Ananias. Perhaps, when you find yourself overlooked you wish to be known or else to go back. Or when a missionary cause is pleaded you give a little, and say to conscience, 'It is all I can afford.' Perhaps you are half--conscious that it is the example of others that carries you along. Are you willing to detect yourself? 

Ask yourself, 'Why am I not willing to do as Jesus did at Nazareth, though unnoticed? Why am I complacent at any good thing I say or do? Are not these to a real saint as natural as streams to a spring? Am I independent of money and comforts, of name and praise for my heaven, finding it in Jesus?' The Spirit has found you out, for He never knew a time when He opened the door of your heart. Your conscience may be quiet by your profession. O look on sin as you see it in the Law and in the Cross, not as you feel it. You cannot lie to the Holy Ghost in vain!