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June 24 - July 6, 2021
before setting to work for God and to fight against the devil, first calculate your forces; and if you consider yourself well enough equipped to begin you are a fool, because the tower to be built costs an outrageous price, and the enemy coming out to meet you is an angel before whom you are of no account. Get to know yourself so well that you cannot contemplate yourself without flinching; then there will be room for hope. Only in the sure knowledge that you are obliged to do the impossible and that you can do the impossible in him who strengthens you are you ready for a task which can be
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If God is Love, He is, by definition, something more than mere kindness. And it appears, from all records, that though He has often rebuked us and condemned us, He has never regarded us with contempt. He has paid us the intolerable compliment of loving in the deepest, most tragic, most inexorable sense.
If His lordship is really established over me, it makes no difference (I might even say it’s “no big deal”) whether I live or die. I am expendable. That knowledge is freedom. I have no care for anything, for all that I am, all that I have, all that I do, and all that I suffer have been joyfully placed at His disposal. He can do anything He wants.
To be a disciple of Jesus Christ is to have a Companion all the time. But that does not mean we will never suffer loneliness. In fact, it means that we may be lonely in ways we would not have been if we had not chosen to be disciples. When people who are contemplating becoming missionaries ask me, “But what about loneliness?” I tell them, Yes. You’ll be lonely. It’s part of the price. Strangers in strange lands are lonely. You accept that in advance.
But marriage teaches us that even the most intimate human companionship cannot satisfy the deepest places of the heart. Our hearts are lonely till they rest in Him who made us for Himself.
The Bible promises me that my God, not my husband, shall supply all my needs.
Events are the sacraments of the Will of God—that is, they are visible signs of an invisible Reality.
God had included the hardships of my life (which I confess have been few) in His original plan. Nothing takes Him by surprise. But nothing is for nothing, either. His plan is to make me holy, and hardship is indispensable for that as long as we live in this hard old world. All I have to do is accept it.
“The life of a soul is so great a thing, that one of those distilled acts of faith and acceptance, without any light or feeling, is of greater activity and of greater vitality in God’s sight than the tramp of armies and the power of those who command them.”3
It is not capitulation to evil or a refusal to do what can and ought to be done to change things. It is a distilled act of faith, a laying of one’s will alongside God’s, a putting of oneself at one with His kingdom and His will.
The cheerful acceptance of humble work, the small testings of any boy’s home life were a part of His preparation for the great testings of His public years, a part of the road which led Him to the Cross.
a genuine faith, which is always a practical faith.
“The King of Glory rewards His servants not according to the dignity of their office, but according to the love and humility with which they carry it out.”2
If all He is asking of us just now is the willingness to accept the relatively small discipline of loneliness, can we not see it as a part of His gift of allowing us to walk with Him?
As many disciples discover, the will of God turns out to be quite different from their expectations.
We cannot offer it unless we first “receive,” that is, accept it—with its beauties, its imperfections, its limitations, it potentialities. This body and nobody else’s is my offering. It is not, however, mere blood, bone, and tissue. It is the dwelling of the “self”—spirit, mind, heart, will, emotions, temperament. It must be offered wholeheartedly, in simplicity, with no quibbles about its fitness.
All offerings made to God matter to Him because of the single, unique offering of Christ for us. We unite ourselves with Him in this—we are actually “crucified with” Christ.
Christ offering Himself in love to us and for us—“My life for yours.”
It is important to understand very clearly that we have nothing at all to add to the complete sacrifice of Christ which is our very salvation. His offering was perfect. It lacked nothing.
Having given my all, I may specifically offer my time, my work, my prayer, my possessions,1 my praise, and—yes—my sufferings. It is in this mysterious sense that I see loneliness as a gift: it is not only something to be accepted, but something to be offered,
Is it not legitimate, then, to think of loneliness as material for sacrifice? What I lay on the altar of consecration is nothing more and nothing less than what I have at this moment, whatever I find in my life now of work and prayer, joys and sufferings. Some people see singleness as a liability, a handicap, a deprivation, even a curse. Others see it as a huge asset, a license to be a “swinger,” an opportunity to do what feels good. I see it as a gift. To make that gift an offering may be the most costly thing one can do, for it means the laying down of a cherished dream of what one wanted to
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a gift God has given me to give back to Him in order that he may make something of it.
When all we have to offer seems pitifully small and woefully poor, we must offer it nevertheless, in obedience like the widow’s, and in the simplicity of a little child who brings a crushed dandelion to his mother. The child is not bitter and resentful at the poverty of his offering. He is happy to have something. Quantity and quality are not always under our control, and what the Lord can possibly make of it is no concern of ours. That part is under His control. He Himself knows what He will do. Let our offering be free, humble, unconditional, given in the full confidence that His
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Our offerings become a part of Christ’s offering of Himself.
a deeper dying has endless powers of multiplying life in other souls.
The fact that his answer to the prayer for a friend has so far been No indicates to me that God does not think he needs the friend now—for God has promised to supply our needs. What we don’t have now we don’t need now. Possibly His very withholding is in order that the boy may learn, at this crucial juncture in his life, to turn to God in prayer for a deeply felt need.
Although as the world looks at things, we may be “solo,” we are not, as God looks at things, solitary instruments. We belong to an orchestra and make harmony by playing our particular part of the score on the instrument given us.
God’s honing methods continue to vary, but my struggles with singleness itself continue much as they ever have, with this one exception: I have made my peace with the future spectre of living all my days as a “spinster” or “old maid.” Those two words and the connotations they evoked used to strike terror in my soul. At last, after years and years of running from the possibility that I may never know the love of a godly man, I told the Lord, “Yes. You’ll just have to take care of me.” Yet I must be honest and add that I still continue to hope celibacy will not always be my lot. Nevertheless I
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Van’s simple word, “It’ll be ok,” encouraged me to trust and obey. I learned that in this renunciation I had what the seed has that falls into the ground—a new potential for life-giving. I would be lonely, but I now had something precious to offer in love to my Lord, which in turn would make something quite different out of my loneliness.
The “wholeness” of the Body. It dawned on me with new understanding—the wholeness of the Body is the holiness of the Body. A healthy body is healthy in all its parts. As each individual member grows in holiness, the Body grows in wholeness. Holiness is what matters to God. The holiness or the wholeness of one member of the Body makes a difference to all the rest.
He knows that spiritual stamina cannot develop without conflict. We must take with both hands the thing given, submissively, humbly, sometimes courageously, or even, as one friend put it, “defiantly”—saying to ourselves, This is part of the story, the story of the love of God for me and of my love for Him.
The motto was Pax, but the word was set in a circle of thorns. Peace: but what a strange peace, made of unremitting toil and effort, seldom with a seen result; subject to constant interruptions, unexpected demands, short sleep at night, little comfort, sometimes scant food; beset with disappointments, and usually misunderstood; yet peace all the same, undeviating, filled with joy and gratitude and love. “It is My own peace I give unto you,” not, notice, the world’s peace.
To be a Christian is to make the kind of choices which bring us daily into an ever greater and closer harmony with the Spirit of Christ.
if there is among you such a root from which springs gall and wormwood, then when he hears the terms of this oath, he may inwardly flatter himself and think, “All will be well with me even if I follow the promptings of my stubborn heart”; but this will bring everything to ruin.
One who forfeits the grace of God is like a bitter, noxious weed which poisons the lives of others. Refusal to accept grace isolates, as a sulking child, wrapped up in his own misery, refuses comfort.
My theme is oblation—the offering up of ourselves, all we are, have, do, and suffer. Sacrifice means something received and something offered.
a very simple thing has helped me. It is to kneel with open hands before the Lord. Be silent for a few minutes, putting yourself consciously in His presence. Think of Him. Then think of what you have received in the four categories mentioned (are, have, do, suffer)—the
Next, visualize as well as you can this gift, resting there in your open hands. Thank the Lord for whatever aspect of this gift you can honestly thank Him for—if not for the thing in itself, then for its transformability, for His sovereignty, His will which allows you to have this gift, His unfailing love, the promise of His presence in deep waters and hot fires, the pattern for good which you know He is at work on. Then, quite simply, offer it up. Make God’s gift to you your oblation to Him. Lift up your hands. This is a physical act denoting your love, your acceptance, your thanksgiving, and
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“It is a mistake to measure such things by introspection. He heard and answered. That is all there is to it. Let the answer be manifested in His own time and way.”
I can promise her that as she eats spiritual food she will acquire an ever-increasing taste for the Bread of Life, which fully satisfies the deepest hunger.
Instead of taking away my appetite, the Lord showed me the indispensable lesson of Deuteronomy 8, a review of Israel’s wilderness experience. While they craved for the food they had had in Egypt, God gave them manna. Manna was supernatural food, miraculously provided, and it was all they needed. But even a miracle did not stop the wanting of leeks, onions, garlic, watermelons, and fish. If He had given them what they naturally craved, they would never have learned to eat manna, they would never have acquired a taste for the bread which came down from heaven. God made them hungry on purpose—in
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So He disciplines us. He pays us that “intolerable compliment” of loving us inexorably. He harrows our souls, making us long for something we cannot have, in order to reveal to us what He wants us to have, which in the long run is far better.
I am confronted with that same troublesome mystery—suffering, pain, and tears are a part of God’s economy on earth. The truth just sickens me! There is no growth and no fruit apart from pain. Christianity is not for the weak, although the world would have us believe so. It is for those who find the courage to humble themselves.
Sometimes we prefer to “struggle” even when we are quite clear about what we ought to do. Struggling in such a case only postpones obedience. While we play for time, we can put off the moment of terrible choice. Sooner or later someone is bound to come along and say just what we hoped to hear, “Go with your feelings.” That may seem the easiest way until we try it, whereupon we find that feelings are always cancelling each other out—which ones shall we go with? When we have once met God we know there’s a war on. We have a lower nature that sets its desires against the Spirit.
Although a year had passed since the man disappeared, she still fought overwhelming guilt and self-hatred. She knew the Scriptures—that Jesus died for her, that His blood would wash away all her sin, that “nothing is too awful for Him to forgive.”
He will restore purity to the heart that has confessed and forsaken the sin. The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses. It cleanses from all sin.
you have been through the purifying waters; you have been dedicated to God and justified through the name of the Lord Jesus and the Spirit of our God. . . . Your body is a shrine of the indwelling Holy Spirit. . . . You do not belong to yourselves; you were bought at a price.
If we begin each day by an acknowledgment of our dependence upon Him, and our intention to obey Him, He will certainly help us. The Holy Spirit, who is the source of our life, then directs the course. Every discipline imposed in that course is for one purpose: “to bring us to our full glory,” and to make us “part of the permanent” that “cannot die”
Turn your loneliness into solitude, and your solitude into prayer.
receiving it as a gift, accepting it from the hand of God, and offering it back to Him with thanksgiving, it
