Words of Divine Comfort - 31 days with Jesus E-Book

Octavius Winslow

• Herausgeber: Bible Study Books
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Serie: Hope messages for quarantine
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 112

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

This blessing text seeks to bring comfort and peace to Christians in this 31-day devotional text. A daily message with texts from the Holy Bible talking about themes about faith, divine love, prayer, and Christian life. A book that will bring you spiritual comfort and renewal of faith and will awaken in your heart a communion with God. Have a moment of meditation on the Word of God every day

Leseprobe

PREFACE

This blessing text seeks to bring comfort and peace to Christians in this 31-day devotional text.

A daily message with texts from the Holy Bible talking about themes about faith, divine love, prayer, and Christian life.

A book that will bring you spiritual comfort and renewal of faith and will awaken in your heart a communion with God.

SUMMARY

PREFACE

REVERENCE FOR GOD WORD

HONORING THE LORD

THE LORD THE SAINTS AVENGER

GOD UNCHANGING LOVE

THE BELIEVERS SUFFICIENCY OF GOD

THE LORDS MEASURED CORRECTION

THE BACKSLIDERS RETURN

THE NEARNESS OF GOD

DIVINE ACCEPTANCE

THE LORD A WALL OF FIRE

THE HUMAN MEANS

THE BLESSING DIVINE

DIVINE LOVE QUESTIONED

THE BEST FOR GOD

THE BLESSING GIVEN

JEHOVAHS JEWELS

GODS WOUNDING AND HEALING

THE VOICE OF THE LORD IN THE CLOUD

PATIENT ENDURANCE OF WRONG

SEPARATION FROM THE UNGODLY WORLD

OBEDIENCE TO CHRIST

IT IS THE BLOOD THAT SAVES

JESUS IN THE CHAMBER OF SICKNESS

THE DYING BELIEVER

THE BELIEVER IN GLORY

JESUS IN THE HOUSE OF MOURNING

JESUS THE SINNERS GUEST

THE GENTLENESS OF GOD

NOTHING TOO HARD FOR GOD

THE LORDS LOVING REMEMBRANCES OF YOUTH

THE LORD FAITHFUL

REVERENCE FOR GOD'S WORD

"And Micaiah said, As the Lord lives, even what my God says, that will I speak." 2 Chron. 18:13

Micaiah was a God-fearing prophet. His fidelity to the Lord stands in striking and instructive contrast with the worldly policy of Jehoshaphat, King of Judah, who joined affinity with Ahab, King of Israel an alliance which proved, as all alliances of the holy with the unholy ever will, a source of discomfort and sorrow to the king. The good prophet Micaiah was charged by the Lord with an especial and solemn message to Ahab. It contained a prohibition, and forewarned a danger. The message was distasteful and annoying to the ungodly, self-willed monarch. Other prophets, anxious to conciliate Ahab, had prophesied good, urging the adoption of a course at once contradictory to the divine injunction, and ruinous to the monarch. The moment was a critical one. Micaiah, the true prophet of the Lord, urged to join the false prophets in speaking what the Lord had not spoken to Ahab, refused to disobey God, replying in the noble language which suggests our present reflection "As the Lord lives, even what my God says, that will I speak." What to him was the favor of Ahab? What the earthly and temporary reward of a time-serving, man-pleasing policy, weighed with reverence for, and obedience to, the word and command of the living God? How replete with spiritual and solemn instruction are the words of the prophet? May the Holy Spirit open and apply them to our minds!

Am I a minister of Christ? Then, as the Lord lives, what my God says, that must I speak, nothing more and nothing less. In this point of light how tremendous the responsibility of my ministerial office! I am under the most solemn obligation to preach the Gospel, the whole Gospel, and nothing but the Gospel, as God has spoken it in His Word. I must not dilute, nor pervert, nor withhold it. I must not preach it with reservation, either to exalt myself or to please man. I must preach Christ's obedience as the sinner's free justification; Christ's death as the sinner's full pardon; Christ's example as the believer's rule of life in a word, Christ must be the all and in all of my ministry even what my God says, that will I speak. Woe is unto me, if I preach not the pure, simple, unadulterated Gospel of Christ! The blood of souls will God require at my hands!

Am I a disciple of Christ? Then I must believe and accept nothing but what the Lord my God has spoken. Guarded against human additions, man's teaching, and those who would seduce me from the simplicity of the truth as it is in Jesus, I must have a "Thus says the Lord" for what I believe and accept. To the law and to the testimony. By this divine rule I must weigh and examine, taking heed, not only how I hear, but also, what I hear. An inspired Apostle has told me that, "The anointing which I have received abides in me, and that I need not that any man should teach me;" let me therefore believe and speak only that which my God has spoken.

O Lord! deepen my reverence for Your word! Confirm my faith in its divinity, increase my experience of its power, and deepen my sense of its preciousness. May I stand in awe of its solemn revelations, walk in the holiness of its precepts, live more simply upon its promises, and increasingly find it sweeter than honey, yes, than the honeycomb, to my taste. As the Lord lives, even what my Lord says, that will I believe, that will I accept, and that will I speak. In all my trials, sorrows, and needs, may Your Word be my comfort and support. May it sweeten the bitter waters of affliction, pencil the rainbow of hope upon the dark clouds of my pilgrimage; and, when I die, may its gracious invitations and precious promises bring Jesus near to my soul.

"How well Your blessed truths agree! How wise and holy Your commands!  Your promises, how sweet they be!  How firm our hope and comfort stands!

"Should all the forms that men devise  Assault my faith with treacherous art,  I'd call them vanity and lies,  And bind the Gospel to my heart."

HONORING THE LORD

"The Lord says, Those who honor Me I will honor." — 1 Sam. 2:30

How necessary for our instruction and God's glory that we should accept His Word just as we find it, and not as interpreted by a fallible church, or as reflected from a human standard. It is perilous to study the Bible in any other light than its own, or to recognize any other interpreter than its Divine Author. Guided by this precept, let us consider the words of God which suggest our present meditation — "Those who honor Me I will honor." They were originally spoken to Eli on the occasion of his preferring the sinful indulgence of his sons to the command and glory of God. By retaining them in the priests' offices, polluted by their iniquity and scandalized by their sacrilege, Eli had greatly dishonored God. It was on this solemn occasion that He spoke these words — "Those who honor Me I will honor, and those who despise Me shall be lightly esteemed."

The subject is solemn — searching — instructive. God keep us from Eli's sin! May His glory be our first and supreme object. God is justly jealous of His honor. He would not be God, righteous and pure, were He to part with one scintillation of His glory. "My glory will I not give to another." How, then, may I — trusting that, through electing love and sovereign grace, I am His adopted child, His chosen servant — best honor Him?

First. By fully believing in the divinity of His revealed Word. In magnifying His Word above His Name, God has demonstrated how closely entwined are His honor and His truth. To cast, then, a doubt upon the truth of God's Word, is to cast the highest dishonor upon God himself. My soul, beware of low views of inspiration, of tampering with the Bible, of caviling at any revealed truth; but, stand in awe of its divinity, adore its majesty, and bow unquestioningly to its authority. Then will God honor you, by making His Word your light in darkness, your joy in grief, your strength in service, your hope in despondency and despair. Thus, the Gospel you do implicitly and fully accept, will soothe you in life, support you in death, and be your glory and song through eternity. Thus honoring God in His Word, God will honor you by making that Word the joy and rejoicing of your soul.

I honor God by trusting Him. As there is not a more God-dishonoring principle than unbelief, so there is not a more God-glorifying grace than the faith that reposes in Him, with a childlike and unquestioning confidence — a faith that trusts His veracity to fulfill, and His power to perform all that He is pledged in His covenant and Word to do. My soul, you are tried, burdened, and in need. Have faith in God! Now is the time to bring honor and glory to His great Name by a simple, unhesitating trust in His power, faithfulness, and love — to comfort your sorrow, to counsel your perplexity, and to bring you out of trouble, with the richest blessing springing therefrom. Then will your God honor you. The faith that trusts the all-sufficiency of God, believing that the promise, though not yet performed, and that the prayer, though not yet answered, still will be, shall be crowned with a full realization of all it needed, all it asked, and all it hoped. God will say, "You have crowned My faithfulness by trusting Me, I will now crown your faith by giving to you."

Let me honor Christ by fully accepting His salvation. O my soul, beware of placing your sin, and guilt, and unworthiness, beyond the limit of Christ's ability and willingness to save. Oh! what dishonor to the Savior — a dishonor with which even devils are not chargeable — to doubt the efficacy of His blood to pardon, and the merit of His righteousness to justify the very chief of sinners.

Lord! what honor have You put upon me, to ask me to believe — to accept — to be saved! What marvelous condescension and grace that, in doing this, You should receive it as an honor done to You at my worthless hands. Blessed Lord! I will trample my own honor in the dust, if Yours be but reared upon its utter ruin. Self shall be uncrowned, that upon Your head the crown may flourish!

THE LORD THE SAINTS AVENGER

"Because of the oppression of the weak and the groaning of the needy, I will now arise," says the Lord. "I will protect them from those who malign them." Psalm 12:5

Never are the ungodly further from the mark never committed to a mistake more suicidal and fatal than when they lay the hand of injustice and oppression upon the saints of the Most High! God is for them. He is the Avenger of all those who put their trust in Him the widow and the fatherless and those who touch them touch the apple of His eye. "If God is for us, who can be against us?"

A simple missionary incident may illustrate this truth. A little band of missionaries in the Fiji Islands found their home, on one occasion, surrounded by a troop of armed savages, bent upon their destruction. Unable, as unwilling, to fight, they closed the door, and betook themselves to prayer. Presently, the war-whoop suddenly ceased. On opening the door they found only one savage there. "Where are your chiefs?" he was asked. "They are gone," was the reply; "they heard you praying to your God, and they knew that your God was a strong God, and they left." How true this testimony of the savages! The God of the Christians is a strong Lord. All that strength is on the side of His people. "For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show Himself STRONG in the behalf of those whose heart is perfect toward Him." Consider, O my soul, this truth, that the Lord is the strength of His people and the Avenger of all who are oppressed, and will set them in a safe place from those who malign them.

The Lord's people are an OPPRESSED people.The ungodly oppress them sins oppress them afflictions oppress them temptations oppress them needs oppress them infirmities oppress them — the body of sickness and suffering oppresses them and, alas! that it should be said, even the saints often oppress them for some of their keenest shafts have been forged and flung by a brother's hand. Oh, if there is a spectacle on earth which might well awaken tears in heaven, it is that of the brethren of one Father, the ransomed of one Savior, the travelers to one home, "falling out by the way," by reason of their varied shades of doctrine, or of worship, or of church relation and so, "biting and devouring one another." My soul, be a lover of good men; love them, not because they are of your creed, or of your church, but, because they belong to Christ so shall all men know that you are also one of His disciples.

But, the Lord stands up for His oppressed ones. He is the Avenger of all such. "It is God who avenges me," says David. Leave Him, O my soul, to vindicate your character, to redress your wrong, to rid you of your adversary, and He will bring forth your righteousness as the light, and your judgment as the noon-day. "O Lord, You have pleaded the causes of my soul."

The sighing of the needy." Jesus was a sighing Savior! He often "sighed