(1) “..Can
any of us dispense with this Morning Watch?
Those that Seek Me early in the morning shall find Me..”
(Prov.8:17)
Prebendary Webb_Peploe once said: “All great saints have been early risers.” Some of the holiest and busiest of God’s children have made the Morning Watch the settled habit of their lives. Sir Henry Havelock, even if he had to march at four in the morning, would rise so as to have two hours of fellowship with the King. The late Lord Cairns made it a rule to have an hour and a half for prayer before meeting the family, and never deviated from this, even if his late duties in Parliament left him no more than two hours’ sleep. Wesley and Whitefield were early risers. Fances Ridley Havergal could not have filled earth with so much of the music of heaven, had she not enjoyed what she calls “the one hour at down with Jesus.”
Can any of us dispense with this Morning Watch? What time is there to gather manna for the soul unless we do it before the sun rises? (Exod.16:19-21). What time to steal a march upon the enemy unless like Joshua, we awake right early? (Josh.6:12).
“Thankfully do I here testify to the value of the Morning Watch and vow to keep the holy trust” are the words of a noted missionary.
Some minutes in the morning,
Ere the cares of life begin,
Ere the heart’s wide door is open
For the world to enter in.
Oh, then alone with Jesus,
In the silence of the morn,
In heavenly, sweet communion
Let your every day be born,
In the quietude that blesses,
With a prelude of repose,
Let your soul be soothed and softened
As the dew revives the rose.
Some minutes in the morning
Take your Bible in your hand,
And catch a glimpse of glory
From the peaceful promised land.
It will linger still before you
When you seek the busy mart,
And like flowers of hope will blossom
Into beauty in your heart.
The precious words like jewels
Will glisten all the day
With a rare refulgent glory
That will brighten all the way!
The morning hour has gold in its hand.
(2) THE OIL
UNDER THE DOVE’S WING!
“The
Lord is thy keeper; the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand.” (Ps.121:5)
A young Christian girl obtained employment in a shop where she had to make a tremendously brave stand, for her colleagues were not Christians. In this environment of worldliness and bad language, she was compelled ever to be on her guard.
At one time she was a little fearful that she would fall into their habits or unconsciously let an unchristianlike word escape her lips. But as the days went by she found there was no desire whatever in her heart to enter into their ways. It puzzled her greatly that she could live under such conditions and not be contaminated. One day to an older Christian she expressed her pleasure in being kept pure under such circumstances. This was the explanation given by her.
“However much a dove may grovel in the filthy and mire of earth it is never contaminated. It always retains its purity and whiteness. The reason is that there is a continual flow of oil through the dove’s wings, which acts as a perpetual cleanser.”
As the dove is kept pure in that manner so are we kept pure from the vileness of sin by the continual cleansing of the oil of the Holy spirit. So many young Christians just starting out on the journey of life with fear that they will be led away from the Christian’s pathway. Banish that fear, in your perfect love for Christ. Remember – God is not only a God that can save, but a God that can keep! What a comforting thought!
Pray the prayer of David: “Lord, keep me as the apple of Thine eye,” guided and protected from all evil. Whatever your circumstances, have courage, for we are kept by the power of God, through faith. – Certrude Hale
“Kept, as chaste as unsunn’d snow.” – Shakespeare
(3) “Oh, God, build a wall around our home…”
“For everyone that asketh receiveth, and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.” (Luke 11:10).
When Napoleon’s army was marching through the country, a good Christian woman, a widow with children, was somewhat fearful lest the soldiers should molest the home; and that night, around the family altar, she breathed her prayer, “Oh, God, build a wall around our home and protect us from the enemy.” When the children retired, they were heard asking one another, “What did mother mean asking God to build a wall around our home?” In the morning they knew, for a heavy wind and snow storm had come, and showdrifts were all around the little home; the soldiers went by, not knowing that the house was there. That mother used God’s promise. So may you, and then you will thank God for the answer.
“Daddy, teach me how to pray’,
Asks the little child down at my knee.
Of all I can think, this is what I say,
“Trust God and ask, as you do of me.’”
PRAYER
Prayer is so simple;
It is like quietly opening a door
And slipping into the very presence of God,
There in the stillness
To listen to his voice;
Perhaps to petition,
Or only to listen;
It matters not.
Just to be there
In His presence
Is prayer.
(4) What is
impossible with you is perfectly possible with God!
“I will go before thee and unwind the snarls.” (Is.45:2)
“Have I no power to deliver?” (Is.50:2)
If any of you, beloved, seem to be in a kind of difficulty of which you cannot get the thread, look to Him who is perfect wisdom, and let the tangle go out of your hands into His; turn the matter over to Him. What is impossible with you is perfectly possible with Him who is almighty!
A little child at mother’s knee
Plies woolen strands and needles bright.
Small, eager hands strive earnestly
To fasten every stitch aright.
But soon perplexing knots appear
Which vex and hinder progress’ flow;
Impatient fingers pull and tear,
While ever worse the tangles grow.
How surely then in wiser hands
The roughest places are made plain!
How easy now the task’s demands,
How wonderful the lesson’s gain!
Thus, God, we bring our snarls to Thee;
Though human sense and stubborn will
Oft clamor loud for mastery,
We hear alone Thy “Peace, be still.” – Edith Shaw Brown
How tangled some of our problems do become as the days pass, and no way appears by which the matter may be straightened out! Perhaps we have been keeping the problems too much in our own hands. No wonder, then, we cannot find the beginning or the end of the line, or how to loosen the knotted strand in just the right places.
A young man writing to his father about a personal problem says: “Once again, just yesterday, I have put this whole matter in the Lord’s hands, and asked Him to guide me about it all. I often think of how I’d get my fishing line all tangled up. The more I pulled the worse it got. Finally I’d hand the whole thing over to you, and you’d smooth it all out. So I generally do that with my problems now; and I’m trying to learnt not to pull at the line much, before I give it to Him.” Have you been pulling at the line in that problem that troubles you today? Just hand it over to your heavenly Father, and see how swiftly and lovingly He will untangle the criss-cross and knotty impossibility that has troubled you so! – Sunday School Times.
“With thoughtless and
Impatient hands
We tangle up
The plans
The Lord hath wrought.
“And when we cry
In pain, He saith,
‘Be quiet, dear,
While I untie the knot.’”
(5) Let God cover thy wounds!
“He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds.
He telleth the number of the stars; he calleth all by their names.” (Ps.147:3,4)
A beautiful picture has just been painted by one of the greatest of the European artists: “The Consoler.” It is a picture of a bedroom in an English cottage. On the bed sits a beautiful little babe, perhaps a year in age, having in his hand a toy soldier that he is holding very lovingly to his body. He is unconscious of anything about him. Back of him on the wall is the picture of a young man in soldier’s dress – the baby’s father. On her knees, her head in her hands, is the young widow robed in deepest black, sobbing her heart out. One of the saddest pictures the world shall ever know – a baby to forget and never know his father; a young widow to go down through life with burdened, broken heart. But leaning over her, with the light of heaven on His beautiful face, is One who lays His hand lovingly on her shoulder. We do not wonder the great artist has called the picture “The Consoler.”
With His healing hand on a broken heart,
And the other on a star,
Our wonderful God views the miles apart,
And they seem not very far.
O it makes us cry – then laugh – then sing,
Tho’ ‘tis all beyond our ken;
He bindeth up wounds on that poor crushed
thing,
And He makes it whole again.
Was there something shone from that healed new heart
Made the Psalmist think of stars –
That bright as the sun or the lightning’s
dart,
Sped away pasta earthly bars?
In a low place sobbing by death’s lone cart,
Then a flight on whirlwind’s cars;
One verse is about a poor broken heart,
And the next among the stars.
There is hope and help for our sighs and tears,
For the wound that tings and smarts;
Our God is at home with the rolling spheres,
And at home with broken hearts.
- M.P.Ferguson.
“Let God cover thy wounds,” said Augustine: “do not thou. For if thou wish to cover them being ashamed, the Physician will not come. Let Him cover; for by the covering of the Physician the wound is healed; by the covering of the wounded man the wound is concealed. And from whom? From Him who knoweth all things.”
The Great Lover comes close behind the storm,
And whispers softly to the broken mountain tops,
And fills their wounds with clean fresh odors.
The Great Lover knows the pain of blasted trees
And binds up tenderly their broken arms;
The Great Lover has gone through many storms. _ Mathew Biller.
(6) Crises
reveal character!
“The things which happened unto me have fallen out rather unto the
furtherance of the Gospel.’ (Phil.1:12)
We cannot expect to learn much of the life of trust without passing through hard places. When they come, let us not say as Jacob did, “All these thins are against me.” (Gen.42:36). Let us rather climb our Hills of Difficulty and say, “These are faith’s opportunities!”
I would not lose the hard things from my life,
The rocks over which I stumbled long ago,
The griefs and fears, the failures and
mistakes,
That tried and tested faith and patience so.
I need them now: they make the deep-laid wall,
The firm foundation-stones on which I raise –
To mount therein from stair to higher stair-
The lofty towers of my House of Praise.
Soft was the roadside turf to weary feet,
And cool the meadows where I fain had trod,
And sweet beneath the trees to lie at rest
And breathe the incense of the follower-starred sod;
But not on these might I securely build;
Nor sand nor sod withstand the earthquake
shock;
I need the rough hard boulders of the hills,
To set my house on everlasting rock.- Annie Johnson Flint.
Crises reveal character: when we are put to the test, we reveal exactly
the hidden resources of our character.
(7) You are
bound to a cross. Do not struggle!
“Faint not.” (2 Cor.4:16)
One day a naturalist, out in his garden, observed a most unusually large and beautiful butterfly, fluttering as though in great distress; it seemed to be caught as though it could not release itself. The naturalist, thinking to release the precious thing, took hold of the wings and set it free. It flew but a few feet and fell to the ground dead.
He picked up the poor thing, took it into his laboratory and put it under a magnifying-glass to discover the cause of its death. There he found the life-blood flowing from the tiny arteries of its wings. Nature had fastened it to its chrysalis and was allowing it to flutter and flutter so that its wings might grow strong. It was the muscle-developing process that nature was giving the dear thing so that it might have an unusual range among the flowers and gardens. If it had only fluttered long enough, the butterfly would have come forth ready for the wide range; but release ended the beautiful dream.
So with God’s children: how the Father wishes for them wide ranges in experience and truth. He permits us to be fastened to some form of struggle. We would tear ourselves free. We cry out in our distress and sometimes think Him cruel that He does not release us. He permits us to flutter and flutter on. Struggle seems to be His program sometimes.
Prayer alone will hold us steady while in the struggles; so we keep sweet and learn, oh, such wonderful lessons.
God laid upon my back a grievous load,
A heavy cross to bear along the road.
I staggered on, and lo! One weary day,
An angry lion sprang across my way.
I prayed to God, and swift at His command
The cross became a weapon in my hand.
It slew my ranging enemy, and then
Became a cross upon my back again.
I reached a desert. Over the
burning track
I persevered, the cross upon my back.
No shade was there, and in the cruel sun
I sank at last, and thought my days were done.
But lo! The Lord works many a blest surprise –
The cross became a tree before my eyes!
I slept; I woke, to feel the strength of ten.
I found the cross upon my back again.
And thus through all my days from then to this,
The cross, my burden, has become my bliss.
Nor ever shall I lay the burden down,
For God some day will make the cross a crown! - Amos
R.Wells.
You are bound to a cross. I entreat you not to struggle. The more lovingly the cross is carried by the soul, the lighter it becomes!
(8) Have you
ever taken any risks for a Christ?
“Have I not I sent
thee?” (Judges
God has guided the heroes and saints of all ages to do things which the common senses of the community has regarded as ridiculous and mad. Have you ever taken any risks for Christ? - C.E.Cowman.
God knows, and you know, what He
has sent you to do. God sent Moses to
And you cannot find any place in Scripture where a man was ever sent by God to do a work in which he ever failed. - D.L.Moody.
Had Moses failed to go, had God
Granted his prayer, there would have been
For him no leadership to win;
No pillared fire; no magic rod; No wonders in the
No smiting of the sea; no tears Ecstatic, shed on Sinai’s steep;
No Nebo with a God to keep
His burial; only forty years
Of desert, watching with his sheep. – J.R.Miller.
Our might is His Almightiness.
“God shall hear” (Psalm 55:19)
I was standing at a bank counter
in
A businessman came into the bank soon after we had gone. He had grown discouraged with business troubles. He started to transact some business with the same clerk, over that blotter when his eye caught the long column of ‘PRAY THROUGH”. He asked who wrote those words and when he was told exclaimed, “That is the very message I needed. I will pray through. I have tried in my own strength to worry through, and have merely mentioned my troubles to God; now I am going to pray the situation through until I get light”. (A personal testimony of Charles M.Alexander)
Don’t’ stop praying, but have more trust;
Don’t stop praying! For pray we must;
Faith will banish a mount of care;
Don’t’ stop praying! God answers payer – C.M.A
All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for what I have not seen!
(10) God is to
be adored, but He is also to be used!
Dying judge said to his pastor, “Do you know enough about law to understand what is meant by joint tenancy?”
“No”, was the reply; “I know nothing about law; I know a little about grace, and that satisfies me.”
“Well,” he said, “if you and I were joint tenants on a farm, I could not say to you, “That is your field of corn, and this is mine; that is our blade of grass, and this is mine, but we would share alike in everything on the place. I have just been lying here and thinking with unspeakable joy that Christ Jesus has nothing apart from me; that everything He has is mine, and that we will share alike through all eternity.”
God wants you to have all that he has – His son, His life, His love, His Spirit, his glory. “All things are ours; and ye are Christ’s and Christ is God’s” “Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine.” (Luke 15:31). What a privilege! What a life for a child of God! Only unbelief can blind us to the Father’s love. Only with a false humility the children of the King set limitations about their lives that he never appointed. The full table is set for us, and we eat so sparingly, forgetful of the voice that cries, “Eat, O friends: drink, yea, drink abundantly, O beloved!”
“The resources of the Christian life, “ says Dr.Robert F.Horton, “are just Jesus Christ.” He is our regal provision for the way. He is the Way. Let us draw upon these Divine resources. Whom should Bless, even on earth, if not His own? Supply yourself from Him! God is to be adored, but He is also to be used. Merely to worship Him in the awe of His greatness and holiness is not to please Him fully. He wants us to draw upon Him as an asset of our practical life, and as a priceless possession. We live in Him; but He also lives in us to bring to our soul the power of His own infinite life. To possess Him is to possess all things and to have power to attain our noblest purposes.
He is always at our service. Use Him, then; for He is there and waits for you to use Him. All the unclaimed wealth of the forty thousand cheques in the bank-book of the Bible is ours! And “He satisfieth the longing soul”. (Ps.107:9). God is our God to be used for things we need Him for.
“My need and Thy great fullness meet,
And I have all in Thee”.
God has a separate inheritance for each one. Do not fail to enter upon yours. “The right of inheritance is thine”. (Jer.32:8)
(11) No servant of Christ will ever be the
loser!
“For Me and Thee” (Matt.17:27)
Peter had been a fisherman. Jesus had said “Follow Me,” and Peter had given up his fishing business to follow. We read that straightway he forsook his nets and followed. That must have been a tremendous experience for Peter; that giving up his means of livelihood, upkeep of his home, not to mention the money for those taxes. Peter, the Fisherman, left all to follow Christ: and the Lord knew that he had given up his means of livelihood to answer His call, and from the very thing that Peter had given up for His sake – fish – the Lord met His servant’s need when the time for paying the taxes came around. No servant of Christ will ever be the loser.
So our dear Lord is always thinking in advance of our needs and He loves to save us from embarrassment and anticipate our anxieties and cares by laying up His loving acts and providing before the emergency comes. “For me and thee’”. He had said, bracketing those words together in a wondrous, sacred intimacy. He puts Himself first in the embarrassing need, and bears the heavy end of the burden for His distressed and suffering child. He makes our cares, His cares; our sorrows, His sorrows; our share, His shame.
The tax was due – the Master’s and disciple’s,
And to the sea the Master strangely sent:
A fish would yield the needful piece of silver!
Strange bank, indeed, from which to pay that rent.
“One piece of silver!” Not
two equal portions!
One piece of silver – one, and shining bright;
“That use for Me and thee,” thus spoke the
Master,
“This claims on Me and thee we thus unite.”
Blest, happy bond! May I thus
sweetly know Him!
Am I His servant? Hath He use of me?
Then, O my soul, why shouldst thou own law’s
limit,
If thy dear Lord doth find delight in thee?
If thou art His – joint-heir in all His riches,
Then, O my soul, a simpler spirit grow;
“how shall He not, with Him, why, give us all
things,”
All that we need, to do His work below! - J.Danson Smith.
“A certain
Pharisee besought Him to dine with Him; and He went in, and sat down to meat”
(Luke 11.37).
- J.R.Miller
Our Lord was not ashamed to be the guest of publicans and sinners, but neither
did He reject the invitations of the rich and influential. He was ready to go
wherever there was an opportunity of doing good, even
to social feasts and large dinner parties. Of course, we are safe in following
Hs example; but we must read on a little farther, and then we shall see that He
always used these opportunities as occasions of doing good.
We may go to any place where we can do the part of a messenger of God to other
souls. We are never to be off duty as Christians, and as Christians, we must be
always Christ’s servants, ready to bear blessings from Him to others. We are to
be sure, before we accept an invitation to any place, that our Master has an
errand there for us. Then when we go, we are to improve the occasion for doing good in some way to some who are there.
Christ never went to any such places of amusement as offer their temptation to
young people in these days; and yet this same principle applies to these. “Is
it right for me to attend the theatre or the dancing-party?” Well, can you go
there as a Christian? Can you confess Christ there? Can you talk of Him to
others? Can you ask His blessing on your going? Can you go as His messenger,
sure that He sends you there? It is time we began to look at these matters very
honestly and frankly. If we are Christians, we are to be Christians seven days
in the week and everywhere.
Then we are to be Christians always on duty. A young clergyman who had been
reproved by his bishop for certain unministerial
conduct, sought to excuse himself by saying that he
was not on duty at the time. The bishop replied, “A clergyman is never off
duty.” This is true of every Christian. Wherever we go we represent our Master.