05/01/2006Monday 2:20pmMaldenHome: God that cannot lie promised.
Faith turns the promise into a prophecy. While it is merely a promise it is contingent upon ourcooperation. But when faith claims it, it becomes a prophecy, and we go forth feeling that is is
something that must be done because God cannot lie.
I hear men praying everywhere for more faith, but when i listen to them carefully, and get at
the real heart of their prayer, very often it it not more faith at all that they are wanting, but a
change from faith to sight.
Faith says not, "I see that it is good for me, so God must have sent it,",but, "God sent it, and
so it must be good for me.
Faith, walking in the dark with God, only prays Him to clasp its hand moe closel.
05/02/2006Tuesday 9:05pmMaldenHome
Some time since, in teh early spring, I was going out at my door when round the corner came ablast of east wind---defiant and pitiless, fierce and withering--sending a cloud of dust before it.
I was just taking the latchkey from the door as i said, half impatiently, "I wish the wind would"--i was going to say change; but the word was checked, and the sentence was never finished.
As I went on my way, the incident became a parable to me. There came an angel holding out a
key; and he said:
My Master sends thee His love, and bids me give you this.
What is it? I asked, wondering . The key of he winds. said the angel, and disappeared.
05/03/2006Wednesday 0845pmMaldenHome
And it shall come to pass that whosoever shall call on the name if the Lord shall be delivered.Why do not I call on His name? Why do i run to this neighbor and that when God is so near and will hear my faintest call? Why do i sit down and devise shcemes and invent plans? Why not
at once roll myself and my burden upon the Lord?
Straightforward is the best runner--why do not i run at once to the living God? In vain shall I
look for deliverance anywhere else; but with God I shall find it; for here I have His royal shall
to make it sure.
I need not ask whether I may call on Him or not, for that word" Whosoever" is a very wide
and comprehensive one. Whosoever means me, for it means anybody and everybody who
calls upon God. I will therefore follow the leading of the text, and at once call upon the
glorious Lord who has made so large a promise.
My case is urgent, and I do not see how i am to be delivered; but this is not business of mine.
He who makes the promise will find ways and means of keeping it. It is mine to obey His
commands; it is not mine to direct His counsels. I am His servant, not His solicitor. I call upon
Him, and He will deliver.
05/10/2006Wednesday 0414pmMaldenHome
How great is the temptation at this point! How the soul sinks, the heart grows sick, and teh faith staggers under the keen trials and testigns which come into our lives in times of special bereavement and suffering."I cannot bear up any longer, I am fainting under this providence. Wha shall I do? God tells me not to faint. But what can one do when he is fainting?"
What do you do when you are about to faint physically? You cannot do anything. You cease
from your own doings. In your faintness, you fall upon the shoulder of some strong loved one.
You lean hard. You rest. You lie still and trust.
It is so when we are tempted to faint under affliction.
BE STILL, AND KNOW THAT I AM GOD!!!
05/14/2006Sunday10:22am, Malden, Home.
Instant obedience is the only kind of obedience thee is; delayed obedience is disobedicence.Every time God calls us to any duty, He is offering to make a covenant with us; doing the
duty is our part, and He will do His part in special blessing.
The only way we can obey is to obey "in teh self-same day," as Abraham did. To be sure, we
often postpose a duty.
05/28/2006: Jacob got the victory and the blessing not by wresting, but
by clinging. His limb was out of joint and he could struggle no longer, but he would not let go.Unable to wrestle, he wound his arms around the neck of his mysterious antagonist and hung
all his helpless weight upon him, until at alst he conquered.
WE will not get victory in prayer until we too cease our stuggling, giving up our own will and
throw our arms about our Father's neck in cling faith.
06/11/2006：The servant of the Lord must be gentle.
When God conquers us and takes aoo the flint out of our nature, and we get deep visions into the Spirit of Jesus, we then see as never before the great rarity of gentlness of spirit in this dark and unheavenly world.The graces of the Spirit do not settle themselves down upon us by chance, and if we do not
discern certain states of grace, and choose them, and in our thoughts nourish them, they never becomne fastented in our nature or behaviour.
EVery advance step in grace must be preceded by first apprehending it, and then a prayerful
resolve to have it.
So few are willing to undergo the suffering our of which thorough gentleness comes. We
must die before we are turned into gentleness, and crucifixion involves suffering; it is a real
breaking and crushing of self, which wrings teh heart and conquers the mind.
There is a good deal of mere mental and logical sancification nowadays, which is only a
religious fiction. It consists of mentally putting one's self on teh altar, and then mentally
saying the altar sanctifies the gift, and then logically concluding therefore one is sanctified;
and such an one goes forth with a gay, flippant, theological prattle about teh deep things of
God.