CHRIST THE WORD

"And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen His glory, the glory as of a Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth." (John 1:14)

Let us serve Him faithfully as our Master. Let us obey Him loyally as our King. Let us study His teachings as our Prophet. Let us work diligently after Him as our Example. Let us look anxiously for Him as our coming Redeemer of body as well as soul.

But above all let us prize Him as our Sacrifice, and rest our whole weight on His death as atonement for sin. Let His blood be more precious in our eyes every year we live. Whatever else we glory in about Christ, let us glory above all things in His cross.

-- J.C. Ryle

#4584

LETTING OUR COMMITMENTS GUIDE US

"It is the LORD your God you must follow, and Him you must revere. Keep His commands and obey Him; serve Him and hold fast to Him."  (Deuteronomy 13:4 NIV)

When I was a kid I loved playing with a little toy train on the carpet at my grandmother’s home. I would pretend that the patterns in the rug were the tracks. I knew that the train’s power came from the engine. So I would hold onto the engine and pull the multi-car train along the lines in the carpet. If I wanted to back up the train, I would hold onto the engine and push the cars backwards. The only problem was that the caboose kept going all over the place, like the tail of a dog.

Commitments are like the engine that pulls the train. Feelings are like the caboose that follows behind. If we let our commitments pull the train, the feelings will follow. However, If we let our feelings, rather than our commitments, guide us, we may soon be off track. We should never live by our feelings, but rather live by our commitments.

-- David T. Wilkinson


#4583

FLESH AND SPIRIT

"That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit."  (John 3:6 ESV)

Some day you will read in the papers that D. L. Moody of East Northfield, is dead.  Don't you believe a word of it!  At that moment I shall be more alive than I am now; I shall have gone up higher, that is all, out of this old clay tenement into a house that is immortal -- a body that death cannot touch, that sin cannot taint; a body fashioned like unto His glorious body.

I was born of the flesh in 1837.  I was born of the Spirit in 1856.  That which is born of the flesh may die.  That which is born of the Spirit will live forever.

-- Dwight Lyman Moody (1837-1899) 


#4582

A BLIND ANIMOSITY

"If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated Me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you."  (John 15:18-19 NIV)

A short story by the Spanish writer Carmen Corde tells of a young woman who gives birth to a blind son.  "I do not want my child to know that he is blind!" she informs family and neighbors, forbidding anyone to use telltale words such as "light," "color," and "sight."  The boy grows up unaware of his disability until one day a strange girl jumps over the fence of the garden and spoils everything by using all the forbidden words.  His world shatters in the face of this unimagined new reality.

In modern times, Christians resemble the strange girl who brings a message from the outside.  To a skeptical audience they bring rumors of another world beyond the fence, of an afterlife beyond death, of a loving God who is somehow working out His will in the chaotic history of this planet.  As in Carmen Corde's story, the news may not be welcome.  "We forget that what is to us an extension of sight is to the rest of the world a peculiar and arrogant blindness," the Catholic novelist Flannery O'Connor admitted.

-- Philip Yancey in “Rumors of Another World”


#4581

SPIRITUAL QUIETNESS

"Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth."  (Psalm 46:10 NIV)

Profound silence is not something we fall into casually. This may indeed happen, and a blessed happening it is, but normally we choose to set aside a time and place to enter into spiritual quietness. Those who never do this, or shrink from it, run a very grave risk of remaining half-fulfilled as humans.

-- Sister Wendy Beckett in “Meditations on Silence”


#4580