Daily Devotional

March 3, 2018

God Calls For Our Best Affections

No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. Matt. 6:24.

Many are on the enchanted ground of the enemy. Things of the least importance—foolish social parties, singing, jesting, joking—engross their minds and they serve God with a divided heart. . . . The declaration of Christ, “No man can serve two masters,” is unheeded.

One of the most marked features of the earth’s inhabitants in the days of Noah was their intense worldliness. They made eating and drinking, buying and selling, marrying and giving in marriage, the supreme objects of life. It is not sinful, but the fulfillment of a duty, to eat and drink, if that which is lawful is not carried to excess. . . . God Himself instituted marriage when He gave Eve to Adam. All God’s laws are marvelously adapted to meet the nature of man. The sin of the antediluvians was in perverting that which in itself was lawful. They corrupted God’s gifts by using them to minister to their selfish desires. . .

Excessive love and devotion to that which in itself is lawful, proves the ruination of thousands upon thousands of souls. To matters of minor importance is often given the strength of intellect that should be wholly devoted to God. We need always to be guarded against carrying to excess that which, rightly used, is lawful. Many, many souls are lost by engaging in those things which, properly managed, are harmless, but which, perverted and misapplied, become sinful and demoralizing.

If we are constantly thinking of and struggling for the things that pertain to this life, we cannot keep our thoughts fixed on the things of heaven. Satan is seeking to lead our minds away from God, and to center them on the fashions, the customs, and the demands of the world, which bring disease and death. . . .

In this world we are to obtain a fitness for the higher world. God has left a trust with us, and He expects us to use all our faculties in helping and blessing our fellow men. He calls for our best affections, our highest powers.

From Devotional: Our Father Cares, pp. 94, 95.

Daily Devotional

March 2, 2018

The Privilege Of Assurance

And hereby we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before him. 1 John 3:19.

I would impress upon our young men and young women the necessity of making their calling and election sure. I would beseech you to do no haphazard or uncertain work where your eternal interests are involved. By so doing you lose happiness, peace, comfort, and hope in this life, and you lose also your immortal inheritance.

My young friends, you are judgment bound, and through the grace of Christ you may render obedience to the commands of God, and daily gain fortitude and strength of character, so that you need not fail or be discouraged. Divine grace has been abundantly provided for every soul, so that each one may engage in the conflict and come off victorious. Do not become sluggish; do not flatter yourselves that you may be saved in walking in accordance with the natural traits of your character—that you may drift with the current of the world, and indulge and please self, and yet be able to withstand the forces of evil in a time of crisis, and come off victorious when the battle waxes hot. . . . You must learn every day to obey the orders of the Captain of the Lord’s host.

My young friends, do you pray? Are you educating yourselves to offer petitions for pure thoughts, for holy aspirations, for a pure heart and clean hands? Are you educating your lips to sing the praises of God, and are you seeking to do the will of God? This is the kind of education that will be of the greatest value to you; for it will aid you in the formation of Christlike character.

Do not settle down in Satan’s easy chair, and say that there is no use, you cannot cease to sin, that there is no power in you to overcome. There is no power in you apart from Christ, but it is your privilege to have Christ abiding in your heart by faith, and He can overcome sin in you, when you cooperate with His efforts. . . . You may be living epistles, known and read of all men. You are not to be a dead letter, but a living one, testifying to the world that Jesus is able to save.

From Devotional: Our Father Cares, pp. 93, 94.

Daily Devotional

March 1, 2018

In Love With Christ

For such an high priest became us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens. Heb. 7:26.

The character of Christ was one of unexampled excellence, embracing everything pure, true, lovely, and of good report. We have no knowledge of His ever visiting a party of pleasure or a dance hall, and yet He was the perfection of grace and courtly bearing. Christ was no novice; He was distinguished for the high intellectual powers He possessed even in the morning of His life. His youth was not wasted in indolence, neither was it wasted in sensual pleasure, self-indulgence, or frittered away in things of no profit. Not one of His hours from childhood to manhood was misspent, none were misappropriated. . . .

Jesus was sinless and had no dread of the consequences of sin. With this exception His condition was as yours. You have not a difficulty that did not press with equal weight upon Him, not a sorrow that His heart has not experienced. His feelings could be hurt with neglect, with indifference of professed friends, as easily as yours. Is your path thorny? Christ’s was so in a tenfold sense. Are you distressed? So was He. How well fitted was Christ to be an example! . . .

The Inspired Record says of Him: “Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man.” Luke 2:52. As He grew in years He grew in knowledge. He lived temperately; His precious hours were not wasted in dissipating pleasures. He had a truly healthy body and true powers of mind. The physical and mental powers could be expanded and developed as yours or any other youth’s. The Word of God was His study, as it should be yours.

Take Jesus as your standard. Imitate His life. Fall in love with His character. Walk as Christ walked. A new spring will be given to your intellectual faculties, a large scope to your thoughts, when you bring your powers into vigorous contact with eternal things which are intrinsically grand and great.

From Devotional: Our Father Cares, p. 93.

Daily Devotional

February 27, 2018

Let Jesus Lead

Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. John 14:6.

Oh, that we who are pilgrims and strangers in this foreign country . . . might comprehend Christ, the way, the truth, and the life. He says, “No man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” The path He has marked out is so plain and distinct that the veriest sinner, loaded with guilt, need not miss his way. Not one trembling seeker need fail of finding the true path, and of walking in pure and holy light, for Jesus leads the way.

The path is so narrow, so holy, that sin cannot be tolerated therein, yet access to the path has been made for all, and not one desponding, doubting, trembling soul needs to say, “God cares nought for me.” Every soul is precious in His sight. . . . When Satan was triumphing as the prince of the world, when he claimed the world as his kingdom, when we were all marred and corrupted with sin, God sent His messenger from heaven, even His only begotten Son, to proclaim to all the inhabitants of the world, “I have found a ransom. I have made a way of escape for all the perishing. I have your emancipation papers provided for you, sealed by the Lord of heaven and earth.” . . .

It is not because there is any flaw in the title which has been purchased for you that you do not accept it. It is not because the mercy, the grace, the love of the Father and the Son is not ample, and has not been freely bestowed, that you do not rejoice in pardoning love. . . . If you are lost, it will be because you will not come unto Christ that you might have life.

God waits to bestow the blessing of forgiveness of sins, of pardon for iniquity, of the gift of righteousness upon all who will believe in His love, and accept of His salvation. Christ is ready to say to the repenting sinner, “. . . Behold, I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee. . . .” Zech. 3:4-7. Christ is the connecting link between God and man. The blood of Jesus Christ is the eloquent plea that speaks in behalf of sinners.

From Devotional: Our Father Cares, pp. 91, 92.

Daily Devotional

February 26, 2018

Enjoyment Of The Truth

Teach me thy way, O Lord; I will walk in thy truth: unite my heart to fear thy name. Ps. 86:11.

Say with your whole heart, “I will walk in Thy truth.” Every resolution expressed in the fear of God will give strength to purpose and to faith. It will tend to stimulate and to humble, to strengthen and confirm. “I will walk in thy truth.” Truth deserves our confidence none the less because the world is flooded with fables. Because error and counterfeit are in circulation it only evidences the fact that there is truth, genuine truth, somewhere. . . .

It is not enough for us to hear the truth only. God requires of us obedience. “Blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it.” Luke 11:28. “If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them.” John 13:17.

We may walk in the enjoyment of the truth. It need not be to us a yoke of bondage, but a consolation, a message to us of glad tidings of great joy, animating our hearts and causing us to make melody in our hearts unto God. Through patience and comfort of the Scriptures we have hope. The Christian hope is not gloomy, comfortless. Oh, no, no. It does not shut us up in a prison of doubts and fears. The truth makes free those who love and are sanctified through it. They walk in the glorious liberty of the sons of God.

We who claim to believe the truth should reveal its fruits in our words and character. We are to be far advanced in a knowledge of Jesus Christ, in the reception of His love for God and for our neighbor, in order to have the sunlight of heaven shining in our daily life. Truth must reach down to the deepest recesses of the soul, and cleanse away everything unlike the spirit of Christ, and the vacuum be supplied by the attributes of His character who was pure and holy and undefiled, that all the springs of the heart may be as flowers, fragrant with perfume, a sweet-smelling savor, a savor of life unto life.

It is truth enshrined in the soul that makes one a man of God.

From Devotional: Our Father Cares, pp. 91, 92.