Gems for the Week
March 21 - 24
"God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble." (1 Peter 5:5)
How one does long to know more of this! "God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace unto the humble." What a difference between the two attitudes! God must resist the proud; but when man takes his true place, God has nothing to resist; every barrier is removed, and the full tide of divine goodness can flow into the lowly heart. God can dwell with a lowly heart. There may be great weakness, great poverty, nothing attractive; but God can dwell there, and that is enough. It is a great point to be able to ascertain what God can go along with. He cannot go on with pride, with assumption, with pretension, with bustling self-importance. Whenever you see these things in a man, you may be quite sure that he is not enjoying the precious privilege of having God making His abode with him. It is this which constitutes the moral security of a lowly path. Oh! that we may know it in this day of pretension! (Things New and Old - 1863)
N.J. Hiebert # 2922
"My brethren count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations;
knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience.
But let patience have her perfect work,
that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing." (James 1:2-4)
We often make this great mistake: we expect in the kingdom of patience what is only promised in the kingdom of glory, and we ask God rather for deliverance from the warfare than grace for it as long as He is pleased that it shall last. Our impatience for victory often increases the heat of the battle. (Robert Cleaver Chapman)
N.J. Hiebert # 2923
"And it shall come to pass, that before they call I will answer;
and while they are yet speaking I will hear." (Isaiah 65:24)
The blessing is all prepared; He is not only willing but most anxious to give them what they ask; everlasting love burns with the longing desire to reveal itself fully to its beloved, and to satisfy their needs. God will not delay one moment longer than is absolutely necessary. He will do all in His power to hasten and speed the answer. (Andrew Murray)
N.J. Hiebert # 2924
"Pray to thy Father." (Matthew 6:6)
"So I prayed to the God of heaven." (Nehemiah 2:4)
Much so-called prayer is not to God. There is very little thought of God in it. We think of the audience, we think it may be of our need, but there is not a clear, deep sense that we have come into the presence of the all-holy, almighty, all-loving One, and are laying hold upon Him for His help. This is one of the most frequent causes of failure in prayer. We do not really pray to God. The first thing to do when we pray is to actually come into God's presence, to dismiss from our minds, as far as possible, all thought of our surroundings and look by the Spirit to present God to our minds and make Him real to us. It is possible by the Holy Spirit's aid to have God so really present that it almost seems as if we could see and touch Him. (R.A. Torrey)
How true it is that our need, our weakness, our surroundings, our thoughts are often more to us in the time of prayer than God is. Let us seek a deeper consciousness of God in prayer.
N.J. Hiebert # 2925
