Gems worth pondering
April 11
"And he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, 'Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?' And he said 'Who art Thou, Lord?' And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest."
(Acts 9:4,5)
Just as He said to Saul, "Why persecutest thou Me?" He felt Himself one with His afflicted members on earth. Just as He will say at the last day, "Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto Me." (Matthew 25:40). He reckons believers a part of Himself; what is done to them is done to Him. So when He carries them to His Father, this is all His argument: "Thou lovedst Me." If Thou lovest Me, love them, for they are part of Me.
See how surely Christ's prayer will be answered for you. He does not plead that you are good and holy; He does not plead that you are worthy; He only pleads His own loveliness in the eyes of the Father. 'Look not on them, He says, but look on Me'. "Thou lovedst Me before the foundations of the world" (John 17:24). (Bonar)
N.J. Hiebert # 3671
April 12
"Thou shalt guide me with Thy counsel, and afterward receive me to glory."
(Psalm 73:24)
Do you not feel that you need the dependable, guiding counsel of the Lord for your soul? What a day in which to live, with pitfalls on every side! If you are going to escape, the only place to get the needed wisdom is in the Word of God. It gives dependable counsel for your soul. If you want to be happy and to be guided through this scene, saved from many a heartache, heed the Word of God. If you despise it, you will have to reap sorrow.
Everything you need to guide you through this world in a moral and spiritual way, blessed, dependable counsel to your soul, is found in the Word of God. The way to be happy is to walk with God; the way to be miserable is to attempt to find your happiness in the world. (From - The Young Christian)
N.J. Hiebert # 3672
April 13
"What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? Can faith save him?" (James 2:14)
The Lord never fails a trusting heart. But He must be trusted in reality. "What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say" he trusts God, if he really does not do so? A sham faith will not do. It will not do to trust in word, neither in tongue. It must be in deed and in truth. Of what use is a faith with one eye on the Creator, and another on the creature? Can God and the creature occupy the same platform? Impossible. It must be God - or what? The creature and the curse that ever follows creature confidence. (C.H. Mackintosh)
"Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is. For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit."
(Jeremiah 17:7,8)
N.J. Hiebert # 3673
