Dawn 2 Dusk More Willing to Forgive Than We Are to AskThere is a staggering truth embedded in Psalm 86:5: the Lord is not reluctant to forgive; He is eager. He is not stingy with mercy; He is rich in it. David runs to God, not away from Him, because he has learned something about God’s character—that even when we are painfully aware of our sin, we are still invited to come. This verse pulls back the curtain on who God is, not just what He does, and it dares us to believe that His heart is kinder than our guilt, stronger than our shame, and more faithful than our failures. He Delights to Show Mercy Psalm 86:5 says, “For You, O Lord, are kind and forgiving, rich in loving devotion to all who call on You”. Notice the order: God is kind and forgiving before David even finishes calling. Forgiveness is not something God has to be talked into; it flows from His nature. This is the same God who revealed Himself to Moses, proclaiming, “The LORD, the LORD God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in loving devotion and faithfulness” (Exodus 34:6). God wants to be known this way—as One who overflows with steadfast love toward weak, needy, repentant people. If you belong to Christ, this is your God. When you sin, your instinct may be to hide, delay, or promise to “do better” before you pray. But the God of Psalm 86:5 calls you to come as you are, right now, because His kindness is greater than your mess. The father in Luke 15 didn’t wait on the porch with crossed arms; he ran, embraced, and kissed his returning son. That story isn’t sentimental fiction—it is a window into the heart of the Lord who is “kind and forgiving, rich in loving devotion to all who call on Him.” Forgiveness That Changes Everything God’s forgiveness is not a bare legal transaction; it is a doorway into restored fellowship. In Christ, God doesn’t just stamp “forgiven” on your record; He welcomes you into His presence as a beloved child. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). Faithful means He will not fail to forgive the one who comes; just means the debt has already been paid in full at the cross. Every time He forgives you, He is honoring the finished work of Jesus. This kind of forgiveness does not make sin light; it makes grace glorious. When you really believe that God has cleared your record at such a cost—the blood of His Son—you don’t want to keep playing with the very thing that nailed Him there. Forgiven people become changed people. The more deeply you drink in His mercy, the more you will hate the sin He died to remove and love the holiness He calls you into. Mercy doesn’t excuse compromise; it empowers obedience. To All Who Call on Him Psalm 86:5 ends with a wide-open invitation: this forgiveness and loving devotion are “to all who call on You”. Not to the strong, the sorted, or the impressive—but to all who call. That means no one is too far gone, too stained, or too complicated. “For, ‘Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved’” (Romans 10:13). Your part is not to clean yourself up; your part is to call—honestly, humbly, urgently. And this isn’t just about the first moment of salvation; it is the way of life for a believer. We keep calling. We keep coming. We keep drawing near. “Therefore let us approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need” (Hebrews 4:16). Today, right in the middle of your real struggles and real sins, you are invited to come boldly—not because you are worthy, but because Jesus is, and the Father delights to forgive those who call on His name. Lord, thank You that You are kind and forgiving, rich in loving devotion to all who call on You. Help me today to run quickly to You with my sin, my needs, and my fears, and to respond to Your mercy with real repentance and joyful obedience. Morning with A.W. Tozer From Spiritual Infancy to MaturitySurely we need a baptism of clear seeing if we are to escape the fate of Israel (and of every other religious body in history that forsook God). If not the greatest need, then surely one of the greatest is for the appearance of Christian leaders with prophetic vision. We desperately need seers who can see through the mist. Unless they come soon, it will be too late for this generation. And if they do come, we will no doubt crucify a few of them in the name of our worldly orthodoxy. But the cross is always the harbinger of the resurrection. Mere evangelism is not our present need. Evangelism does no more than extend religion, of whatever kind it may be. It gains acceptance for religion among larger numbers of people without giving much thought to the quality of that religion. The tragedy is that present-day evangelism accepts the degenerate form of Christianity now current as the very religion of the apostles and busies itself with making converts to it with no questions asked. And all the time we are moving farther and farther from the New Testament pattern.
We must have a new reformation. There must come a violent break with that irresponsible, amusement-mad, paganized pseudo-religion which passes today for the faith of Christ and which is being spread all over the world by unspiritual men employing unscriptural methods to achieve their ends.
When the Roman church apostatized, God brought about the Reformation. When the Reformation declined, God raised up the Moravians and the Wesleys. When these movements began to die, God raised up fundamentalism and the "deeper life" groups.
Now that these have almost without exception sold out to the world--what next? Music For the Soul The Silence of ScriptureMany other signs therefore did Jesus in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book: but these are written that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life in His Name. - John 20:30-31 The silence of Scripture is quite as eloquent as its speech. Think for instance, of how many things in the Bible are taken for granted that you would not expect to be taken for granted in a book of religious instruction. It takes for granted the Being of a God. It takes for granted our relations to Him. It takes for granted our moral nature. In its later portions, at all events, it takes for granted the future life. Look at how the Bible, as a whole, passes by, without one word of explanation or alleviation, a great many of the difficulties which gather round some of its teaching. For instance, we find no attempt to explain the Divine nature of our Lord, or the existence of the three Persons in the Godhead. It has not a word to say in explanation of the mystery of prayer, or of the difficulty of reconciling the omnipotent will of God on the one hand with my own free will on the other. It has not a word to explain, though many a word to proclaim and enforce, the fact of Christ’s death as the atonement for the sins of the whole world. Observe, too, how scanty the information on points on which the heart craves for more light. Plow closely, for instance, the veil is kept over the future life! How many questions which are not prompted by mere curiosity our sorrow and our love ask in vain! Nor is the incompleteness of Scripture as a historical book less marked. Nations and men appear on its pages abruptly, rending the curtain of oblivion, and striding to the front of the stage for a moment, and then they disappear, swallowed up of night. It has no care to tell the stories of any of its heroes, except for so long as they were the organs of that Divine breath, which, breathed through the weakest reed, makes music. The self-revelation of God, not the acts and fortunes of even His noblest servants, is the theme of the Book. It is full of gaps about matters that any sciolist or philosopher or theologian would have filled up for it. There it stands, a Book unique in the world’s history, unique in what it says, and no less unique in what it does not say. Why was it that in the Church, after the completion of the Scriptural canon, there sprang up a whole host of apocryphal gospels, full of childish stories of events which they felt had been passed over with strange silence in the teachings of the four evangelists? Put the four gospels down by the side of the two thick octavo volumes which it is the regulation thing to write nowadays about any man that has a name at all, and you will feel their incompleteness as biographies. They are but a pen-and-ink drawing of the sun! And yet, although they be so tiny that you might sit down and read them all in an evening over the fire, is it not strange that they have stamped on the whole world an image so deep and so sharp, of such a character as the world never saw besides? They are fragments, but they have left a symmetrical and a unique impression on the consciousness of the whole world. Spurgeon: Morning and Evening Mark 9:19 Bring him unto me. Despairingly the poor disappointed father turned away from the disciples to their Master. His son was in the worst possible condition, and all means had failed, but the miserable child was soon delivered from the evil one when the parent in faith obeyed the Lord Jesus' word, "Bring him unto me." Children are a precious gift from God, but much anxiety comes with them. They may be a great joy or a great bitterness to their parents; they may be filled with the Spirit of God, or possessed with the spirit of evil. In all cases, the Word of God gives us one receipt for the curing of all their ills, "Bring him unto me." O for more agonizing prayer on their behalf while they are yet babes! Sin is there, let our prayers begin to attack it. Our cries for our offspring should precede those cries which betoken their actual advent into a world of sin. In the days of their youth we shall see sad tokens of that dumb and deaf spirit which will neither pray aright, nor hear the voice of God in the soul, but Jesus still commands, "Bring them unto me." When they are grown up they may wallow in sin and foam with enmity against God; then when our hearts are breaking we should remember the great Physician's words, "Bring them unto me." Never must we cease to pray until they cease to breathe. No case is hopeless while Jesus lives. The Lord sometimes suffers his people to be driven into a corner that they may experimentally know how necessary he is to them. Ungodly children, when they show us our own powerlessness against the depravity of their hearts, drive us to flee to the strong for strength, and this is a great blessing to us. Whatever our morning's need may be, let it like a strong current bear us to the ocean of divine love. Jesus can soon remove our sorrow. He delights to comfort us. Let us hasten to him while he waits to meet us. Spurgeon: Faith’s Checkbook Like Palm and CedarThese trees are not trained and pruned by man: palms and cedars are "trees of the LORD," and it is by His care that they flourish. Even so it is with the saints of the LORD: they are His own care. These trees are evergreen and are beautiful objects at all seasons of the year. Believers are not sometimes holy and sometimes ungodly: they stand in the beauty of the LORD under all weathers. Everywhere these trees are noteworthy: no one can gaze upon a landscape in which there are either palms or cedars without his attention being fixed upon these royal growths. The followers of Jesus are the observed of all observers: like a city set on a hill, they cannot be hid. The child of God flourishes like a palm tree, which pushes all its strength upward in one erect column without a single branch. It is a pillar with a glorious capital. It has no growth to the right or to the left but sends all its force heavenward and bears its fruit as near the sky as possible. LORD, fulfill this type in me. The cedar braves all storms and grows near the eternal snows, the LORD Himself filling it with a sap which keeps its heart warm and its bough strong. LORD, so let it be with me, I pray Thee. Amen. The Believer’s Daily Remembrancer Fight the Good Fight of FaithFAITH has to fight with the deep and direful depravity of the heart; with error and superstition; with despondency and early prejudices; with unbelief and carnal reason; with Satan and the world at large. Faith has to fight for victory, for a crown, for God’s glory. True faith fights in God’s strength; with certainty, arising from the faithful promise; in holy fear , produced by grace taking advantage of our weakness; with courage; principally on the knees; and looking to the Captain of our salvation, the end of the conflict, and the design of the combat. Believer, "Fight the good fight of faith." Thy God bids thee. His promises are intended to encourage thee. The example of Jesus should animate thee. The coward’s doom should alarm and instruct thee. The connection between conflict and conquest should impel thee. Jesus says, "To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with Me in My throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with My Father in His throne." God is faithful, by whom ye were called unto the fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Omnipotent Lord, my Saviour and King, Thy succour afford, Thy righteousness bring; On Thee, as my power, for strength I rely; All evil before Thy presence shall fly: Thy love everlasting will never depart, Thy truth and Thy mercy shall rule in my heart. Bible League: Living His Word One who is wise is cautious and turns away from evil, but a fool is reckless and careless.— Proverbs 14:16 ESV Sin and evil don't always announce themselves as such. That is, they don't always appear to be as they really are. Sometimes, sin and evil disguise themselves, making themselves out to be something good. This should not surprise us, for the Bible tells us that even Satan "disguises himself as an angel of light" (2 Corinthians 11:14). He does it to deceive us and trick us into falling for the evil intentions he has for us. He couldn't care less if it is an unfair tactic. It is also less than surprising that his servants "disguise themselves as servants of righteousness" (2 Corinthians 11:15). Those disguises will not be effective with the wise man from our verse today. He recognizes evil for what it is and turns away. In contrast, a fool, as our verse points out, is reckless and careless. What does it mean to be reckless and careless? It means that someone is simply not concerned with the consequences of what he believes or what he does. Reckless and careless people do not pay enough attention to what confronts them, taking no thought to the possibility that a wolf in sheep's clothing may be in front of them. They do not consider the possibility that what seems good to them is actually evil. Wise people are just the opposite. They are aware that there is evil in the world and that it doesn't play fair. Instead of being reckless and careless, they are cautious. What does it look like to be cautious? It means that someone is alert and prudent. Cautious people are wary, Recognizing that there are wolves in sheep's clothing out there. Hence, they pay attention to what confronts them in life and won't open themselves up to exploitation. It is very difficult for Satan and his servants to play the wise for fools. Being ready to turn away from evil takes wisdom that comes from knowing God and His Word. Continue in prayer for this wisdom, friends, so that you will not be in the company of the careless fools. Daily Light on the Daily Path Matthew 12:20 "A BATTERED REED HE WILL NOT BREAK OFF, AND A SMOLDERING WICK HE WILL NOT PUT OUT, UNTIL HE LEADS JUSTICE TO VICTORY.Psalm 51:17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; A broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise. Psalm 147:3 He heals the brokenhearted And binds up their wounds. Isaiah 57:15,16 For thus says the high and exalted One Who lives forever, whose name is Holy, "I dwell on a high and holy place, And also with the contrite and lowly of spirit In order to revive the spirit of the lowly And to revive the heart of the contrite. • "For I will not contend forever, Nor will I always be angry; For the spirit would grow faint before Me, And the breath of those whom I have made. Ezekiel 34:16 "I will seek the lost, bring back the scattered, bind up the broken and strengthen the sick; but the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with judgment. Hebrews 12:12,13 Therefore, strengthen the hands that are weak and the knees that are feeble, • and make straight paths for your feet, so that the limb which is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed. Isaiah 35:4 Say to those with anxious heart, "Take courage, fear not. Behold, your God will come with vengeance; The recompense of God will come, But He will save you." New American Standard Bible Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation, La Habra, Calif. All rights reserved. For Permission to Quote Information visit http://www.lockman.org. Tyndale Life Application Daily Devotion And the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. For example, we don't know what God wants us to pray for. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words. And the Father who knows all hearts knows what the Spirit is saying, for the Spirit pleads for us believers in harmony with God's own will.Insight As a believer, you are not left to your own resources to cope with problems. Even when you don't know the right words to pray, the Holy Spirit prays with and for you, and God answers. With God helping you pray, you don't need to be afraid to come before him. Challenge Ask the Holy Spirit to intercede for you “in harmony with God's own will.” Then, when you bring your requests to God, trust that he will always do what is best. Devotional Hours Within the Bible Jesus Prays for His FriendsA writer tells of quietly opening the door of his mother’s room one day in his boyhood, seeing her on her knees, and hearing her speak his own name in prayer. He quickly and quietly withdrew from the sacred place but he never forgot that one glimpse of his mother at prayer, nor the prayer for himself, which he heard her speak to God. Well did he know that what he had seen that moment, was but a glimpse of what went on every day in that place of prayer. The consciousness of this fact, he says, strengthened him countless times in duty, in danger, in struggle. In this seventeenth chapter of John’s gospel, we hear Christ praying just once, a few sentences but we know that this is only a sample of what is going on forever in heaven, for the Scriptures tell us that He ever lives to make intercession for us! Jesus knew that the end had come, the time for Him to make His great sacrifice, to offer Himself for the redemption of His people. He knew how much depended upon this hour. So He prayed that the Father would glorify Him in His sufferings, that in turn He might glorify His Father. When we are about entering any sore trial, or taking up any great duty on which much depends, it should be our prayer that God would so sustain us that we may honor Him in the experience and in the way we pass through it. We should dread nothing so much as the dishonoring of God in sorrow, in trial, or in pain by losing faith, by complaining, or by murmuring. The deepest wish and prayer of our hearts always should be that we may be enabled to glorify God in every experience of our lives. “Love’s secret,” says Faber, “is to be always doing things for God, and not to mind because they are such very little things.” This means that we do nothing, say no word, let no feeling enter our heart that would in any way dishonor God. A great preacher who was subject at times to seasons of excruciating suffering would ask when the paroxysms were over, “Did I complain? I did not want to complain.” He wished to endure His anguish without yielding to any expression of pain, and he feared that he had not honored God as he had wished to do. Too many fail in glorifying God in suffering. Allowing themselves to cry out, to fret, to chafe and repine, giving way to feelings of pain, to impatience, to envy or jealousy, to anger and bitterness, to discouragement or despair is to fail in glorifying God. Jesus looks back over His past, too, with comfort and satisfaction. He can say to the Father, “I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do.” (17:4). He is the only person that ever lived who could say this. The most faithful of us, have done but a little of what God meant for us to do when He made us. The best and most complete human lives, are but little fragments in which are left undone many things which ought to have been done. We may take a lesson, too, from Christ’s way of accomplishing His work. He did it by simply doing each day, the will of His Father. He was only a young man, thirty-three years old when He died. We think of those dying early as dying too soon, before their work is accomplished. Yet we learn from Jesus that even a young man may leave a finished work. Years enough are given to each one in which to do the work allotted. And the young man who dies at thirty-three, with his hands full of tasks, whom his friends mourn as having died prematurely, if only he has lived faithfully while he lived has accomplished the work that God gave him to do. It is not the amount of years we live but our diligence and faithfulness which count with God. Jesus makes an earnest prayer for His disciples before He leaves them. He knows what lies before them the persecutions, the struggles, the temptations, and then their weakness, their ignorance, their inability in themselves to meet these perils and difficulties; so He commends them to His Father, “Holy Father, keep through your own name, those whom you have given me.” While He was in this world, Jesus had kept them in the Father’s name, guarding them so that not one of them had perished, but the son of perdition. Now, however, He was about to leave them in the world. He was going back to God, and they would not have His protection, the shelter of His love, His divine strength, to keep them. He knows that the world will hate them and persecute them even as it had hated and persecuted Him. But He will not leave them alone. He will so keep them that they shall not be overwhelmed in the world’s enmity. In great tenderness, He commends them to His Father’s keeping . “I am not praying that You take them out of the world but that You protect them from the evil.” John 17:15. Jesus does not pray that His disciples should be taken out of the world to escape the danger. This would have been the easier way for them, for with Him in heaven they would have been safe from all persecution. But they had a work to do in this world, and therefore they must stay to do it. They were to represent their Master, carrying on His work among men. Hence, He must leave them behind Him. It was for this very work that He had called them and made them His followers. It would be a great deal easier in one sense for Christian people, if they were taken to heaven as soon as they had become Christ’s followers. Then they would have no cross-bearing, no giving of their lives for others, no struggles, no self-denials, no sacrifices. But who then would do Christ’s work in the world? Who would look after the wandering ones, or rescue those who are tempted? Thus followers of Christ are left to the world after they become Christ’s friends both for their own sakes and for the sake of others. It seems hard to have to fight battles and endure trials but these battles and trials are means of strengthening and growth. Not those who have the easiest life, are really the most favored ones but those who endure life’s trials victoriously. They are not the most majestic trees that grow in the sheltered valley but those that are found on hilltops and mountains, where they must encounter fierce storms. When armies return from victorious war, the loudest cheers are not for those who have fought the fewest battles and wear the fewest scars, nor for the flags that are cleanest but for the regiments that are cut down to the fewest men, and for the colors that have been shot to tatters. So when the redeemed are welcomed home, those who have fought the hardest battles and who wear the most scars will be received with the highest honor. The prayer that Jesus did make for His disciples, was that they should he kept from the evil of the world. There is but one evil in the world. It is not trouble, not persecution, not suffering nor sorrow. The one and only evil is sin. No matter what comes to us, so long as we do not sin, we have not been really harmed. The Revised Version makes the evil personal “the evil one.” We know who this “evil one” is. It is a great comfort also for us to know that Christ Our Master is stronger than Satan, and if we are faithful to Him, Satan will have no power to harm us. “Sanctify them by the truth; Your Word is truth.” Jesus prayed also for His disciples, that they might be sanctified in the truth. A man is sanctified, when he is given up to God to live for Him only, to think, to feel, to act, to do all things for the glory of God and in God’s service of love for men. It means also the cleansing and purifying of the life and character. Then the prayer of Christ reached out beyond the little group of men who stood about Him that night in the upper room and took in all who ever would believe on Him. “I pray not only for these, but also for those who believe in Me through their message.” We can think of ourselves as remembered that night by the Master, before He set out for His cross. The special prayer that He made for all His disciples, was that they might be one. Anything that separated them in heart and life, the one from the other, would destroy their unity as believers. “May they all be one, as You, Father, are in Me and I am in You. May they also be one in Us, so the world may believe You sent Me.” The great passion of the Redeemer’s heart, was that His disciples might be one. The reason He so longed for their unity was that the world might be impressed by their oneness, and might be led to believe in Christ. It was a unity of heart and spirit which Christ had in mind not a mere formal unity. He would have His people bound together in bonds of love. Denominationalism need not be wrong nor harmful, if the different churches live together in the spirit of love and unity. But controversy and strifes not only dishonor Christ but greatly mar the influence of Christianity in the world! An old legend says that when Adam and Eve were turned out of Eden, an angel broke the gates to pieces, and the fragments flying over the earth are the precious stones which men now gather. A writer makes an application of the legend he says that the precious stones were picked up by the various religions and philosophies, each claiming that His own fragment alone reflects the light of heaven, and is the material of which the gates of paradise were made. But as all these fragments had the same origin, it is the work of Christianity to gather them all back again into one unity, thus reconstructing the gates of paradise. Every Christian represents Christ, and all Christians combined together should represent the spirit of Christ, the love of Christ, the compassion, the patience, the mercy of Christ. We all should seek to be one in spirit, to whatever particular branch of the Church we may happen to belong. Bible in a Year Old Testament ReadingEcclesiastes 1, 2, 3 Ecclesiastes 1 -- "Vanity of vanities," says the Preacher; "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." NIV NLT ESV NAS GWT KJV ASV ERV DRB Ecclesiastes 2 -- "Come now, I will test you with mirth: therefore enjoy pleasure;" NIV NLT ESV NAS GWT KJV ASV ERV DRB Ecclesiastes 3 -- For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven NIV NLT ESV NAS GWT KJV ASV ERV DRB New Testament Reading 2 Corinthians 9 2 Corinthians 9 -- Thanks be to God for his unspeakable gift; Those who Sow Generously will Reap Generously NIV NLT ESV NAS GWT KJV ASV ERV DRB Reading Plan Courtesy of Christian Classics Etherial Library. |
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