OCTOBER 21

OUR PERSONAL PROMISES

1 John 4:20

If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?

Acts 5:29

“But Peter and the other apostles answered and said: “We ought to obey God rather than men.”

John 16:33

“These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.”

Galatians 3:1

“O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you that you should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed among you as crucified?”

Romans 6:12 (NLV)

 “So do not let sin have power over your body here on earth. You must not obey the body and let it do what it wants to do.”

Acts 14:22

“strengthening the souls of the disciples, exhorting them to continue in the faith, and saying, “We must through many tribulations enter the kingdom of God.”

This month we will read choices from Charles Spurgeon’s (known affectionately as the “prince of preachers”)  devotional, “Beside Still Waters.”   It’s no secret that this world system is getting more evil by the day.  We have to stand strong in the Lord and look to Him more than ever to get through, and to be guided through, what is in the future……..known and allowed  by Him alone…..as well as whatever personal things we are experiencing in our lives.

PASTOR SPURGEON:

All God’s children go to school (meaning those who are born again and living for Him).  Our Lord took kindly to this lesson.  He always did the things that pleased the Father.  Now is our time of schooling and discipline, for we are learning the highest and best lesson of all:  Obedience.  This brings our Lord close to us.  We go to school to Christ and with Christ, thus we feel His qualifications to be our compassionate High Priest.

As swimming is learned only in the water, obedience is learned by doing and by suffering the divine will.  Obedience cannot be learned at the university, unless it is at the College of Experience.  You must allow the commandment to have its way with you.  It will educate you.  Who knows what it is to obey God to the fullest?  Until you have laid aside your will in the most tender and painful respects, you will not know.  To plead with God for the life of a beloved child, to see that dear child die, this is to learn obedience.

To go alone and plead with God for the life of a husband or wife, to agonize with Him for the blessing, and then to be compelled to weep at a fresh grave and still be able to say, “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away;  blessed be the name of the Lord.” (Job 1:21), this is to learn obedience.

Our Lord as man was made to know by His suffering what full obedience meant.  His was a practical, experiential, personal acquaintance with obedience, and in all this He comes near to us.

A Son learning obedience, that is our Lord.  May we not therefore walk joyfully with Him in all the rough paths of life?  May we not safely lean on the arm of the One who knows every inch of the way?

(To quote from   Major Ian Thomas about Jesus learning obedience:  “He humbled Himself, and became obedient.” (Phil. 2.8b).  Not simply that He accepted the physical limitations of the human body but that He adopted an attitude of total dependence upon the Father and denied Himself the right to exercise all those prerogatives of deity that were undoubtedly His by virtue of the fact that He was both God and man, at one and the same time.  He deliberately made Himself of “no reputation” and consistently refused to be the “cause” of His own “effect”, declaring emphatically:  “I can of mine own self do nothing.” (John 5:30)).  

(How much more can we, of ourselves do nothing, since we live only in the flesh which possesses the sin nature.)

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