DEVOTIONAL COLUMN

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 176, 26 June 1937, Page 15

DEVOTIONAL COLUMN

THE ONLY UNMOVABLE GROUND. Those who are right with God through Jesus Christ will not totter, for they take His yoke .upon them, and He steadies them. They shall not be agitated. They shall not fall. Empires fall, kingdoms wane, but those who trust in Hun belong to a kingdom that knows no end. All such shall be like Mount Zion that can never be moved. They shall never sink beneath the load, for His hand shall be outstretched to bear you up, and strength will he given you to go right through. Burdens will not disturb you, hilt will really establish you, and knowing that it is His lot for you, you will be kept in a measure of calm in the midst of earth’s upheavals, and also personal losses. —Dr. Jesse Sayer.

“IN MY FATHER’S HOUSE.” (St. John 14, 2.) (By Edith Hickman Divall.) “My Father’s House is great and wide, And many Mansions, bright and fair, Where they who love Him shall abide For all eternity, are there. “Wherefore I go,” the Master saith “To make a dwelling for Mine own — Yea! even by the way of death, Forsaken, J go out alone. “Yet will I Come for you again— At noon, or night, or dawn of day, Or when the light is on the wane — Watch! Follow on! Ye know' the Way!”

M'ORDS THAT GRIP. They were sent to arrest Jesus, blit He arrested them. They were sent to lay hands on Him, and take Him back to the’ rulers that they might deal with Him; hut they went back empty-handed, and the reason was that He had arrested them. He laid no hands upon them, hut He arrested them, and they could not arrest Him. Such is the historical setting of the words. Nineteen hundred years, and more, have run their course since these temple orderlies came back, empty-handed, and gave as their reason for their dereliction in duty, that Jesus spoke as no man had ever spoken, and the thing they then said is true to-day. —G. Campbell Morgan, D.D.

NEVER TROUBLE TROUBLE. “Don’t trouble trouble till trouble troubles you. Don’t you look lor trouble; let trouble look for von. Who fearetli hath forsaken the Heavenly Father’s side; What He hath undertaken He surely will provide. “The very birds reprove thee with their happy song; The very Bowers teach iliee that fretting is wrong. ‘Cheer up,’ the sparrow chirpeth; ‘thy Father feedeth me; Think how much He caretli, O lonely child for thee.’ “‘Fear not,’ the flowers whisper; since He hath arrayed The buttercup and daisy, how canst thou be afraid?’ Then don’t trouble trouble till trouble troubles you ; You’ll only double trouble and trouble others too.” —Mark Guy Pearse.

DIVERSITY YET UNITY. How foolish it is to wish to shape our fellow believers by the mould which God has made for us and us only! Those who have no sympathy except for what is limited by their own personal experience- and tastes may imagine that their character and vieive are entirely due to their faithfulness in divine things, whereas .any unprejudiced observer ca.n see that the natural factors have had a considerable influence in forming them. They may bewail the absence or decay of their type of piety as if it were the absence or decay of all godliness. They need have no fear, however, th.it wisdom, and truth and holiness will perish with them! „ , , —E. Adams.

PERHAPS TO-DAY. He Who raised the little maid who lmd just died (Mark 5: 41), the widow’s son on the way to burial (Luke 7: 1314) and Lazarus who had been four days dead (John 11 : 39). will, as “the resurrection” (John 11 : 25), raise His sleeping saints from land and sea. What a glorious resurrection !

“MORE TOLERABLE” NOT ENOUGH. To preach deliverance to the captives. It is not enough, if you would help a prisoner, to go to him and say, “Friend, I come to instruct you, to amuse vou. to help you to puss the time.” What he wants is not to make his captivity more tolerable, but to be set free. And our Bold came to make us free.

CONDESCENDING GRACE. Let us trv to get this magnificent conception of the condescension of grace, that God did not leave men to find Him, but found them; that God did not leave men to love Him, but loved them; that God did not leave men to seek Him. but sought them; that God did not leave men to make the first approaches unto Himself, but mn.de the first approaches io them. Ami T believe that that is, after all. the substance of the doctrine of election, that God loved us when we hated Him, that God sought us when we rejected Hun, that Lori atoned for us when we hated Him, and that the whole of the grand plan and its execution .and its application begins and ends with Him. Hr. A. T. Pierson.