성령 안에 있는 의와 평강과 희락(롬14:17)

MAKE A HABIT OF HAVING NO HABITS “For if these things are yours and abound, they make you to be not idle nor unfruitful.” 2 Peter 1:8, RV When we begin to form a habit we are conscious of it. There are times when we are conscious of becoming virtuous and patient and godly, but it is only a stage; if we stop there we shall get the strut of the spiritual prig. The right thing to do with habit..

YOU WON’T REACH IT ON TIPTOE Add to your brotherliness . . . love. 2 Peter 1:7 Love is indefinite to most of us, we do not know what we mean when we talk about love. Love is the sovereign preference of one person for another, and spiritually Jesus demands that that preference be for Himself (cf. Luke 14:26). When the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, Jesus Christ is ..

IF THOU HADST KNOWN! “If thou hadst known . . . in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes.” Luke 19:42 Jesus had entered into Jerusalem in triumph, the city was stirred to its foundations; but a strange god was there, the pride of Pharisaism; it was religious and upright, but a “whited sepulchre.” What is it that blinds me in this “m..

TAKE THE INITIATIVE “Add to your faith virtue . . . . “(“Furnish your faith with resolution.”) (MOFFATT) 2 Peter 1:5 “Add” means there is something we have to do. We are in danger of forgetting that we cannot do what God does, and that God will not do what we can do. We cannot save ourselves nor sanctify ourselves, God does that; but God will not give us good habits, He will not giv..

THE GLORY THAT EXCELS “The Lord . . . hath sent me that thou mightest receive thy sight.” Acts 9:17 When Paul received his sight he received spiritually an insight into the Person of Jesus Christ, and the whole of his subsequent life and preaching was nothing but Jesus Christ—“I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.” No attraction was ever al..

GRASP WITHOUT REACH “Where there is no vision, the people cast off restraint.” Proverbs 29:18 (R.V.) There is a difference between an ideal and a vision. An ideal has no moral inspiration; a vision has. The people who give themselves over to ideals rarely do anything. A man’s conception of Deity may be used to justify his deliberate neglect of his duty. Jonah argued that because God was a..

HEARTINESS V. HEARTLESSNESS TOWARDS OTHERS “It is Christ . . . who also maketh intercession for us.” “The Spirit . . . maketh intercession for the saints.” Romans 8:34, 27 Do we need any more argument than this to become intercessors— that Christ “ever liveth to make intercession”; that the Holy Spirit “maketh intercession for the saints”? Are we living in such a vital relatio..

THE PATIENCE OF FAITH “Because thou hast kept the word of My patience.” Revelation 3:10 Patience is more than endurance. A saint’s life is in the hands of God like a bow and arrow in the hands of an archer. God is aiming at something the saint cannot see, and He stretches and strains, and every now and again the saint says—“I cannot stand any more.” God does not heed, He goes on str..

HEEDFULNESS V. HYPOCRISY IN OURSELVES “If any man see his brother sin a sin which is not unto death, he shall ask, and He shall give him life for them that sin not unto death.” 1 John 5:16 If we are not heedful of the way the Spirit of God works in us, we shall become spiritual hypocrites. We see where other folks are failing, and we turn our discernment into the gibe of criticism instead o..

BUILDING FOR ETERNITY “For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it?” Luke 14:28 Our Lord refers not to a cost we have to count, but to a cost which He has counted. The cost was those thirty years in Nazareth, those three years of popularity, scandal and hatred; the deep unfathomable agony in Gethsemane,..