성령 안에 있는 의와 평강과 희락(롬14:17)

ACQUAINTANCE WITH GRIEF “A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.” Isaiah 53:3 We are not acquainted with grief in the way in which Our Lord was acquainted with it; we endure it, we get through it, but we do not become intimate with it. At the beginning of life we do not reconcile ourselves to the fact of sin. We take a rational view of life and say that a man by contro..

THE UNDEVIATING TEST “For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged; and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.” Matthew 7:2 This statement is not a haphazard guess, it is an eternal law of God. Whatever judgment you give, it is measured to you again. There is a difference between retaliation and retribution. Jesus says that the basis of life i..

THE MINISTRY OF THE INTERIOR “But ye are . . . a royal priesthood.” 1 Peter 2:9 By what right do we become “a royal priesthood”? By the right of the Atonement. Are we prepared to leave ourselves resolutely alone and to launch out into the priestly work of prayer? The continual grubbing on the inside to see whether we are what we ought to be, generates a self-centred, m..

HAVE YOU COME TO “WHEN” YET? “And the Lord turned the captivity of Job when he prayed for his friends.” Job 42:10 The plaintive, self-centred, morbid kind of prayer, a dead-set that I want to be right, is never found in the New Testament. The fact that I am trying to be right with God is a sign that I am rebelling against the Atonement. “Lord, I will purify my heart ..

SERVICE OF PASSIONATE DEVOTION “Lovest thou Me? . . . Feed My sheep.” John 21:16 Jesus did not say—Make converts to your way of thinking, but look after My sheep, see that they get nourished in the knowledge of Me. We count as service what we do in the way of Christian work; Jesus Christ calls service what we are to Him, not what we do for Him. Discipleship is based ..

DON’T THINK NOW, TAKE THE ROAD “And Peter . . . walked on the water to go to Jesus. But when he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid.” Matthew 14:29-30 The wind was actually boisterous, the waves were actually high, but Peter did not see them at first. He did not reckon with them, he simply recognized his Lord, and stepped out in recognition of Him and walked on the wa..

WHAT DO YOU MAKE OF THIS? “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friend . . . I have called you friends.” John 15:13, 15 Jesus does not ask me to die for Him, but to lay down my life for Him. Peter said—“I will lay down my life for Thy sake,” and he meant it; his sense of the heroic was magnificent. It would be a bad thing to be..

GET A MOVE ON “Abide in Me.” John 15:4 In the Matter of Determination. The Spirit of Jesus is put into me by the Atonement, then I have to construct with patience the way of thinking that is exactly in accordance with my Lord. God will not make me think like Jesus, I have to do it myself; I have to bring every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. “Abide in ..

GETTING THERE “Come ye after Me.” Mark 1:17 Where the selective affinity dies and the sanctified abandon lives. One of the greatest hindrances in coming to Jesus is the excuse of temperament. We make our temperament and our natural affinities barriers to coming to Jesus. The first thing we realize when we come to Jesus is that He pays no attention whatever to our natural a..

GETTING THERE “Master, where dwellest Thou?. . . Come and see.” “Come with Me. John 1:38-39 Where the self-interest sleeps and the real interest awakens. “They abode with Him that day.” That is about all some of us ever do, then we wake up to actualities, self-interest arises and the abiding is passed. There is no condition of life in which we cannot abide in Jesus. ..