“A life without a purpose is a languid, drifting thing. Every day we ought to renew our purpose, saying to ourselves: This day let us make a sound beginning, for what we have hitherto done is nought.” -Thomas A` Kempis
Moses was comfortable tending sheep for his father-in-law until he met the bush that burned yet was not consumed. For forty years after fleeing Egypt, Moses’ life was on hold – without clarity, purpose or direction. Then God spoke from the bush and Moses’ life would never be the same. He had purpose and direction. Saul was a man driven by purpose, but it was the wrong purpose. He needed his zeal redirected. When the Lord spoke to him on the road to Damascus, Saul became the Apostle Paul with a new and righteous purpose. His missionary journeys would change the world. Like Moses, many people are comfortably sailing through life with no driving purpose or have lost focus on their divine calling. Others, like Saul, are spending their energy and life pursuing the wrong purpose and never seeing their greater calling. If you find yourself in one of these schools, then look to the Lord Jesus for he has a noble purpose for your life. Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord…Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began. (2Timothy 1:8a, 9) Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:2) May we suggest this blog article: Who Knows?
Because he slew the Gibeonites. 2 Samuel 12:1. THE Gibeonites were under the protection of a special covenant, which had been entered into between them and Joshua. That covenant was the outcome of a ruse on their part. But since it had been most solemnly made by the leaders of Israel, it held good. The fact of their deceit and chicanery could not absolve Israel from the oath which had been passed for their safety. For centuries the provisions of this covenant had been observed, till Saul invaded them, and slew the Gibeonites. This was a grievous sin, which, according to the religious light of the time, seemed to demand blood; and David proposed to atone for blood by blood. Nothing but blood could atone for sin so black and dark.
We are also protected by a covenant, into which the Father has entered with the Son, not for our worthiness or merit, but only because He would. The provisions of that covenant engage to take us to be his people, to remember our sins no more, and to make the Divine law the object of our love (Heb. viii.). And the argument is irresistible, that if man is so mindful of a covenant as to feel that its infraction is a sin which can only be expiated by blood-shedding, it is impossible to suppose that God will ever run back from his. My soul, thou mayest rest secure in this: here is an everlasting rock; this foundation shall suffice thee for evermore. Thou art in the Son of his love. Though thou art sinful and evil, yet thou art included in the covenant which is more lasting than that of day and night. Jesus has met its conditions on thy behalf, and has undertaken to secure thy obedience and holiness. -F.B. Meyer
Editor's Note: Today's thought is based on all of chapter 17 of 1 Kings. (1 Kings 17) I have commanded the ravens . . . a widow women . . . there. 1 Kings 17:4, 9.
WE must be where God desires. — Elijah spoke of himself as always standing before the Lord God of Israel. He deemed himself as much a courtier in the royal palace as Gabriel (Luke i. 19). And he could as distinctly stand before God when hiding beside Cherith, or sheltering in the widow's house at Zarephath, as when he stood erect on Carmel, or listened to the voice of God at Horeb. Wherever you go, and whatever ministry you are called to undertake, glory in this, that you never go to any greater distance from God. If we are where God wants us to be, He will see to the supply of our need. It is as easy for Him to feed us by the ravens as by the widow woman. As long as God says, Stay here, or there, be sure that He is pledged to provide for you. Though you resemble a lonely sentinel in some distant post of missionary service, God will see to you. The ravens are not less amenable to his command than of old: and out of the stores of widow women He is as able to supply your need as He did Elijah's, at Zarephath. How often God teaches best in seclusion and solitude! It is by the murmuring brooks of nature that we have our deepest lessons. It is in the homes of the poor that we are fitted for our greatest tasks. It is beside couches where children suffer and die, that we receive those preparations of the heart which avail us when the bugle note summons us to some difficult post. God leads through death to life. — It was needful that the child should die, that sin might be remembered and dealt with; but through Death's portal the trio entered a richer, fuller life. Fear not that gateway! F. B. Meyer
Now the Lord my God hath given me rest on every side. 1 Kings 5:4.
GOD is the Rest-Giver, When He surrounds us on every side with his protecting care, so that our life resembles one of the cities of the Netherlands in the great war — inaccessible to the foe because surrounded by the waters of the sea, admitted through the sluice — then neither adversary nor evil occurrent can break in, and we are kept in perfect peace, our minds being stayed on God.
"Hidden in the hollow of his blessed hand, Never foe can enter, never traitor stand." Have you experienced the rest which comes by putting God round about you, on every side — like the light which burns brightly on a windy night because surrounded by its four panes of clear glass! Ah! what a contrast between the third and fourth verse: Wars on every side; Rest on every side. And yet the two are compatible, because the wars expend themselves on God, as the waves on the shingle; and there are far reaches of rest within, like orchards and meadows and pasture-lands beyond the reach of the devastating water.
Out of such rest should come the best work. We are not surprised to find Solomon announcing his purpose to build a house unto the name of the Lord. Mary, who sat at the feet of Jesus, anointed Him. Out of quiet hearts arise the greatest resolves; just as from the seclusion of country hamlets have come the greatest warriors, statesmen, and patriots. Men think, foolishly, that the active, ever-moving souls are the strongest. It is not so, however. They expend themselves before the day of trial comes. Give me those who have the power to restrain themselves and wait; these are they that can act with the greatest momentum in the hour of crisis. -F. B. Meyer Check out this Wisdom Tidbit "Rest in the Lord."
Let us fetch the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord. 1 Samuel 4:3
ISRAEL had been defeated with great loss. Their only hope of being able to hold their own against the Philistines and the people of the land was in the protection and help vouchsafed to them by God. They knew this, and thought that they would be secured, if only the Ark of the covenant were on the field. They forgot that it was only the material symbol of a spiritual relationship; that it was useless unless that relationship was in living force; and that the bending forms of the cherubim, emblematic of the Divine protection, would not avail if their fellowship with the God of the cherubim had been ruptured by backsliding.
There is a sense in which we are always sending for the Ark. The reliance on outward rites, such as Baptism and the Lord's Supper, on the part of those who are alienated from the life of God ; the maintenance of the forms of prayer and Scripture-reading, which no longer express the passionate love of the soul; the habit of churchgoing, which so many practice, not because they love God, but because they think that it will in some way secure his alliance in life's battle — all these are forms in which we still fetch the Ark of the covenant, whilst our hearts are wrong with the God of the covenant. It should never be forgotten that nothing can afford to us protection and succor but vital union with Christ. We must hide in his secret place if we would abide under his shadow. We must dwell in the most holy place if we would be shadowed by the wings of the Shekinah*. There must be nothing between us and God, if we are to walk together, and enjoy fellowship with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. -F. B. Meyer, (1847-1929), Our Daily Homily *Shekinah: (Hebrew) the presence of God on earth or a symbol or manifestation of His presence.
THROUGH this one girl-life God was about to save his people, though He was all the while hidden from view. The peculiarity of this book is that there is no mention of the name of God; but there is no book in the Bible more full of the presence and working of God for his own. His name is clearly in the watermark of the paper, if it do not appear in the print. We know that the meshes of evil plotting were laid for the hurt of Israel long before the fatal decree was made for the destruction of the entire nation; but here we find that God has begun his preparations for deliverance long before. In the beauty of Esther, in the position her uncle held at court, in the favour she won with the king, in the discovery through Mordecai of the plot against the king's life, there are the materials of a great and Divine deliverance. God was clearly beforehand to the devil. The angels of light were on the ground before those of darkness were marshalled. It is a sweet thought to carry with us always: God prepares of his goodness for the poor. He prepares the good work in which we are to walk, and the deliverances by which He will succour us in the hour of need. Do not dread the foe, be not fearful nor dismayed, as he draws his net around thee; God has prepared a way of escape, so that thou shalt be able to bear it. In the meanwhile, rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him; trust in the Lord; wait for the Lord; be silent to the Lord. He is more farseeing, his plans more far-reaching, his help more certain, than all the stratagems of evil. God laughs at them. Into the pit they have dug, thine enemies shall fall. -F. B. Meyer, Our Daily Homily
