Abiding and Obeying
By Vance Havner
If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love.
John 15:10
This is only one of many verses that connect fellowship with Christ with obedience to Him. We are His friends if we do His commandments. If we do God’s will we are Jesus’ brother and sister. He that has and keeps His commandments, he it is that loves the Lord.
We are prone to make much of abiding, not much of obeying. We bask in the blessedness of being His friends, dwelling in Him, being hid with Christ in God. But Jesus always joins this holy estate with practical obedience. We hang up promises as mottoes but we are not so fond of commandments. Contemplation and adoration and mysticism have their place, but the friend of Jesus is the man who does what Christ commands him. To be sure, His commandment is that we love one another, but that includes a lot of other commandments and is as practical as the Thirteenth Chapter of First Corinthians.
A lot of people sing, “Oh, How I Love Jesus,” who are not keeping His commandments. And He said, “If a man love me, he will keep my words.”
Character Excellence Rather Than Things
By A.W. Tozer
Human excellence consists in the perfection of human nature. Things cannot enter men to make them better or more worthy. “A man can receive nothing, except it be given him from heaven.” Only the God who made man’s nature in the first place can remake it after the divine image.
A man’s earthly situation can neither add to nor take from what the man has within him. The martyrs who went about in goatskins or hid from their tormentors in dens and caves of the earth had nothing external to support their self-confidence or give them social status. Yet in the great day of Christ their interior excellence will shine forth as the brightness of the sun.
So I watch the man drive proudly by and wonder why he does not understand that true excellence lies in moral character, not in the beauty or elegance of a soulless machine. And I wonder whether he is an unbeliever or a deacon in a nearby church. A gospel church perhaps. And my thoughts are troubled for myself, and mine, and those for whom I am responsible, and for all for whom Christ died.
Verse
To this John replied, ‘A man can receive only what is given him from heaven.’ John 3:27
Thought
It is character excellence that defines one’s worth and only God can transform us into the likeness of Christ. Earthly possessions and life circumstances do not contribute to that transformation. Submission to the Holy Spirit does.
Prayer
O God, continue changing me even if it means dispossessing me of things.
Abundance of Things or Life
By A.W. Tozer
I have long ago given up the hope of making any appreciable change in the world’s philosophy of life. Were I concerned solely with the ways of the world, this piece would never be written; but when the children of God accept the world’s values it is time some Christian spoke up. Babylon may have her gods, her own way of life and her own moral standards. It is when Israel begins to adopt them that the prophet of God becomes responsible to rise and cry against them.
The man in the big car is thinking wrongly about himself and others and everything that relates to himself and them. He is as completely wrong as a man who gets off a bus in London and believes himself to be in New York. For his error he must not be blamed or scolded for he is simply mistaken, terribly mistaken, and should be dealt with patiently as a lost man, for such he undoubtedly is, at least for the time.
Someone should explain to him that a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance or elegance of the things which he possesseth. He should be taught that the excellence of anything lies in the perfection of its nature. The excellence of a horse (as Plato said somewhere) lies in the perfection of the qualities that make it a horse—strength, speed, intelligence, et cetera—and these cannot be transferred to something else. Give to a wren, for instance, the qualities that constitute a good horse and you have a grotesque monster that is neither wren nor horse. How unthinkable for a wren to perch on the back of the horse and ride proudly by under the mistaken impression that it has now reached his complete fulfillment. No. The horse cannot impart anything to the nature of the wren that will add to its excellence as a wren. Let the wren know itself and seek its fulfillment singing beside its nest and gathering food for its young, not in trying to borrow a glory that must be forever foreign to it.
And so with a man. . . .
Verse
Then he said to them, ‘Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.’ Luke 12:15
Thought
We are not defined by our abundance of possessions or lack of them. Unrestrained craving for things can become a cancer of the heart. And all the things must one day be left behind. It is abundant life that counts!
Prayer
Father, my greatest need is abundant life not abundant things. Help me to maintain proper perspective.
God’s Faithfulness And Ours
by Pastor Cornelius R. Stam
Many people suppose that salvation is God’s reward to those who do their best to live good lives. This is not so, for God’s Word says of those who are saved:
“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” (II Timothy 1:9).
Referring to this “salvation which is in Christ Jesus,” St. Paul says:
“It is a faithful saying, for if we died with Him, we shall also live with Him” (II Timothy 2:10,11).
In other words: The believer, viewing Calvary aright, has “died with Christ.” Viewing the Cross, he has said: “This is not Christ’s death. He was no sinner. He had no death to die. He is dying my death!” And so by faith he is “crucified with Christ” (Galatians 2:20). The penalty for all his sins has been fully paid, for he died — in Christ, and thus has also risen with Christ “to walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:3,4).
This is all God’s doing, and only now is the believer in a position to do good works that will please God. Thus the Apostle writes of believers, in II Timothy 2: “If we suffer, we shall also reign with Him: if we deny Him, He also will deny us” (Ver. 12). When the believer’s service for Christ is reviewed some, indeed, will “receive a reward,” but others will “suffer loss,” though they themselves will “be saved, yet so as by fire” (I Corinthians 3:14,15).
It will be deeply embarrassing, in that day, for unfaithful Christians to face empty-handed the One who gave His all, Himself, to save them. Yet salvation is by grace, thus the Apostle hastens to conclude his statement in II Timothy 2, with the words:
“If we are unfaithful, yet He abideth faithful: He cannot deny Himself” (Ver. 13)
Thus our rewards as believers depend upon our faithfulness, but our salvation, thank God, on His!
“What I believe about God is the most important thing about me.”
~A.W. Tozer
“The devil is a better theologian than any of us and is a devil still.”
~A.W. Tozer
Strategy For Victory
By Vance Havner
Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.
Romans 12:21
“Overcome evil with good” – here is a principle often overlooked. We do not master our sins and doubts and fears by direct frontal assault, taking them one by one. It is better to concentrate on the positive, become occupied with the Lord, and leave these evils to die from neglect. General MacArthur did not take each Japanese outpost on the way back to the Philippines. He concentrated on a few major objectives and left the other enemy garrisons to “rot on the vine.” If we become taken up with every temptation and difficulty we shall wear ourselves out on secondary skirmishes. Let us rather put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make not provision for the flesh. We can circumvent a lot of our worries by giving our attention to the good. Most of our ailments will die from neglect. We give them importance when we devote time and thought to them.
Make your life a major drive with Christ the objective – “This one thing I do” – and let the devil’s minor outposts starve to death.
One Thing
by Pastor Cornelius R. Stam
Referring to the great Temple of God, which King David so earnestly hoped to build, he said:
“ONE THING HAVE I DESIRED of the Lord; that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to enquire in His temple” (Psalm 27:4).
Similarly, when Martha of Bethany complained to Jesus that Mary “sat at [His] feet and heard His Word” while she was left to serve alone, the Lord answered:
“Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things, but ONE THING IS NEEDFUL, and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her” (Luke 10: 41,42).
Today, with regard to the message of grace from the ascended, glorified Lord, the Apostle Paul exhorts us: “Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly”(Colossians 3:16). Wonderful results follow such a determination to know Christ through the Word.
When the Lord Jesus opened the eyes of the blind beggar, the poor man was immediately persecuted by the religious leaders of the day. He could not answer all of their questions but he could answer the one most important to himself:
“ONE THING I KNOW, that, whereas I was blind, now I see” (John 9:25).
The rest of the narrative relates how the blind beggar also received spiritual sight as, face to face with the Son of God, he exclaimed: “Lord, I believe! …and…worshipped Him” (Ver.38).
But what about our conduct after spiritual sight has been bestowed? The most consecrated believer will acknowledge that he often fails to live up to the light he has received. St. Paul, by inspiration, gives us the solution to this problem also, saying:
“THIS ONE THING I DO: forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press [strain] toward the goal for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3: 13,14).
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