Daily Devotionals for January 12, 2024

For Reading and Meditation:     Nehemiah 6:9-13

We continue meditating on the fact that the psalmist, though filled with doubts about the goodness of God, nevertheless refrained from expressing those doubts to others. He carefully considered what effect his action might have on the family of God. Nothing that we do in life is without consequences. Someone has put it...

Walk in [dependence upon] the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh" (Gal. 5:16).

Those who have thoroughly learned full dependence on Him for justification will come to understand that sanctification is by the same faith principle. We are to rest in His finished work - both for birth and for...

God is a good paymaster; he pays his servants while at work as well as when they have done it; and one of his payments is this: an easy conscience. If you have spoken faithfully of Jesus to one person, when you go to bed at night you feel happy in thinking, "I have this day discharged my conscience of that man's blood." There is a great comfort in doing something for Jesus. Oh, what a happiness to place jewels in his crown, and give him to see of the travail of his soul! There is also very...

With the birth of Isaac, Abraham saw the beginning of the fulfillment of the Divine promise. He was to have a great posterity. For a long while, he had no child - but at last one was born to him. Yet Isaac was little more than a link. He had none of the greatness of Abraham. One writer thinks this was partly due to his father's greatness - he was dwarfed and weakened by growing up under the shadow of Abraham....

The Believer's prayers should be regulated by God's promises; he often fancies he wants what would only do him harm; and, therefore, if he ask, he is denied, not in anger but in love.

God has promised all good, and only good, to His beloved people. Ask for what God has promised to bestow, and ask believing that God will honour and fulfil His own precious word. He cannot deny Himself; all He hath promised He will perform. You can therefore have no reason to doubt whether the Lord will...

"For the LORD will not cast off for ever." Lamentations 3:31

He may cast away for a season but not forever. A woman may leave off her ornaments for a few days, but she will not forget them or throw them upon the dunghill. It is not like the LORD to cast off those whom He loves, for "having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end." Some talk of our being in grace and out of it, as if we were like rabbits...

WE ARE UNDER CONSTANT TEMPTATION these days to substitute another Christ for the Christ of the New Testament. The whole drift of modern religion is toward such a substitution.

To avoid this we must hold steadfastly to the concept of Christ as set forth so clearly and plainly in the Scriptures of truth. Though an angel from heaven should preach anything less than the Christ of the apostles let him be forthrightly and fearlessly rejected.

The mighty, revolutionary...

. . . advertising, at least in the United States, is the most powerful educational agent extant. Those who write the advertising copy probably do more to determine the way the average person thinks than the school and church combined.

The reasons for this are two. One is that men may flee from the admonitions of parents and the good counsel of the church, but where can anyone hide from the advertiser" He is as near to being ubiquitous as anything on earth except...

Sometimes the Lord Jesus tells his Church his love thoughts. "He does not think it enough behind her back to tell it, but in her very presence he says, 'Thou art all fair, my love.' It is true, this is not his ordinary method; he is a wise lover, and knows when to keep back the intimation of love and when to let it out; but there are times when he will make no secret of it; times when he will put it beyond all dispute in the souls of his people" (R. Erskine's Sermons). The Holy Spirit is...

You are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God—and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. § Can you search out the deep things of God? Can you find out the limits of the Almighty? They are higher than heaven—what can you do? Deeper than Sheol—what can you know?We speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages for our glory. § The mystery, which from the beginning of the ages has been hidden in God who created all...

Tell him your story; unfold to him your case; expect deliverance through him alone; -be satisfied to receive it as it shall please him to give it and in the time that seems best to him. By prayer and faith on your part and promise on his, there is an alliance signed, sealed, and ratified. Your enemies see you alone, and dream not that the Almighty is your ally, and that they are rushing upon the thick bosses of his shield. See him that is to them invisible, and be of good courage....

This is a good question because it reduces us all to size. We do not have anything that we did not receive. We received our physical and mental equipment through birth. What we look like and how brainy we are is something too far beyond our control to justify pride. It is an accident of birth.

All that we know is a result of our education. Others have poured information into our minds. Often when we think we have had an original thought, we find it in a book we first read twenty years...

Watchman, what of the night?” The watchman said, “The morning comes.”He who is coming will come and will not tarry. § He shall be like the light of the morning when the sun rises, a morning without clouds.I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also … Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. You have heard Me say to you, “I am going away and coming...