2 Timothy 2:3-42

For Reading and Meditation:     Genesis 16:1-16

What matters most - that I know God or that God knows me? I think in a sense the latter. For my knowledge of Him depends on His sustained initiative in knowing me. Just as the knowledge of His love for me causes the scales to fall from my eyes and turns the machinery of my soul in His direction, so my knowledge of how...

For Reading and Meditation:     John 6:25-33

It is because God is so utterly trustworthy and reliable that the Christian life at heart is a life of trust. In the passage before us today our Lord is asked: "What must we do to do the works God requires?" (v. 28). His answer was entirely different from that which you would receive if you posed the question to...

For Reading and Meditation:     Psalm 36:1-12

How wonderful it is, in an age where unfaithfulness abounds, to focus our gaze on those Scriptures that point to the trustworthiness of our God. The one before us today is quite wonderful, but consider also these: "O Lord God Almighty, who is like you? You are mighty, O Lord, and your faithfulness surrounds you" (

For Reading and Meditation:     Colossians 2:1-15

We are seeing the suffering and persecution we experience can be due to our own tactlessness and folly. Today I want to go a stage further, and suggest that in relation to this matter of suffering and persecution, some Christians have developed a "martyr complex". A "martyr complex" is an attitude of mind that finds...

For Reading and Meditation:     Matthew 22:23-33

We spend one more day considering the proposition that apart from a relationship with God and an understanding of the Scriptures, we are unable to see life as a whole. The man or woman who knows and understands the Bible will be acquainted with the facts he or she needs to have in order to come to right and sound...

For Reading and Meditation:     Psalm 76:1-12

We touched yesterday on the truth that the reason why the ungodly are set in eminent places is because God arranges it. The psalmist goes on to say that not only does God raise up the ungodly, but He also brings them down: "You cast them down to ruin. How suddenly are they destroyed –" (

GOD has opened His heart to us in His word. He has told us all His mind, He intends every word He has spoken, and will fulfill every promise He has made. He cannot deny Himself or falsify His word; He can have no temptation to do so. Man may be fickle, He is but a bruised reed; Jehovah is always the same, He is the Rock of Ages. He will have compassion on the miserable who seek His face; and show mercy to all who plead with Him in Jesus' name. He cannot cast out a coming sinner, or refuse to...

Paul has four of these "faithful sayings." The first occurs in 1 Timothy 1:15, "This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners." The next is in 1 Timothy 4:6, "Godliness is profitable unto all things, having the promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come. This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation." The...

We must not imagine that we are suffering for Christ, and with Christ, if we are not in Christ. Beloved friend, are you trusting to Jesus only? If not, whatever you may have to mourn over on earth, you are not "suffering with Christ," and have no hope of reigning with him in heaven. Neither are we to conclude that all a Christian's sufferings are sufferings with Christ, for it is essential that he be called by God to suffer. If we are rash and imprudent, and run into positions for which...

The foundation upon which our faith rests is this, that "God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them." The great fact on which genuine faith relies is, that "the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us," and that "Christ also hath suffered for sin, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God"; "Who himself bare our sins in his own body on the tree"; "For the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and by his stripes we are healed."...