September 12 - Morning"God is jealous." Nahum 1:2
Your Lord is very jealous of your love, O believer. Did He choose you? He
cannot bear that you should choose another. Did He buy you with His
own blood? He cannot endure that you should think that you are your
own, or that you belong to this world. He loved you with such a love that
He would not stop in heaven without you; He would sooner die than you
should perish, and He cannot endure that anything should stand between
your heart's love and Himself. He is very jealous of your trust. He will not
permit you to trust in an arm of flesh.
He cannot bear that you should hew
out broken cisterns, when the overflowing fountain is always free to you.
When we lean upon Him, He is glad, but when we transfer our dependence
to another, when we rely upon our own wisdom, or the wisdom of a friend
worst of all, when we trust in any works of our own, He is displeased,
and will chasten us that He may bring us to Himself. He is also very
jealous of our company. There should be no one with whom we converse
so much as with Jesus. To abide in Him only, this is true love; but to
commune with the world, to find sufficient solace in our carnal comforts,
to prefer even the society of our fellow Christians to secret intercourse
with Him, this is grievous to our jealous Lord.
He would fain have us abide
in Him, and enjoy constant fellowship with Himself; and many of the
trials which He sends us are for the purpose of weaning our hearts from
the creature, and fixing them more closely upon Himself. Let this jealousy
which would keep us near to Christ be also a comfort to us, for if He loves
us so much as to care thus about our love we may be sure that He will
suffer nothing to harm us, and will protect us from all our enemies. Oh that
we may have grace this day to keep our hearts in sacred chastity for our
Beloved alone, with sacred jealousy shutting our eyes to all the
fascinations of the world! September 12 - Evening"I will sing of mercy and judgment." Psalm 101:1
Faith triumphs in trial. When reason is thrust into the inner prison, with
her feet made fast in the stocks, faith makes the dungeon walls ring with
her merry notes as she I cries, "I will sing of mercy and of judgment. Unto
thee, O Lord, will I sing." Faith pulls the black mask from the face of
trouble, and discovers the angel beneath. Faith looks up at the cloud, and
sees that There is a subject for song even in the judgments of God towards us. For,
first, the trial is not so heavy as it might have been; next, the trouble is not
so severe as we deserved to have borne; and our affliction is not so
crushing as the burden which others have to carry. Faith sees that in her
worst sorrow there is nothing penal; there is not a drop of God's wrath in
it; it is all sent in love. Faith discerns love gleaming like a jewel on the
breast of an angry God. Faith says of her grief, "This is a badge of honour,
for the child must feel the rod"; and then she sings of the sweet result of
her sorrows, because they work her spiritual good. Nay, more, says Faith,
"These light afflictions, which are but for a moment, work out for me a far
more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." So Faith rides forth on the
black horse, conquering and to conquer, trampling down carnal reason and
fleshly sense, and chanting notes of victory amid the thickest of the fray. September 12 |