Bounds: the needed anointing

Saturday, July 7, 2018
Meditation:
    As for you, the anointing you received from him remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about all things and as that anointing is real, not counterfeit—just as it has taught you, remain in him.
    —1 John 2:27 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Earnestness is good and impressive: genius is gifted and great. Thought kindles and inspires, but it takes a diviner endowment, and more powerful energy than earnestness or genius or thought to break the chains of sin, to win estranged and depraved hearts to God, to repair the breaches and restore the Church to her old ways of purity and power. Nothing but this holy unction [the anointing of the Holy Spirit] can do this.
    ... E. M. Bounds (1835-1913), Preacher and Prayer, Publishing House of the M. E. Church, South, Dallas, Tex., 1907, p. 93-94 (see the book)
    See also 1 John 2:27; Jer. 31:33-34; John 14:26; 16:13; 1 Cor. 2:13; Eph. 4:21; 1 Thess. 2:13; 2 Pet. 1:16-17; 1 John 2:20-21
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, teach us to grasp Your reconciliation. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Rutherford: the balance sheet

Friday, July 6, 2018
    Feast of John Huss, Reformer, Martyr, 1415
    Feast of Thomas More, Scholar & Martyr, &
    John Fisher, Bishop & Martyr, 1535
Meditation:
    You sympathized with those in prison and joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property, because you knew that you yourselves had better and lasting possessions. So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded.
    —Hebrews 10:34-35 (NIV)
Quotation:
    I desire now to make no more pleas with Christ. Verily, he hath not put me to a loss by what I suffer; he oweth me nothing: for in my bonds how sweet and comfortable have the thoughts of him been to me, wherein I find a sufficient recompense of reward!
    ... Samuel Rutherford (1600-1664), Letters of Samuel Rutherford, Edinburgh: William Whyte & Co., 1848, letter while in exile, Jan. 1, 1637, p. 135-136 (see the book)
    See also Heb. 10:34-35; Matt. 5:11-12; 6:19-20; 19:21; 2 Cor. 5:1; Col. 3:2-4; 2 Tim. 4:8
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, whatever I have now, or will ever have, is Yours. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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I. What’s wrong?

People are asking, What’s wrong? Has the world gone mad? And the answer is, yes, and it has been going mad for a long time. But the nature of that madness is not what most people think it is. The underlying cause of all the most destructive, wide-spread, and tormenting afflictions and deformities in society and in personal life is estrangement from God. This single fact explains everything we see and find alarming. Moreover, the process and progress of estrangement from God in our Western society has reached a point where one may legitimately ask whether the term “Christendom” means anything at all.

When we see (as we so often do) people acting out rivalry, strife, or enmity; or when we hear of people wasting their lives on empty pursuits like wealth, entertainment, or self-delusion; or when we read of people embracing isolation, anger, or despair, in response to the world’s false promises and true miseries, we should not respond with condemnation—we should see first and foremost that they are suffering because of their estrangement from God, that their deepest need is to end that estrangement, which is the root of all their troubles. This suffering must arouse our compassion, so that our response is the Gospel of the love of God.

Conveying the Gospel is neighbor-love, addressing our neighbor’s deepest need, the first and indispensable step towards our neighbor’s ultimate welfare. This does not mean that we should ignore other needs; alleviating misery in any of its forms is part of the Gospel, and sometimes this must come first before the Gospel can be heard. But God has promised that whoever calls on the Name of the Lord will be saved. In the Gospel, we teach our neighbors how to call on the Lord in that way, from the heart, in faith.

These days, it is common to witness people engaged in personal self-destruction, in one of the many ways of self-destruction that the world offers. When we see this, our message is not, “Stop destroying yourself,” but “Learn the value of self through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ,” so that self-destruction is no longer attractive. Nothing less will suffice, because the underlying cause for the self-destructive impulse is estrangement from God, Who is the source of all true value.

In Western society, most of man’s many needs are satisfied to a degree unprecedented in history. The broad satisfaction of man’s needs has concealed the one great need for fellowship with God, so much, that in most plans for human welfare, that is, nutrition, schooling, medical care, psychological maturation, governance, and physical and economic security, that one great unsatisfied need can scarcely get any attention. It seems hopeless, but it is not. We must face the true condition of the world in which we have been placed. God asks us to confront and overcome the obstacles, not in our own strength but in His. For He has a plan.

The deepest pathology of the world is estrangement from God; the cure is reconciliation with God through the Gospel. It answers the need, whether for a single individual or for billions. In every context, we are called always to interpret the human condition in this way, not the secular world’s way, and act accordingly.

Bell: the answer is Christ

Thursday, July 5, 2018
Meditation:
    Jesus said to them, “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those who exercise authority over them call themselves Benefactors. But you are not to be like that. Instead, the greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves. For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one who is at the table? But I am among you as one who serves.”
    —Luke 22:25-27 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Thank God, our Christian chance is not permanently gone from us [in world affairs]. Ecclesiastics seem for the most part to have failed, failed both man and God; but God has not failed, Jesus has not failed. The God-man still remains the only leader into cooperation whose wisdom is sufficient for a permanent, competent, and free Society. The dictators and would-be dictators will not do. They overreach themselves. Eventually they will destroy one another, and kill off most of us. But even that disaster will not eradicate the desire of men and women to lay down lives for that which is more than themselves. Men will continue to demand not the freedom from that degree of unity for which the dictatorships stand, but rather a finer, more noble, more perceptive kind of unity: a human solidarity which is not nationalistic but world-embracing, a human integration which in aim and purpose is not secularist but spiritual. What the world unwittingly is groping after is allegiance to the eternal, the compassionate, the completely integrating Christ.
    ... Bernard Iddings Bell (1886-1958), Still Shine the Stars, New York, London: Harper & Brothers, 1941, p. 51 (see the book)
    See also Luke 22:25-27; Ps. 2:6-9; 110:1-3; 118:9; Isa. 9:6-7; Dan. 7:13-14; Matt. 28:18; John 3:35
Quiet time reflection:
    Assist me, Lord, to lift You up before the world. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Summer: sending the right message

Wednesday, July 4, 2018
Meditation:
    ... if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.
    —2 Chronicles 7:14 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Bless God, America.
    ... Linden Summer
    See also 2 Chr. 7:14
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, heal our nation and all the world. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Tozer: the mysteries

Tuesday, July 3, 2018
    Feast of Thomas the Apostle
Meditation:
    Since ancient times no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who acts on behalf of those who wait for him.
    —Isaiah 64:4 (NIV)
Quotation:
    God will not hold us responsible to understand the mysteries of election, predestination, and the divine sovereignty. The best and safest way to deal with these truths is to raise our eyes to God and in deepest reverence say, “O Lord, Thou knowest.” Those things belong to the deep and mysterious Profound of God’s omniscience. Prying into them may make theologians, but it will never make saints.
    ... A. W. Tozer (1897-1963), The Pursuit of God [1948], Christian Publications, 1982, p. 64 (see the book)
    See also Isa. 64:4; 1 Cor. 2:9-11; Col. 1:25-26; Heb. 5:11-14; 2 Pet. 3:16-17
Quiet time reflection:
    I bow before Your mysteries, Lord. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Wirt: lessons about differences

Monday, July 2, 2018
Meditation:
    “Do not mistreat an alien or oppress him, for you were aliens in Egypt.
    “Do not take advantage of a widow or an orphan. If you do and they cry out to me, I will certainly hear their cry. My anger will be aroused, and I will kill you with the sword; your wives will become widows and your children fatherless.
    “If you lend money to one of my people among you who is needy, do not be like a moneylender; charge him no interest. If you take your neighbor’s cloak as a pledge, return it to him by sunset, because his cloak is the only covering he has for his body. What else will he sleep in? When he cries out to me, I will hear, for I am compassionate.”
    —Exodus 22:21-27 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The early Hebrews learned at the foot of Mount Sinai that in the sight of God there is indeed a difference between the sacred and the profane, but there is no difference between the spiritual and the social.
    ... Sherwood Eliot Wirt (1911-2008), The Social Conscience of the Evangelical, New York: Harper & Row, 1968, p. 9-10 (see the book)
    See also Ex. 22:21-27; Lev. 25:32-38; Lev. 19:17-18; Deut. 10:19; Jer. 7:5-7; 22:3; Zech. 7:10
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, show Your people the way to spiritual fellowship. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Wright & Fuller: the Risen Christ

Sunday, July 1, 2018
    Commemoration of John & Henry Venn, Priests, Evangelical Divines, 1813, 1873
Meditation:
    While they were still talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.”
    They were startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost. He said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts rise in your minds? Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.”
    —Luke 24:36-39 (NIV)
Quotation:
    [Continued from yesterday]
    Here [in the Gospels] is something that the layman can hold on to, quite apart from the vagaries of critical scholarship, for it is a portrait unaffected by the authenticity of any particular saying or story. Such an encounter with the historical Jesus is, of course, not the same as Christian faith in him. Even Caiaphas, Herod, and Pontius Pilate encountered him in this way. Christian faith is still a matter of decision—either this Man is God’s redemptive act, or he is not. Nor is the historical Jesus the object of our faith. That object is the Risen Christ preached by the Church. But the Risen Christ is in continuity with the historical Jesus, and it is the historical Jesus which makes the Risen Christ not just an abstraction, but clothes him with flesh and blood.
    ... George Ernest Wright (1909-1974) & Reginald Fuller (1915-2007), The Book of the Acts of God, London: Doubleday, 1957, p. 265-266 (see the book)
    See also Luke 24:36-39; 24:46-48; John 20:26-29; Acts 2:29-32; 13:29-31
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, may I become like You. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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