Phillips: divisions in the church

Saturday, February 18, 2023
Meditation:
    Now the God of patience and consolation grant you to be likeminded one toward another according to Christ Jesus: That ye may with one mind and one mouth glorify God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Wherefore receive ye one another, as Christ also received us to the glory of God.
    —Romans 15:5-7 (KJV)
Quotation:
    The ‘outsider’ who knows nothing of the mixture of tradition, conviction, honest difference, and hidden resentment, that lies behind the divisions of the Christian Church sees clearly the advantage of a united Christian front and cannot see why the Churches cannot ‘get together’. The problem is doubtless complicated, for there are many honest differences held with equal sincerity, but it is only made insoluble because the different denominations are (possibly unconsciously) imagining God to be Roman or Anglican or Baptist or Methodist or Presbyterian or what have you. If they could see beyond their little inadequate god, and glimpse the reality of God, they might even laugh a little and perhaps weep a little. The result would be a unity that actually does transcend differences, instead of ignoring them with public politeness and private contempt.
    ... J. B. Phillips (1906-1982), Your God is Too Small [1953], Simon and Schuster, 2004, p. 40 (see the book)
    See also Rom. 15:5-7; Neh. 4:4; Matt. 12:25; 1 Cor. 1:10-13 CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Owen: gifts

Friday, February 17, 2023
    Feast of Janani Luwum, Archbishop of Uganda, Martyr, 1977
Meditation:
    On coming to the house, [the Magi] saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold and of incense and of myrrh.
    —Matthew 2:11 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Gifts are servants, not rulers, in the mind; are bestowed on us to be serviceable unto grace, not to lead, but to follow it, and to be ready with their assistance on its exercise.
    ... John Owen (1616-1683), Works of John Owen, v. VII, London: Johnson & Hunter, 1852, p. 250 (see the book)
    See also Matt. 2:11; 1 Cor. 1:5-7; 7:7; 12:4-11; Eph. 2:8-9; 4:7-8; Jas. 1:5; 1 Pet. 4:10
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, Your Son is the ultimate gift to sinners. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Law: labor and gambling

Thursday, February 16, 2023
Meditation:
    Still others, like seed sown among thorns, hear the word; but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful.
    —Mark 4:18-19 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Now he that is up early and late, that sweats and labours ... that he may be some time or other rich, and live in pleasure and indulgence, lives no more to the glory of God, than he that plays and games for the same ends. For though there is a great difference between trading and gaming, yet most of that difference is lost, when men once trade with the same desires and tempers, and for the same ends that others game.
    ... William Law (1686-1761), A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life [1728], London: Methuen, 1899, p. 54 (see the book)
    See also Mark 4:18-19; Deut. 31:20; Ps. 37:16-17; Eccl. 5:10; Isa. 5:8-10; Matt. 6:19-21; Luke 12:15-21; 1 Tim. 6:6-11,17-19; Jas. 5:1-5; 1 John 3:17
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, help me to dedicate my labors to You. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Guinness: the authority of faith

Wednesday, February 15, 2023
    Commemoration of Thomas Bray, Priest, Founder of SPCK, 1730
Meditation:
    Hear the word of the LORD, you Israelites, because the LORD has a charge to bring against you who live in the land: “There is no faithfulness, no love, no acknowledgment of God in the land.”
    —Hosea 4:1 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Today we have deflated the phrase “let God be God.” We laughingly apply it to presidents or children, usually as a form of indulgence, ... condescendingly. But for Martin Luther who coined the phrase, the context was the unrelenting call of God before which he trembled.
    But if the phrase needs recovery, how much more the reality of God’s authority in our lives? At its heart, the modern world is a decisive challenge to the authority of God outside our private lives. This is true not because a few atheists trumpet that “God is dead” but because our entire culture, Christians included, so relies on the gifts of the modern world that we have “no need of God” in practice.
    No more urgent task faces the church today than the recovery of the authority of faith over the modern world.
    ... Os Guinness (b. 1941), The Call: finding and fulfilling the central purpose of your life, Nashville: Word, 1998, reprint, Thomas Nelson Inc., 2003, p. 66 (see the book)
    See also Hos. 4:1; Job 38:2-3; Ps. 46:10; Isa. 55:8-9; Hos. 6:6; Matt. 28:18; Luke 10:22; Phil. 2:9-11; Col. 2:9-10; Heb. 1:1-2; 1 Pet. 3:18-22
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You reign from heaven, supreme over all. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Thomas a Kempis: Jesus the treasure

Tuesday, February 14, 2023
    Feast of Cyril & Methodius, Missionaries to the Slavs, 869 & 885
    Commemoration of Valentine, Martyr at Rome, c.269
Meditation:
    And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.
    —1 John 5:11-12 (NIV)
Quotation:
    He who finds Jesus finds a rare treasure, indeed, a good above every good, whereas he who loses Him loses more than the whole world. The man who lives without Jesus is the poorest of the poor, whereas no one is so rich as the man who lives in His grace.
    ... Thomas à Kempis (1380-1471), Of the Imitation of Christ [1418], Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1877, II.viii.2, p. 96 (see the book)
    See also 1 John 5:11-12; Pr. 2:4-5; Matt. 6:19-21; 10:39; 13:44-46; Luke 9:24-25; Eph. 3:8; Col. 2:2-3
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You have enriched Your people beyond measure. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Calvin: express Christ in life

Monday, February 13, 2023
Meditation:
    How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.
    —1 John 3:1-2 (NIV)
Quotation:
    We have been adopted as sons by the Lord with this one condition: that our life express Christ, the bond of our adoption. Accordingly, unless we give and devote ourselves to righteousness, we not only revolt from our Creator with wicked perfidy, but we also abjure our Savior Himself.
    ... John Calvin (1509-1564), The Institutes of the Christian Religion, v. I [1559], tr. John Allen, Presbyterian Board of Publication and Sabbath-School Work, 1921, III.vi.3, p. 616 (see the book)
    See also 1 John 3:1-2; John 1:12-13; Rom. 8:13-17; Gal. 3:26-27; 4:4-6; Phil. 2:14-16; Heb. 2:10-11
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, may my life exhibit Your presence. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Bonhoeffer: the work of forgiveness

Sunday, February 12, 2023
    Commemoration of Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection (Nicolas Herman), spiritual writer, 1691
Meditation:
    Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?”
    Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.”
    —Matthew 18:21-22 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The call to follow Christ always means a call to share the work of forgiving men their sins. Forgiveness is the Christlike suffering which it is the Christian’s duty to bear.
    ... Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), The Cost of Discipleship, Simon and Schuster, 1959, p. 90 (see the book)
    See also Matt. 18:21-22; 5:7; 6:12-15; 26:28; Mark 11:25; Luke 11:4; 17:3-4; 23:34; Eph. 4:32; Col. 3:13
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, transform my heart so that I may learn to forgive. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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