Category: Devotion of the Day

WE ASKED FOR IT

Hast thou not procured this unto thyself, in that thou hast forsaken the Lord thy God, when he led thee by the way?
Jeremiah 2:17

Are not these evils come upon us because our God is not among us?
Deuteronomy 31:17

Our plight today is our own fault. We asked for it. All our modern evils are come upon us because God is not among us. Of course, He is omnipresent, but He is not among us in that we have not His favor, the smile of His approval.

God has been among us in blessings unnumbered, but we have forgotten Him. And to be lost it is not necessary for a nation to blaspheme God. “The wicked shall be cast into hell and all nations that forget God.”

Even God’s people sometimes ask, “Is the Lord among us or not?” And in the absence of Him we are faced with the presence of evils galore.

We have lost the sense of God in the nation, in the churches, in our lives. The biggest business of the hour is to draw nigh to God that He may draw nigh to us. His presence with us is too often an assumption in our heads instead of an awareness in our hearts.

HOW GOOD WERE “THE GOOD OLD DAYS”?

Say not thou, What is the cause that the former days were better than these? For thou dost not inquire wisely concerning this.
Ecclesiastes 7:10

“Distance lends enchantment to the view,” and in retrospect we crown the past with a halo. Like Saul, we try to call up Samuel, and sigh, “If only Wesley or Finney or Moody were alive now!” Elisha did not pine for Elijah: he asked, “Where is the Lord God of Elijah?”

Someone wrote to an editor, saying, “Your paper is not as good as it used to be.” He replied, “It never has been.”

Some of the old worthies could take pretty mean cracks at each other. If you go all the way back to the Early Church, consider the plight of Corinth. And even in Acts it was not long after Pentecost that “there arose a murmuring.”

We do not inquire wisely when we cast longing eyes in the direction of the past. The days of Elijah are gone but the God of Elijah lives today. There are no untarnished haloes in any generation, and looking at heroes of any era is disappointing. Look not to “the good old days” but to the God of all the days.