Category: Devotion of the Day

Included in the Ticket

He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?
Romans 8:32

It is an old story of the ship passenger who lived on crackers and cheese all the way across the ocean only to learn that his meals were included in his ticket.

Our salvation includes more than pardon from sin, deliverance from hell and a ticket to heaven. It includes all that we shall need on our journey. Sin has been dealt with in the Son, but Jesus is not only our Saviour, He is our Sustenance and Supply. We are not to subsist on our own crackers and cheese. “All things are yours.” Indeed, the supreme thing is that God spared not His own Son but delivered Him up for us all. That is the message of Calvary. But God has also freely given us all things in the gift of His Son. Our assurance, sanctification, peace, joy, wisdom, all that we need for body, mind and spirit to do God’s will, a new body at the resurrection, eternal life in heaven, all this is “included in the ticket.”

What a “ticket,” bought at the purchase price of God’s own Son! Throw away your crackers and cheese! You have a right to eat in the Main Dining Room!

The daily devotions are from Day by Day by Vance Havner. Fleming H. Revell Company, 1953.

God Has No Grandchlidren

To him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to his it is sin.
James 4:17

Gibbon describes the degeneration of Christianity under the Greek scholars of the 10th century, who handled the literature and spoke the language of the spiritual but knew not the life: “They held in their lifeless hands the riches of their fathers without inheriting the spirit which had created and imparted that sacred patrimony. They read; they praised; they compiled; but their languid souls seemed alike incapable of thought and action.”

The Pharisees of Jesus’ day handled the things of God, read the Scriptures, faithfully kept the letter of the law, were painstakingly separated from sinners. But the publicans and harlots went into the Kingdom before them.

To have grown up in a Christian home and in a church, early fluent in the speech of the Kingdom, familiar with its subjects and observing its practices, yet never a citizen, produces a type of sinner often harder to awaken than the most ignorant heathen. Truth long heard and not acted upon means awful self-deception (James 1:22).

Second generations do not inherit salvation. God has no grandchildren.

The daily devotions are from Day by Day by Vance Havner. Fleming H. Revell Company, 1953.