Category: Devotion of the Day

Not Now But Afterwards

What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter.
John 13:7

Our Lord’s saying goes deeper than the immediate application of this precious word. God trusts some of His saints in the dark. To some He allows chapters that defy all explanation, that do not make sense, that seem to contradict all we have been taught to expect. From some He seems to withdraw His presence; some He lets pass from this world in strange and sinister ways. We must never make too much of deathbed stories, for some choice saints have had anything but a shouting exit.

We must take account of this, for all lives do not follow the ocurse we would have anticipated. Paul dropped from height to depth in the same chapter (II Cor. 12), from third heaven to thorn in the flesh, and God may give us along with a mountain-top vision a dark valley where deliverance is not granted.

Some chapters are to be experienced now and understood hereafter. It is well to be forewarned about them and forearmed for them, even if they do not come, lest Satan overwhelm us as he sought to do with Job and Peter.

God marks across some of our days, “Will explain later.”

The Lesson of the Cave: God’s Presence

And after the fire a still small voice.
I Kings 19:12

It was the day after Carmel. The day after the big day can be a very bad day. From His baptism our Lord went to meet the devil. After the third heaven, Paul came to his thorn in the flesh.

But Elijah learned at the cave what he never learned on Carmel. We make so much these days of wind, fire, and earthquake, of the sensational and spectacular, of the dramatic demonstration on Carmel. We measure everything by “How big?” and “How loud?” God’s voice in the cave was still and small. He does indeed speak in wind, fire, and quake, but those are occasional. Woe unto us if we are so deafened by the whirlwind that we cannot hear the whisper!

We are in great danger of going from one Carmel to another, living on excitement, mass meetings, and amazing demonstrations, that we need a session in the cave. Let us not deafen our ears to the quiet moving of God’s Spirit in hundreds of humble hearts whose work of faith and labor of love will outlast anything on Carmel.