Devotion of the Day

God’s Finished Product

The Lord will perfect that which concerneth me.
Psalm 138:8

I have heard of a little boy whose sailor father was coming home to see him. The youngster worked the afternoon long trying to carve a ship model from a block of wood. He fell asleep, with very little success achieved for all his whittling. That night his father came, removed the block of wood and put in its place a real wooden ship exquisitely carved and rigged or perfection.

Your life and mine often bears poor resemblance to the Perfect Model. At our best we are like the carving of the little boy. But one day we shall awake in His likeness and see Him as He is. And we shall find that we bear the image of the heavenly. He who has begun a good work in us in regeneration will perform it in sanctification until the day of Jesus Christ in glorification. We were predestinated to be conformed to the image of God’s Son, and God will make of us a finished product and a perfect creation.

It will be great to awaken in the morning and find that we are just like Jesus!

Cheer up, my brother. He will perfect that which concerneth you!

Devotion of the Day

Living Permanence

He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water.
Psalm 1:3

The righteous man is not like a tombstone but like a tree. A tombstone is permanent, but it is dead permanence. A tree has living permanence, it is planted, not merely put, by the rivers of water.

The Psalmist said, “My heart is fixed.” Some saints have fixed heads, they are steadfast and unmovable, but it is the fixity of stubbornness and obstinacy. “Nothing is more like real conviction than simple obstinacy.” So much of orthodoxy is the tombstone kind. We tend to petrify. Religious movements run a certain course – a man, a movement, a machine, a monument. Churches tend to become like trees in the Petrified Forest instead of living trees by the rivers of water

Our faith, too, must be like seed, not sand, for living permanence endures because it perpetuates itself. A stone remains a stone. The Gospel reproduces itself from life to life. Christ lives from generation, not only in heaven but in the hearts of His people.