Category: Devotion of the Day

FINISHING GRACE

Now also when I am old and greyheaded, O God, forsake me not; until I have shewed thy strength unto this generation, and thy power to every one that is to come.
Psalm 71:18

The Psalmist prays that he may demonstrate God in his old age, both to his own generation and to all who are to come, even as he has declared God in his youth. It is a worthy ambition. The eyes of the Lord are looking for someone in whose behalf He may show Himself strong, and the Psalmist wants to demonstrate God’s strength, not his own. Paul lived to demonstrate Christ’s strength made perfect in his weakness.

We are seeing a demon-stration of the powers of darkness these days. We need a demonstration of God in human lives. Too many of us are showing what we can do. The Psalmist wanted to show what God could do. He wanted to finish in old age what he had begun in youth. Some declare God in early life, deny Him in later years. Paul wanted to finish his course with joy.

Pray God for finishing grace!

AN ENEMY HATH DONE THIS

Wherefore we would have come unto you, even I Paul, once and again; but Satan hindered us.
I Thessalonians 2:18

Strange statement! We are in the habit of saying, “I was providentially hindered.” Not so Paul. He blames the devil. And remember that he called his thorn in the flesh “a messenger of Satan.” He did not make God the author of it, though God did permit it. Did not our Lord say of the woman with a spirit of infirmity, “this woman whom Satan hath bound”? He told His disciples, “And Satan shall cast some of you into prison.” We are too inclined to attribute to God the work of the devil, just as some have ascribed to the devil the work of God.

Paul gloried in tribulation, but we tend to glorify tribulation, which is something else. God does, indeed, permit Satan to afflict Job, but Job goes far afield if he thinks that sickness, pain, and death are of God. It sounds pious to look at the mischief and misery which Satan has wrought and call it providential. In the world we shall have tribulation, which we can turn to good account, but let us be intelligent and “give the devil his due.”