Category: Devotion of the Day

Devotion of the Day

Two Lost Words

All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.
Matthew 28:18-20.

Here is our Saviour’s prerogative: He claims all power; our Saviour’s program: discipling, baptizing, teaching; our Saviour’s promise: to be with us all the days, even to the consummation of the age.

What a set-up! All the world before us, all power behind us, the All-powerful One with us!

In the teaching phase of our Saviour’s program, we do not read, “teaching them all things whatsoever I have commanded you.” Much of our teaching today is just that, the dissemination of information. It says, “teaching them to observe…” Here are the two lost words of the Great Commission. Throughout the Word of God the accent is on doing, observing, keeping the commandments of the Lord. Today we teach them, but we do not teach people to do them. The Word is hid in the head but not in the heart. It is the Word hidden in the heart that keeps from sin. You can have a head full of Scripture and a heart full of sin.

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

Devotion of the Day

The Word or the World

I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.
John 17:14.

If you stand on the Word you do not stand in with the world. McLaren says, “The measure of our discord with the world is the measure of our accord with our Saviour.” Our Lord said the world hated Him and would hate us. “If ye were of the world, the world would love its own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you” (John 15:18-19).

“The world knoweth us not, because it knew him not” (I John 3:1). What has happened to all this today? The average church member courts the world’s favor and rejoices in being hail-fellow-well-met and shows off the world’s prizes and rewards. If to love the world is to be the enemy of God, we have some strange contradictions among us!

What some think is the world becoming more Christian is just Christians becoming more worldly. We can have the word or the world but not both. There is no concord between Christ and Belial. Read John 17; II Corinthians 6:14-7:1; James 4:4; I John 2:15-17. We are strangers here. Don’t make yourself at home.

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