Category: Devotion of the Day

The Good Old Days

Where is the Lord God of Elijah?
2 Kings 2:14

Elisha did not ask for the return of Elijah or sigh for the good old days of Elijah. Some of us are like Saul trying to call up departed Samuels. “What would Moody do today? Oh, for the times we used to have!”

A subscriber wrote to a magazine editor, “Your magazine is not as good as it used to be.” The editor replied, “It never has been.” The times have never been as good as they used to be! The Early Church, fresh from Pentecost, had barely started, when “‘there arose a murmuring.” Look at Corinth! Don’t forget Ananias and Sapphira, the Galatians and Colossians, Euodia and Syntyche, the plight of Ephesus, Sardis, Laodicea. It has always been so, yet God has carried on.

Looking back to the good old days is not the way out. Looking up to the God of All the Days is.

Elijah goes, but “thou, O Lord, remainest.”

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

Sand or Seed

Faith as a grain of mustard seed.
Matthew 17:20

If you would develop a living faith, not like a grain of sand but like a grain of seed, do not read too many books on faith. One dear brother will tell you that you must agonize and strive to enter, while another would have you “take it by faith.” Both are right: you must mean business and be in dead earnest, but beyond that you must, like Hudson Taylor, quit working at your faith and rest in the Faithful one.

Books on faith are colored by the author’s temperament, theology, experience, style of expression. You can become more concerned about the quantity and quality of your faith than about its object. You never will get your experience to suit you. You will never pray just as you want to, or feel or preach or live just as you want to. Perfection is found only in Him.

Real faith stops studying itself and is occupied with Him. Quit digging in the ashes of your poor heart for satisfaction. Consider Him-not your faith- “lest ye be weary and faint in your minds.”

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