Category: Devotion of the Day

TAKE HIS WORD FOR IT

Let God be true, but every man a liar.
Romans 3:4

“Abraham believed God.” The essence of faith is simply taking God at His Word. “What more can he say than to you he hath said?” “He hath said…so that we may boldly say.” We are thrown back upon revelation, not reason. God has spoken and holy men recorded it. Back of everything stands the record. If we are to believe the Living Word we must accept the Written Word. Jesus accepted the Old Testament as the Word of God. And He told us that His words were spirit and life. “Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus” – but how do we trust Him? The next line has it, “Just to take Him at His word.”

Not “a feeling fond and fugitive,” not a frame of mind strenuously maintained, but a calm reliance on, “It is written,” that is it. For “these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God: and that believing ye might have life through his name.”

Take His Word for it!

JESUS MADE REAL

He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine and shall shew it unto you.
John 16:14.

We do not make Jesus real by conjuring up a mental picture of Him long ago in Galilee and trying to walk in imagination with Him there. We do not have to go back two thousand years or travel to Palestine to find Jesus. There is a fad for that sort of thing, but so might one inwardly visualize any character of history. Such mental association may, indeed, affect one’s life to some degree, but it is far from the way Christ is made real to the believer.

The Holy Spirit has come for that purpose. All things spiritual are from God through Christ and are communicated to us by the Spirit. It was expedient that Jesus should go that the Spirit might come. He does not testify of Himself but of Christ, and He makes the Lord real to the heart. It is not a mere mental exercise but the work of the Spirit that enables us to say, “He is real to me.”