Category: Devotion of the Day

STEPPING IN THE LIGHT

As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him.
Colossians 2:6

God would not have us merely “take a stand,” He would have us walk. Too many have taken a stand and are still standing; for years they have made to progress. The New Testament makes much of our walk. We walk by faith, not by sight. We are to walk in the light, walk in love, walk in newness of life, walk worthy of our vocation, walk circumspectly, walk worthy of the Lord, walk honestly, walk in the truth, walk as He walked. The Christian life begins with a step of faith – “As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord” – and it proceeds step by step – “so walk ye in him.”

We are inclined to take a stand and at best strive to maintain it instead of walking daily with God like Enoch. Faith grows as we go. And don’t let your tongue get too far ahead of your feet. Let your walk match your talk!

TRYING TO REST

Let us labor therefore to enter into that rest.
Hebrews 4:11

We do not labor to rest. That is a contradiction. We labor to enter into rest, we make it our resolute purpose, we go about it in dead earnest. But when we have ceased from our works and entered, then we rest. We make an effort to reach a vacation spot but after we arrive we rest. The Saviour invites us to His rest, and we are not to live in a tense strain, holding on to it for dear life for fear “it” will slip from us. We do not keep Him, He keeps us. We are His guest, not His host, we sit at His table and we need never go away.

The rest of the Christian is not a pose of faith rigidly fixed and maintained. It is not something we screw ourselves up to, it is the very opposite of all strenuous effort. We labor to enter in, we earnestly commit all in a positive, definite, businesslike way. Then the responsibility is His to keep what we have committed; we have simply to abide. Like some vacationists, we exhaust ourselves trying to rest! Let go and let God!