Category: Devotion of the Day

GOD AND TITUS

I found no rest in my spirit, because I found not Titus my brother…Our flesh had no rest, but we were troubled on every side; without were fightings, within were fears. Nevertheless God, that comforteth those that are cast down, comforted us by the coming of Titus.
II Corinthians 2:13; 7:5, 6

Thank God for the humanness of Paul! Every lonely preacher, far from home, without rest in flesh or spirit, finds a kindred soul in these verses. We miss Titus, whether a brother or a dear one far from us. True, we have God, but we need the touch of a human hand and God often comforts us by Titus. It takes both God and Titus to cheer the castdown. Paul had his helpers, like Onesiphorus, who oft refreshed him, and like Luke and Timothy.

But when the day came that “all men forsook” him, he could say, “Notwithstanding the Lord stood with me.” There may come a time when Titus cannot reach us, but when it comes God will get through. And in the last valley where the dearest cannot go along we need fear no evil “for thou art with me.”

BY PARADISE AND THORN TO CHRIST

Caught up into paradise…a thorn in the flesh… My grace is sufficient.
II Corinthians 12:4, 7, 9

Paul’s paradise experience and the thorn given to offset it lest he be exalted above measure – from height to depth – were necessary to bring him to life’s richest experience, the daily sufficiency of Christ. We may need a crisis to precipitate the matter, bring it to a head, but trips to the third heaven and thorns in the flesh are incidental to life’s greatest lesson, to find in Christ Himself everything and draw from Him His resurrection life for body, mind, and spirit.

To stop short of that is to have an immature and inadequate experience. Occasional high days, answers to prayer now and then, temporary blessings, make an uneven and spasmodic Christian life. But to live day in and out, all kinds of days, in simple dependence on Christ as the branch on the vine, constantly abiding, that is the supreme experience. Not always glamorous and exciting but always sure, it is far better than an erratic, up-and-down, paradise-and-thorn existence. “A man in Christ” – that is it!