Category: Devotion of the Day

“BY HEART” OR “BY HEARSAY”?

Now we believe, not because of thy saying: for we have heard him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world.
John 4:42

The Samaritans “believed” (v. 39), and now they knew the Saviour “by heart,” for themselves. There is a second-hand, by-proxy knowledge of the Lord as a report but not as a reality. Andrew and Philip were not content for Peter and Nathanael to know Jesu by hearsay, they brought Peter and Nathanael to the Lord Himself. We have heard and believed the report of Him, and we must, for “faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God.” But how many in our churches have had a personal encounter with the Saviour?

The Samaritan woman, like Philip, said, “Come and see.” Much of our personal work, our Sunday-school teaching, our preaching, falls short of that. We disseminate information about Jesus, but we often fail to clinch the matter by bringing men and women into His presence. True, they cannot see Him as the Samaritans saw Him. But they can believe on Him and know Him “by heart,” as they did.

And how often is the “deeper Christian life,” or whatever you may call it, hearsay? We have heard it in a sermon, read it in a book; but that is all. Job knew it “by heart,” not hearsay, when he cried: “I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear but now mine eye seeth thee.”

DOUBLE ABUNDANCE

God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work.
II Corinthians 9:8

God’s grace is not only amazing grace, it is abounding grace. He abounds toward us that we may abound toward Him There is abundance of grace in order that there may be abundance of good works. “Always having all sufficiency in all things” – what could be more satisfying than that? It is another way of saying, “My grace is sufficient for thee.” There is nothing stingy and niggardly about the grace of God. “Of his fullness have all we received and grace upon grace.” Jesus came that we might have life more abundantly.

And as God abounds toward us, we should abound toward Him. Paul was a great example of what he wrote. With all his infirmities, his thorn in the flesh, his opposition and persecution, who ever abounded to every good work as he did?

Our penurious and miserly service today declares that we live cheaply in our souls. We do not lay hold of the riches of grace in Christ Jesus. Our output is small because our intake is small. “My God shall supply all your need,” and beyond that do more for us than we can ask or think.

Let us be doubly abundant, in grace and good works.