Category: Devotion of the Day

The Liberty of the Lord

Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
II Corinthians 3:17

Of course we must understand this to mean, “Where the Spirit of the Lord is in control, there is liberty.” He indwells every believer, but not every believe has come out into the glorious liberty of the children of God. He is present in the churches, even where two or three gather in Christ’s Name, but often He is hindered. He is often resident where He is not president!

But wherever He is recognized and obeyed there is no longer a spirit of bondage. In church history the great revival periods have been the blessed liberations in which the Spirit has loosed all bonds and the church has recovered her early freedom. In local churches, what glorious liberty follows when the Spirit is Lord! Read How Christ Came to Church and transformed both A. J. Gordon and his Boston pastorate. And the individual Christian “gets loose” only when he is controlled by the Spirit. “Lord” and “liberty” may seem contradictory, but the free man is a controlled man. He has the liberty of the Lord. We have “deliberations” aplenty these days, but what we need is liberation!

Making Yours Your Own

How long are ye slack to go to possess the land, which the Lord God of your fathers hath given you?
Joshua 18:3

The Promised Land was theirs but they had not possessed their possessions. It is not what we have but what we know we have that determines our actual wealth. Many a poor man has had an oil well on his farm and didn’t know it. If he found that he did have such a treasure he would lose no time tapping his resources. He would not merely brag, “There is oil on my place.” Such boasts would not pay bills. He must possess his possessions.

Yet Christians know what they have, but often get no farther than merely boasting of what is potentially but not experientially theirs. Jesus said, “I will give you rest,” but He added, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me, and ye shall find rest.” God gives us oil wells but He does not pump the oil for us. All things are ours in Christ, but we must make what is ours factually our very own actually.

Appreciating what is yours never makes you rich, but appropriating it will. “The Lord is rich unto all that call upon him.”