Category: Devotion of the Day

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.”

What Are You Looking At?

Looking unto Jesus.
Hebrews 12:2

We hear a lot these days about “looking up,” “keeping your chin up,” and other exhortations, by which this poor world tries to whistle its way past the graveyard. But the value of the uplook depends on what you are looking at. Looking up avails little if it is only a forced optimism starting at the blue sky.

The Christian look s and lives even as the snake-bitten Israelites were healed by a look at the brazen serpent. “Look unto me, and be ye saved,” is God’s invitation (Isa. 45:22). Then we live the Christian life, “off-looking unto Jesus” (Heb. 9:28). But the value of faith lies in its object, and our look of faith has meaning only if “we see Jesus.”

A lot of our present-day looking up sees nothing, for it is not looking at anything. Any object other than Jesus is only a disappointment. He is the only satisfying object of the soul’s gaze. “They looked unto him, and were lightened: and their faces were not ashamed” (Ps. 34:5). “Looking up” and “smiling through,” with a Micawberish hope that something will happen will never get you through. Fix your eyes on Jesus!