Day: July 29, 2011

Strength For The Day

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Vance Havner 90x115by Vance Havner

I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me. Philippians 4:13

As thy days, so shall thy strength be. Deuteronomy 33:25

Red-letter days and lofty experiences tend to fade. Resolutions, though penned in blood, soon lose their original drive. Spiritual stimulants, like shots in the arm, may serve a purpose, but living by shots in the arm, whether physically or spiritually, is abnormal. The trolley car does not run all day on one big push of power at the start. Its slender arm reaches up and keeps constant contact with the current.

Christ is our strength and He is with us all the days and is ever available. He will not give us tomorrow’s strength today, nor will yesterday’s grace suffice. “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,” but also sufficient unto the day is the strength thereof with which to meet the evil.

Believe Him for today’s strength today!

by Vance Havner

Give Up, In Order To Receive

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A.B. Simpson 90 x115by A.B. Simpson

Not my will, but thine—Luke 22:42

Jesus who once suffered in Gethsemane will be our strength and our victory, too. We may fear, we may also sink, but let us not be dismayed, and we shall yet praise Him and look back from a finished course and say,

Not one thing hath failed of all the good things which the Lord [our] God spake concerning [us] (Joshua 23:14).

But in order to do this, we must, like Jesus, meet the conflict, not with a defiant but with a submissive spirit. He had to say, Not my will, but thine be done, but in saying it He gained the very thing He surrendered. The submission of Gethsemane is not a blind and dead submission of a heart that abandons all its hope, but it is the free submission that bows the head in order to get double strength through faith and prayer.

We let go in order that we may take a firmer hold. We give up in order that we may more fully receive. We lay our Isaac on Mount Moriah, and we receive him back, no longer our Isaac, but God’s Isaac and infinitely more secure because he is returned to us in resurrection life.

by A.B. Simpson