Daily Devotionals

Mornings and Evenings with Jesus

Devotional: August 16th

Watch ye, and pray, lest ye enter into temptation. - Mark 14:38.

“WHAT God has joined together, let no man put asunder.” In vain do we pray if we are careless and unwatchful, if we expose ourselves needlessly in dangerous places and company, if we leave without a sentinel our senses, appetites, and passions, and use not the means of preservation which are placed within bur reach. Prayer without watchfulness is hypocrisy; watching without prayer is presumption. Our strength is in God alone. We should always manifest a lively concern for our spiritual preservation. Our prayer should ever be, “Uphold my goings in thy ways,” and, “Let not any iniquity have dominion over me.” “Hold thou me up, and I shall be safe.” Whatever be our weakness, if he upholds us he will keep us from falling. Whatever be our inability and danger, if he holds us up we are safe.

Now, this preservation, about which we are to be thus prayerfully solicitous, includes not only eventual security as to eternity, but stability and constancy as to time, our being steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord. And the very exercise of prayer will tend to secure us. And God has promised to hear and answer the prayers of his people. He will “strengthen us with might by his Spirit in our inner man.” And though Christians know God has engaged to keep the feet of his saints, they also know that their safety consists in watching and praying; they know there is no perseverance without persevering; they know the certainty of the end includes the certainty of the means.

A Christian hates sin, and believes it to be, as the apostle says, “exceeding sinful.” He not only hates it, but desires to depart from it. He loves heart-purity, and, feeling sin to be his abhorrence, he will not, cannot, bear his heavenly Father should plead in vain, “Oh, do not the abominable thing which I hate.” Therefore he sees enough in the nature of sin, and in the accusations of conscience, to induce him to cry, “Hold thou me up, and I shall be safe.”

Be content with such things as ye have. - Hebrews 13:5.

FOR if we are not content with such things as we have, we shall never be content with such things as we would have. Haman’s riches and honours availed him nothing so long as he saw Mordecai the Jew sitting at the king’s gate. Ahab was the king of Israel, yet he was not satisfied with his dominions. No, he covets Naboth’s vineyard; and because he cannot obtain it he is sick forsooth, and taketh to his bed, and can eat nothing. Adam and Eve in Paradise had a whole new world to themselves, but they were not satisfied. No, they must have a little more indulgence and a little more knowledge. The angels in heaven, were they content? Oh, no; Lucifer says, “I will set my throne among the stars, I will be like the Most High.” Thus do we find that there is no worldly portion which can satisfy the longing of an immortal mind; that “in the midst of their sufficiency” the owners are “in straits.”

Let us look at Solomon in all his glory, and hear what he says, after looking on all the works his hands had wrought, and all his labours to obtain happiness. “Behold,” says he, “all is vanity and vexation of Spirit.” So that we see that those who have attained to an affluence of earthly good, find themselves no nearer happiness than before, and that the fault lies in the things themselves. This is a reason why we should seek “the things which are above,” which are satisfying and produce heart contentment.

Moses prayed that he might be early satisfied with God’s mercy. And God says, “My people shall be satisfied with my goodness.” Oh, says David, “I am satisfied.” “My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness.” And says the Saviour, “He that drinketh of this water shall thirst again; but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.” “He that cometh to me shall never hunger, and he that believeth in me shall never thirst.” Among all the complainers, therefore, in our world there are some who have found what has set their poor hearts at ease; they have found the light of God’s countenance; and this has put “more joy into their hearts than when their corn and their wine and their oil increased.” They want more indeed of this good, but they do not want more than this good. They can say with Paul, “I have learned, in whatsoever state lam, therewith to be content.”

Contentment is a kind of self-sufficiency. Contentment cannot suffer a man to desire or want more than the providence of God affords him; he is therefore happy. He has a sufficiency-he has other resources-he has other compensations. The grace of God produces in him anew character; it makes him a “stranger and a pilgrim on the earth,” and leads him to judge of himself, not by what he has in the way, but what he has in the end. It comes to him and says, in the homely verses of Bunyan’s shepherd boy in the valley of Humiliation,

“Fulness to such a burden is,

That go on pilgrimage,

Here little, and hereafter bliss,

Is best in every age.”