Daily Devotionals

Music For the Soul

Devotional: December 10th

OUR INCOMPLETE POSSESSION OF GOD

Ye have not, because ye ask not. Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may spend it in your pleasures. - James 4:2-3

We have an Infinite Spirit to dwell with us; how finite and little is our possession of it! The Spirit of God is set forth in Scripture under the symbol of "a rushing, mighty wind"; and you and I say that we are Christ’s, and that we have Him - how does it come, then, that our sails flap idly on the mast, and we lie becalmed, and making next to no progress? The Spirit of God is set forth in Scripture under the symbol of " flaming tongues of fire"; and you and I say that we have it - how is it, then, that this thick-ribbed ice is round our hearts, and our love is all so tepid? The Spirit of God is set forth in Scripture under the symbol of " rivers of water "; and you and I say that we possess it - how is it, then, that so much of our hearts and of our natures is given up to barrenness and dryness and deadness? The present possession of the best of us is but a partial and incomplete possession.

And the same facts of wavering faith and cold affection, of imperfect consecration, which show how little we have of God, show likewise how little God has of us. We say that we are His, and live to please ourselves. We profess to belong to another, and to that other we render fragments - of ourselves, and scarcely even fragments of our time and of our efforts. His! and yet all day long never thinking of Him. His! and yet from morning till night never refraining from a thing because we know it is contrary to His will, or spurred to do a thing that is contrary to ours because we know it is His. His! and yet we wallow in selfishness. It is only a little corner of our souls that really belongs to God.

I do not forget that this incompleteness of possession, looked at in both aspects, is to a certain extent inevitable, and must go with us all through life. And so do not let any of us rush precipitately to the conclusion that we are not Christians because we find what poor Christians we are. Do not let us say, " If there were any reality in my faith, it would be, not a dotted line, but one continuous and unbroken." Do not let us write bitter things against ourselves because we find that we have only got " the earnest of the inheritance," and that the inheritance has not yet come. And, on the other hand, do not you make a pillow of laziness of that most certain truth; nor because there must be imperfection always in the Christian career here, apply that as an excuse for the individual instances of imperfection as they crop up. You know, when you are honest with yourself, that each breach of continuity in your faith and obedience might have been prevented; you know that there was no reason that could not have been overcome for any failure of consecration or wavering of faith or act of disobedience and rebellion which has ever marked your course. Granted, imperfection is the law, but also remember that the individual instances of imperfection are to be debited not to law, but to us, and are not to be lamented over as inevitable, though painful, issues of our condition, but to be confessed as sins. "My fault, O Lord! my fault, and mine only."