the Third Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
Our Daily Homily - Volume 3
1 Corinthians 7:24—Let every man, wherein he is called, therein abide with God.
Strong temptations to restlessness beset the early Christians. The great change through which they had passed from heathenism to Christ threatened to dissolve all the ties by which they had been held, in the home, the business, and the State. Very necessary and wholesome, therefore, was the apostle’s advice. Stay as you are, until God clearly leads you into something else—only with this difference, whatever be the vocation of your life, therein abide with God. Paul was only careful that the thought of God should penetrate their entire existence; all else would come right in time; and he was only anxious that they should be laid hold of by that central, vivifying, transmuting influence.
Practice the presence of God.—A godly brother used to say that we should establish ourselves in a sense of God’s presence by an act of the will, which put aside wandering, frivolous, and evil thoughts, and that we should be continually conversing with Him; that we ought to give ourselves up to God, making Him the end of all our actions, and seeking our only satisfaction in doing his will; and that even the set times of prayer should not greatly differ from other times, because all were equally filled with God.
Such a sense equalizes our lot.—The slave realizes that he is God’s free man; the master that he is God’s slave. The poor are enriched, and the rich are convicted of their poverty. So this holy brother said that, in his business in the kitchen (to which naturally he had a great aversion), having accustomed himself to do everything there for the love of God and with prayer, he had found everything easy, and was very well pleased to continue in the same post so long as it was God’s will.
