Daily Devotionals

Spiritual Treasury For The Children of God

Devotional: September 8th

My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in thy weakness.- 2 Corinthians 12:9.

Spiritual conflicts with the enemy of souls are the lot of all God’s children. Holy Paul was under deep and afflicting distress of soul. Satan the adversary assaulted him very powerfully. He groaned under it; he frequently besought Jesus that this grievous and painful messenger of Satan might be made to depart from him, and that his conflict might be at an end. O, what distressing exercises God’s children undergo from the enemy! The hearts of such only know the bitterness thereof. But is the captain of their salvation regardless of them? Is he deaf to their prayers when they call on him? No: he ever hears, he always answers in love. But did the Lord grant his dear servant’s request? No; then the design of love would not have been answered. Paul was in danger of being "exalted above measure." This was to be prevented. He was "to glory in infirmities." This was to be effected. Satan’s design was for his evil. Jesus makes it work for good. But that he might not faint in the combat, this comfortable answer is given, "My grace is sufficient for thee; for my strength is made perfect in weakness." Let it suffice, my love and favor is ever towards you; my almighty strength is engaged to preserve you. Though you are weakness itself to withstand such an enemy, yet my almighty strength shall uphold you; in this you shall conquer.

Here is the strongest assurance for the confidence of faith, and the most solid ground for the rejoicing of hope. The grace and love of Jesus opposed to the malice and hatred of Satan; the strength of Jehovah triumphing in, and made illustriously glorious through saints’ weakness. O, what an ever-loving, allsufficient, omnipotent Lord is Jehovah Jesus! The Lord whom thou servest, believer, knows thy every distress and conflict of soul. He will strengthen thee in, support thee under, and bring thee safe through and out of all thy exercises and troubles. Thou shalt lose nothing in the furnace but the dross of nature’s pride and corruption, and the vanity of selfglorying, self-sufficiency, and self-righteousness. God by his Spirit will teach thee to profit in humility and self-diffidence, and to glory in and exalt the Lord Jesus more and more. Sweet and encouraging is that promise to God’s church and people in general: strong and comforting as God’s declaration to Paul, in particular: "Fear not, for I am with thee; be not dismayed, for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea I will help thee; yea I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness."- Isaiah 41:10.

I can do all things, or can bear

All sufferings if my Lord be there:

Sweet pleasures mingle with the pains,

While his left hand my head sustains.

But if the Lord be once withdrawn,

And we attempt the work alone:

When new temptations spring and rise,

We find how great our weakness is.

I know that my Redeemer liveth. Job 19:25.

Matters are sometimes brought to a close point between God and the soul. It is stript of all its comforts. The soul is in heaviness. (1 Peter 1:6.) It is broken in the place of dragons, and covered with the shadow of death, as the Psalmist most emphatically paints the scenes of horror and affliction. (Psalms 44:19.) So that he says, “I had fainted, unless I had believed.” (Psalms 27:13.) Nothing within, nothing without, for the soul to stay itself upon, but the word of the Lord, and the Lord revealed in the word. Then is that sweet promise fulfilled. “They shall hang upon him all the glory of His Father’s house.” (Isaiah 22:24.) This was Job’s tried, tempted, afflicted, yet blessed state. Though all his comforts were dead, still his Redeemer lived. In the midst of all his losses, he had not lost this blessed knowledge. I know, it is a matter of the greatest certainty to my soul, I am as sure of it as my existence, that there is a Redeemer for lost sinners. I know he is my Redeemer. I have seen my want of him, and my certain destruction without his redemption. He liveth. While he lives my hopes cannot die, my soul cannot despair. Stript of all things beside, nothing can separate me from the love of Christ. I know Christ liveth at the right hand of God for me, because he liveth in my heart by faith. Such is the language of this Old Testament saint. Says Luther, “I had utterly despaired, had I not known that Christ was the head of the church.” “Head over all things to his body, the church.” (Ephesians 1:22.) But how doth a soul know with Job, that Christ is his Redeemer, so as to say, with Paul, he loved me, and gave himself for me? By the word of grace, we know there is a Redeemer. By the testimony of the Spirit of truth, through faith, the sinner is enabled to say, he is mine.

My beloved, my friend. These are two infallible evidences of this. Christ has both our hearts and our hopes. Our heart is set upon him. Our hopes centre in him. (1st.) Christ is precious to our hearts. We have fellowship with him by faith. We know that he liveth, because we enjoy the comforts of his life and love in our souls. We know him both as dying for us, and also as living in us. He dwells in our hearts by faith. He sends us love tokens. He draws our affections to himself, from the world of sin and vanity. (2d.) Our hopes are in him. His Spirit gives us to see such an infinite perfection in his glorious work and finished salvation, as sickens us to every other hope: yea, kills self-righteousness, and self-confidence. “We become dead to the law by the body of Christ.” (Romans 7:4.) We might as soon place our confidence in the righteousness of the thief on the cross, as in any righteousness of our own. “We know that he abideth in us, by the spirit he hath given us.” 1 John 3:24.

Then dry your tears and tune your songs:

The Saviour lives again;

Not all the bolts and bars of death,

The conqueror could detain.