Days of Heaven Upon Earth Part 19

Lord, help us to-day, to so yield to the gentle Dove-Spirit, that our lives shall be as His life.

MAY 2.

"Always causeth us to triumph" (II. Cor. ii. 14).

How these words help us. Think of them when the people rasp you, when the devil p.r.i.c.ks you with his fiery darts, when your sensitive, self-willed spirit chafes or frets; let a gentle voice be heard above the strife, whispering, "Keep sweet, keep sweet!" And, if you will but heed it quickly, you will be saved from a thousand falls and kept in perfect peace.

True, you cannot keep yourself sweet, but G.o.d will keep you if He sees that it is your fixed, determined purpose to be kept sweet, and to refuse to fret or grudge or retaliate. The trouble is, you rather enjoy a little irritation and morbidness. You want to cherish the little grudge, and sympathize with your hurt feelings, and nurse your little grievance.

Dear friends, G.o.d will give you all the love you really want and honestly choose. You can have your grievance or you can have the peace that pa.s.seth all understanding; but you cannot have both.

There is a balm for a thousand heartaches, and a heaven of peace and power in these two little words-KEEP SWEET.

MAY 3.

"My peace I give unto you" (John xiv. 27).

Here lies the secret of abiding peace-G.o.d's peace. We give ourselves to G.o.d and the Holy Spirit takes possession of our breast. It is indeed "Peace, Peace." But it is just then that the devil begins to turn us away, and he does it through our thoughts, diverting or distracting them as occasion requires. This is the time to prove the sincerity of our consecration and the singleness of our heart. If we truly desire His Presence more than all else, we will turn away from every conflicting thought and look steadily up to Jesus. But if we desire the gratification of our impulse more than His Presence, we will yield to the pa.s.sionate word or the frivolous thought or the sinful diversion, and when we come back our Shepherd has gone, and we wonder why our peace has departed.

Failure occurs often in some trifling thing, and the soul failure has occurred in some trifling thing, usually a thought or word, and the soul which would not have feared to climb a mountain has really stumbled over a straw.

The real secret of perfect rest is to be jealously, habitually occupied with Jesus.

MAY 4.

"Greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world" (I. John iv.

4).

Satan loves to trip us over little things. The reason of this is because it is generally a greater victory for him, and shows that he can upset us by a shaving and knock us down with a straw. It is the old boast of the Jebusite, when they told David they could defend Jerusalem by a garrison of the blind and lame. Most of us get on better in our great struggles than we do in our little ones. It was over a little apple that Adam fell, but all the world was wrecked. Look out, beloved, for the little stumbling blocks, and do not let Satan laugh at you, and tell his myrmidons how he tripped you over an orange peel. And, too, when the devil wants to stop some great blessing in our lives, he generally throws some ugly shadow over it and makes it look distasteful to us. How many of us have been keeping back from truths, places and persons in which G.o.d has reappeared, the greatest blessing of our lives, and the devil has succeeded in keeping us away from them by some false or foolish prejudice!

MAY 5.

"If ye then be risen" (Col. iii. 1).

G.o.d is waiting this morning to mark the opening hours for every ready and willing heart with a touch of life and power that will lift our lives to higher pleasures and offer to our vision grander horizons of hope and holy service.

We shall not need to seek far to discover our risen Lord. He was in advance even of the earliest seeker that Easter morning, and He will be waiting for us before the break of day with His glad "All Hail," if we have only eyes to see and hearts to welcome and obey Him.

What is His message to us this spring time? "If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of G.o.d. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in G.o.d."

It is not risen with Christ, but _resurrected_. It is not rising a little higher in the old life, but it is rising from the dead. The resurrection will mean no more than the death has meant. Only so far as we are really dead shall we live with Him.

MAY 6.

"Reckon ye also yourselves to be alive unto G.o.d" (Rom. vi. 11).

Death is but for a moment. Life is forevermore. Live, then, ye children of the resurrection, on His glorious life, more and more abundantly, and the fulness of your life will repel the intrusion of self and sin, and overcome evil with good, and your existence will be, not the dreary repression of your own struggling, but the springing tide of Christ's spontaneous overcoming life.

Once in a religious meeting a dear brother gave us a most exhilarating talk on the risen life. Then another brother got up and talked for a long time on the necessity of self-crucifixion. A cold sweat fell over us all, and we could scarcely understand why. But after he had got through, a good sister clarified the whole situation by saying, that "Pastor S. had taken us all out of the grave by his address, and then Pastor P. has put us back again."

Don't go back into the grave again after you have got out, but live like Him, who "liveth and was dead, and lo! He is alive forevermore, and has the keys of h.e.l.l and of death." Keep out of the tomb, and keep the door locked, and the keys in His risen hands.

MAY 7.

"I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you" (Gal. iv. 19).

It is a blessed moment when we are born again and a new heart is created in us after the image of G.o.d. It is a more blessed moment when in this new heart Christ Himself is born and the Christmas time is reproduced in us as we, in some real sense, become incarnations of the living Christ. This is the deepest and holiest meaning of Christianity. It is expressed in Paul's prayer for the Galatians. "My little children, for whom I travail in birth again till Christ be formed in you."

There will yet be a more glorious era when we, like Him, shall be transformed and transfigured into His glory, and in the resurrection shall be, in spirit, soul and body, even as He.

Let us live, under the power of the inspiring thought, incarnations of Christ; not living our life, but the Christ-life, and showing forth the excellencies, not of ourselves, but of Him who hath called us "out of darkness into His marvelous light"; so our life shall be to all the re-living in our position of the Christ life, as He would have lived it, had He been here.

MAY 8.