Hungry Heart Daily Devotional Anthology -mjs

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1-29. SACRIFICIAL SELF

"Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap" (Galatians 6:7).

It is essential for the believer to see that his old nature has been completely rejected by God at Calvary, and that as a "new creation" he is fully and eternally accepted in the Lord Jesus. Otherwise, self will continually seek to be something for God, to please Him, to merit His approbation.

"It is very possible that our sacrifices and self denials may be altogether selfish. Self can pray, and say, What a lovely prayer! It can preach a fine message, and pat itself on the back and say, That was splendid, what a useful man you are! How, then, can it become 'not I, but Christ'? Well, we must above all else see the reality and danger of the thing, we must look at it frankly, and choose to be free of its domination. The worst and the saddest part of it is its deception. It says, How that fits So-and-so, not me. But you must pass sentence upon it, or it will pass sentence upon you."

"Through the victory won on Calvary we enter into newness of life; and as the old nature seeks to assert its supremacy, each uprising of it must be handed over to the Lord Jesus Christ, that He may deal with it. That He has dealt with it, through His death on the Cross, in a way which satisfies God and makes deliverance possible for us, is the foundational fact for Christian life and work." -G.W.

"For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life"(Galatians 6:.

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There’s nothing that can be done against our sinful nature—the “old man”, except continually yield it to the Holy Spirit (Rom 6:13) and He applies the Cross of Christ to it. We take it up, “daily” (Luk 9:23), but He applies it, “so that ye cannot do the things that ye would” (Gal 5:17).

 

Neither feel guilty because of the sinful self (1Jo 3:20), nor glory in the divine-partaker of the new self, but glory in the Lord (1Cr 1:31; 2Cr 10:17) because of His continual victory over sin in our lives.

-NC


1-30. SPIRITUAL BALANCE

"Not I, but Christ" (Galatians 2:20).

Any abiding spiritual progress must be based upon our taking sides with God against the old life. Why? "Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be" (Romans 8:7). "Enmity" knows no reconciliation; crucifixion is the only alternative!

"The life of Christ is the holiness of Christ. The reason we so often fail in the pursuit of holiness is that the old life, the flesh, in its own strength seeks for holiness as a beautiful garment to wear and enter heaven with. It is the daily death to self out of which the life of Christ rises up." -A.W.T.

"In receiving Christ we receive the divine-human life, a life that is death to the life of fallen nature, which finds its fruit in sin and self. The tragic mistake of thousands of believers is in trying to live in two worlds at the same time in nature and in God, in self and in Christ, in the flesh and in the Spirit, by faith and in independence, by abiding and by effort. To have life is not enough: the life of the Lord Jesus demands the death of the flesh, if that life is to be fully developed and become fruitful in us. Here is the crux of the whole matter."

"That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His suffering, being made conformable unto His death" (Philippians 3:10

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1-31. WORTH WAITING FOR

"But ye are sanctified but ye are justified in the Name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God" (1 Corinthians 6:11).

The fact of our position, which we can see in the Word, may take years to realize in life. Many believers feel that their appropriation of a truth must result in same-day experience of that doctrine. It is true that we are often given a foretaste, a brief experience of its reality, but we must then settle down to the daily processing of the Spirit, whereby He slowly and thoroughly translates the apprehended truth into character and walk. Paul testified, "I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus" (Philippians 3:12). He pressed toward the mark.

"As a gift of grace, sanctification is conferred on each believer as soon as he believes. But it is a gift yet held on deposit, 'hid with Christ in God,' to be appropriated through daily communion and gradual apprehension. So, while the believer's realized sanctification appears painfully meager, at most a thin line of light, like the crescent of the new moon, yet he sees it ever complemented by the clear outlines of that rounded wholeness which is his in the Lord Jesus, and into which he is to be daily waxing till he grows to 'the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ' (Ephesians 4:13)" -A.J.G.

"And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Thessalonians 5:23).

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2-1. HEART OF THE MATTER

"That I may know Him" (Philippians 3:10).

Immaturity is selfish; maturity is selfless. "He must increase, but I must decrease" (John 3:30). "The question for the tried and tempted, the harassed and oppressed, is this: 'Which would you rather have, the power of Christ's hand in deliverance from trial, or the sympathy of His heart in the midst of trial?' The carnal mind, the unsubdued heart, the restless spirit, will, no doubt, at once exclaim, 'Oh! let Him only put forth His power and deliver me from this insupportable trial, this intolerable burden, this crushing difficulty. I sigh for deliverance. I only want deliverance.'

"But the spiritual mind, the subdued heart, the lowly spirit, will say, and that without a single particle of reserve, 'Let me only enjoy the sweet company of the heart of the Lord Jesus Christ in my trial, and I ask no more. I do not want even the power of His hand to deprive me of one drop of consolation supplied by the tender love and profound sympathy of His heart. I know He can deliver me, but if He does not see fit to do so, if it does not fall in with His unsearchable counsels, and harmonize with His wise and faithful purpose concerning me so to do, I know it is only to lead me into a deeper and richer realization of His most precious sympathy.'" -C.H.M.

"The same faith that sees glory for us at the end of the path sees God for us all through the path. This is the secret of real strength. What unbelief does is to compare ourselves and our own strength with circumstances. What faith does is to compare God with circumstances."

"For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth by Christ" (2 Corinthians 1

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“The life of a mature Christian is the life of the vicariously-lived life of Christ. The Lord Himself—through the Spirit, lives His life in us and is evident by the works of righteousness which He does using us.

“I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh (physical body) I live by the faith of the Son of God” (Gal 2:20). “By”, not on the faith of Christ. We live on and in Christ, by or through faith. We do not live on faith but by faith, because it’s Christ we live on.” -NC

“By the faith of the Son of God”: “not that faith which Christ, as man, had, but that of which He is the author and object, by which the just man lives; not upon it, for the believer does not live upon any of his graces, no, not upon faith, but by faith on Christ, the object; looking to Him for pardon, righteousness, peace, joy, comfort, every supply of grace, and eternal salvation: which object is described as "the Son of God"; who is truly God, equal with His Father; so that he did not live upon a creature, or forsake the fountain of living waters, but upon the only begotten Son of God, who is full of grace and truth.” –J Gill

2-2. FACT FINDING

"Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord" (2 Peter 1:2).

We cannot too highly value and appreciate heart-hunger for the Word. It is of the Spirit of Truth. We may have been born again without knowing much of the Bible, but we certainly are not going to grow to any extent apart from a careful and persistent study of the Word of God. Yes, the maturing believer is a Spirit-dependent student of the Scriptures, "whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises; that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1.4).

"Christian progress is not a question of attaining to some abstract standard, or of pressing through to some far-off goal. It is wholly a question of seeing God's standard in God's Word. You advance spiritually by finding out what you really are (in Christ), not by trying to become what you hope to be. That goal you will never reach, however earnestly you may strive.

"It is when you see you are dead unto sin that you die to it (daily); it is when you see you are risen that you arise; it is when you see you are a 'new creation' in Him that you (progressively) grow. Seeing the accomplished fact in the Word determines the pathway to the realizing of that fact. The end is reached by seeing, not by desiring or working. The only possibility of spiritual progress lies in our discovering the truth as God sees it; the truth concerning Christ, the truth concerning ourselves in Christ." -W.N.

"Come and see the works of God" (Psalm 66:5).

 

 

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2-3. NEED, THEN SUPPLY

"Not as though I had already attained. . . but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also l am apprehended of Christ Jesus" (Philippians 3:12).

The heavenly Husbandman develops a believer on the same principle that He does a tree: planting, growth, consolidation, rest, and then more growth. There are stages. We are shown our sin and need--self. Then we hunger for freedom and life--Christ. This is a progression. At first, we consider the shocking revelation of self the greatest of calamities; later, we realize that it is the pathway to the blessed revelation of our life in the Lord Jesus Christ.

"Before we can take on the likeness of the Lord Jesus, we must see ourselves and know how we look; we must be brought into the place where we are not dismayed nor cast down when we discover how little we are conformed to His image. It is only as we see our need, that we can be supplied." -C.McI.

"It does us no good, but only discourages us if we see our failures and shortages and do not behold the beauty of Christ, and apprehend and experience our sufficiency in Him. On the other hand, if we see only what we are in Him and do not discern our defects; if we do not apprehend that which must be appropriated and worked out in us; if we do not see all that must be put off, and that Christ must be put on in actual control and manifestation, we become self-satisfied and puffed up--we lose our invaluable 'need.'" -C.McI.

"I certainly do count everything as loss compared with the priceless privilege of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord" (Philippians 3:8, Wms.).

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"We should not be looking for confirmation but conformation. Though certain experiences can reveal truth, scripture and not experience is the final source to use as the base of our support because the Word of God shows what everything should be.

Now that we’ve been delivered from sin’s guilt---by His blood, we need continued deliverance from sin’s rule---by His Cross:

Christ’s blood only once applied
But His cross continually
For our old man to die

Our works are not to be the medium for salvation but the evidence of it and wherever we base our assurance for acceptance and security, there our trust for salvation will be." –NC


2-4. FREEDOM'S FOUNDATION

"I have been crucified with Christ, and I myself no longer live" (Galatians 2:20, Wms.).

Upon conversion, the new believer feels that every opposition to a joyous, fruitful Christian life has been overcome once for all. Later, when the world and self begin to insinuate themselves once again, he thinks that determination and self-effort will keep him free. Finally, after a seemingly endless struggle, the defeated believer is brought back to the Cross. Here is the source of liberation from the power of self and the world.

"Sinners are not saved until they trust the Savior, and saints are not delivered until they trust the Deliverer. God has made both possible through the Cross of His Son." -L.S.C.

"The believer can never overcome the 'old man' even by the power of the 'new' apart from the work of the Cross, and therefore the death of Christ is indispensable, and unless the Cross is made the basis upon which he overcomes the 'old nature,' he only drops into another form of morality; in other words, he is seeking by self-effort to overcome sin and self, and the struggle is a hopeless one." -C.U.

"Just as the Lord Jesus came into this world where this old humanity was and came into it not to ally Himself with it but to take it into death by the Cross, even so He now by the Holy Spirit, in regeneration, comes into us where there is this old fallen life and not to ally Himself with it, but to hold it in the place of death by the same means--His Cross." -N.D.

"But may it never be mine to boast of anything but the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ by which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world!" (Galatians 6:14, Wms.).

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2-5. DEFECTIVE BEGINNING

"Being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus" (Romans 3:24).

Are we aware of the importance of a personal assurance of salvation? Healthy spiritual growth is founded upon it. Many Christians seem unable to enter Romans Six and Eight simply because they are not truly established in Romans Three, Four and Five. Full assurance as to our eternal security in the Lord Jesus is the basis for the ever-deepening experience of our identification with Him.

"The defect in souls in general is the incompleteness of their conversion. It is pardon that is apprehended and not acceptance. Acceptance embraces God's side--how He feels, and this should be chief, for we as sinners have offended Him. The offender has been removed from His eye by a Man--the Lord Jesus Christ, and He can receive us on the ground of the Man who glorified Him in bearing our judgment.

"We cannot enjoy acceptance but in the way in which it was acquired or effected for us, and if we are in the acceptance we know that no improvement of the flesh could commend us to God, and that we cannot be before Him but in Christ. But if we are in any degree dark as to the crucifixion of the old man, we are not in acceptance experientially, we are not in the daily benefit of it, and our liberty by the Spirit can never go beyond our conscious acceptance." -J.B.S.

"For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death" (Romans 8:2).

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2-6. HEART OF ROMANS

"Yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead" (Romans 6:13).

Deliverance from the reign of sin, and liberty in the life of Christ, are set forth as a doctrinal unit in Romans Six, Seven and Eight. This area of truth has but one key--the Cross. This is the great master key to spiritual life and liberty.

When we begin to comprehend Romans Six, we know that our death in Christ unto sin was completed at Calvary. When we have been in Romans Seven for a time, we come to realize that we have been struggling to produce that which God has already accomplished for us in Christ. When we thereby come to Romans Eight, we know at last that the Holy Spirit will produce in our experience what God completed for us on the Cross and in Christ our life.

"In Romans Six we see the foundation of our deliverance--the fact that we died with Christ; and also the conditions of our deliverance--that we reckon ourselves dead unto sin and yield to God as those that are alive from the dead. Romans Eight tells us the means and the method of our deliverance--that it is through the blessed Holy Spirit alone that we are actually delivered in everyday life, from sin's reign; the moment we cease from all our own efforts and let Him do all the work, He will begin delivering us from the power of sin. How long it takes some of us to come to the end of our own efforts can be seen in Romans Seven!" -W.R.N.

"That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit" (Romans 8:4).

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2-7. GROW TO SHARE

"For they disciplined us only a short time, as it seemed proper to them; but He does it for our good, in order that we may share His holy character" (Hebrews 12:10, Wms.).

It is only natural to feel that our need requires immediate victory, but the truth is that we cannot come to maturity apart from the Holy Spirit's processing and development of our life, day by day. A quick and easy victory would cripple our usefulness in these two ways: we would not understand the all-important principle of processing; we would not appreciate the needs of others. If we are unable to share, we abide alone like the grain of wheat that does not die.

"So often in the battle we go to the Lord, and pray, and plead, and appeal for victory, for ascendancy, for mastery over the forces of evil and death, and our thought is that in some way the Lord is going to come in with a mighty exercise of power and put us into a place of spiritual maturity as in an act. We must have this mentality corrected. What the Lord does is to enlarge us to possess. He takes us through some exercise, through some experience, takes us by some way which means our spiritual expansion, an increase of spirituality so we occupy the larger place spontaneously because of our growth 'I will not drive them out from before thee in one year; lest the land become desolate, and the beast of the field multiply against thee. By little and little I will drive them out from before thee, until thou be increased' (Exodus 23:29, 30)." -T. A-S.

"Now for the time being no discipline [child-training] seems to be pleasant; it is painful; later on, however, to those who are trained by it, it yields the fruit of peace which grows from upright character" (Hebrews 12:11, Wms.).

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2-8. SUBTLE SELF

"Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me" (Psalm 51:10).

A healthy spiritual birth results in the falling away of many of the more obvious works of the flesh, often causing the new believer to claim 2 Corinthians 5:17 or Galatians 2:20 as his testimony. However, for the Lord Jesus to be fully manifested, it is going to involve a lifetime of the Holy Spirit's deep dealing with the more subtle and deadly characteristics of the self-life"always delivered unto death" (2 Corinthians 4:11).

"By the daily 'supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ' (Philippians 1:19), the believer united to his Risen Lord 'grows continually to a more perfect knowledge and likeness of his Creator,' and grows up 'after the image of Him that created him, in the sphere where 'Christ is all, and in all.'

"The child naturally grows up in the likeness of his father, and the new life communicated to the redeemed grows up in the likeness of Him who is the Creator of the new creation if so be that the death with Christ is unflinchingly recognized, and 'old things' are truly allowed to pass away to make room for the growth of the new man 'which is after God . . . created in righteousness, and holiness of truth' (Ephesians 4:24)."

"How many earnest and religious people belong to 'the Old Adam Improvement Society.' It is the recognition of the Christ-life, it is union with the Risen Christ, that men need instead of the culture of the religious self-life." -E.H.

"Unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ" (Ephesians 4:13).

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2-9. EXPERIENCE SUPERSEDED

"And they who know Thy Name will put their trust in Thee" (Psalm 9:10).

Our experiences must be judged by God's Word, never the Word judged by our experiences. Normally, the Spirit of Truth will reveal a truth to us from the Scriptures and, as we exercise faith in what we have been shown, will begin to take us into the experience of it. Abnormally, a Christian will yearn for an 'experience,' and then attempt to find corroboration for it in the Word.

"Knowledge must carry the torch before faith." Always give God's Word first place, "for the Word of God liveth and worketh, and is sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, yea, to the inmost parts thereof, and judging the thoughts and imaginations of the heart" (Hebrews 4:12, Cony.).

"A person may easily know his sins forgiven, but it is a further truth to know that he himself has 'died to sin.' He finds this conflicts with his experience. Suppose I tell you a debt of a thousand pounds which you owed was paid by someone, it would not be a question of experience, but of simply believing my statement. Just so with God. He tells us our sins are forgiven, and it is a question whether we believe Him. But when He tells us we have died to sin, we look inside and say, 'Ah, sin is still at work; how is that?' A person must be taught of God to know really the truth that he has died to sin." -J.N.D.

"It is written, That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God" (Luke 4:4).

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2-10. PEACE AND REST

"The Lord will perfect that which concerneth me" (Psalm 138:.

After the believer enters into life by faith, he wonders why it was so difficult for him to see that it was all of grace--the humble reception of a finished work. And yet he goes through the faithless struggle once again before he sees that his daily Christian life is also a finished work--complete in Christ.

"'God is faithful, by whom ye were called unto the fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord' (1 Corinthians 1:9). What believers need is the simple faith that the establishing in Christ, day by day, is God's work--a work that He delights to do, in spite of all our weakness and unfaithfulness, if we will but trust Him for it. To the blessedness of such faith, and the experience it brings, many can testify. What peace and rest, to know that there is a Husbandman who cares for the branch, to see that it grows stronger; who watches over every hindrance and danger, who supplies every needed aid!

"What peace and rest, fully and finally to give up our abiding into the care of the Father, and never have a wish or thought, never to offer a prayer or engage in an exercise connected with it, without first having the glad remembrance that what we do is only the manifestation of what our Father is doing in us! The establishing in Christ is His work: He accomplishes it by stirring us to watch, and wait, and work." -A.M.

"Now He which stablisheth us with you in Christ, . . . is God" (2 Corinthians 1:21).

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2-11. PROFIT

"Heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ--sharing His inheritance with Him; only we must share His suffering if we are to share His glory" (Romans 8:17, Amp.).

The term "profit and loss" is reversed in the Christian life to "loss and profit." The principle never varies: our losses are all in the realm of the old, never the new. Every loss in the life of self brings greater gain and profit in the new--our life in Christ. And, conversely, every gain for the self-life is loss for our growth and His glory. "But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ" (Philippians 3:7).

"It is not the design of God to deprive His children of happiness, but only to pour the cup of bitterness into that happiness which the believer has in anything outside of Christ." -F.F.

"Everything that tries us, that is a check upon us, that causes exercise of heart, and makes us sensible of weakness in ourselves, is of the nature of chastisement (child-training). It may come in the way of difficulties in the path of faith; or in the shape of such trials and sorrows as are common to all men--loss of property, loss of health, or bereavement; or it may be as the governmental consequences of sin; but in one way or other all have it. It is 'for our profit, that we might be partakers of His holiness' (Hebrews 12:10). That is, it serves to break down that which is not of God in us, that the life of the Lord Jesus might be made manifest." -C.A.C.

"When He hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold" (Job 23:10).

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2-12. THE CROSS FOR SELF

"I have been crucified with Christ" (Galatians 2:20, ASV).

The Cross is the height of paradox; it is at once God's greatest agony, and His eternal glory. For the growing believer it means daily crucifixion, and at the same time freedom from the penalty and the power of sin and self. "But may it never be mine to boast of anything but the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world!" (Galatians 6:14, Wms.).

"We need to enter deeply into the truth that Christ the Beloved Son of the Father could not return to the glory of Heaven until He had first given Himself over to death. As this great principle opens up to us, it will help us to understand how in our life, and in our fellowship with the Lord Jesus, it is impossible for us to share the fullness of His life until we have first in very deed surrendered ourselves every day as having died to sin and the world."

"Many believers appear to think that when once they have claimed Christ's death in the fellowship of the Cross, and have counted themselves crucified with Him, they may now consider it as past and done with. They do not as yet understand that it is in the crucified Christ, and in the fellowship of His death, that they are to abide daily and unceasingly. The fellowship of the Cross is to be the life of a daily walk--His taking the form of a servant, His humbling Himself and becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross; this mind that was in the Lord Jesus is to be the disposition that marks our daily life."

"Have this mind [attitude] in you, which was also in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 2:5, ASV).