George H. Morrison's Old And Beautiful Devotions

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The Secrecy of God - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

The Secrecy of God's Approaches to the Soul

You who are students of the Scripture know what a favorite thought the secrecy of God was with Jesus Christ. It is not in the whirlwind that the kingdom comes when it makes it lodgment in the heart. Christ will not strive nor cry nor lift up His voice in the streets—those steep streets that lead into the soul. The kingdom comes as if a man should sleep, and the seed should spring up he knows not how. The kingdom comes just as the leaven comes, and who is so watchful as to see it rise? When Christ was born at the inn in Bethlehem, choirs of angels were singing in the sky. And when Christ comes again there will be the sound of the trumpet and a light so bright that every eye shall see Him.

But when Christ comes into the human soul, He comes with voice so soft that none can hear it except the ear on which the message falls. Christ does not ride in uproar to the soul; Christ steals in quiet secretly. The kingdom cometh not with observation, and here the kingdom is the King. His knock is so clear that when He knocks, you hear it, but His knock is so soft that no one else can hear it. To everyone else it is an ordinary footstep, and to everyone else it is an ordinary hand. But to you there is a wound upon the hand and the print of the nails upon the feet. To you it is CHRIST, and He is yours forever in infinite and redeeming love.

The Secrecy of Christ While on Earth

Notable, too, is this element of secrecy in the life of Christ when He was here on earth. God hid Him under the garb of poverty and set Him amid the silence of the hills.

When a man has a message which he burns to make known, you know the passion that rises in his heart. You know how the beckoning hand of London calls him, and how he is restless till he has reached the capital.

But when God had a message, He despised the capital and passed it by and all the glories of it, and He sent His Son into a secret place where the wind was fresh upon the hills. There He was born, and men were in the inn jesting and drinking and knew not it was He. And kings were rioting and scholars pondering and armies marching with the imperial eagles. But not a whisper broke upon that riot nor hushed the play of the children in the streets nor fell on the legionaries with a sense of awe as at a greater captain than their own. Wrapped in the secrecy of distant Galilee, moving obscurely amid obscurer villages, shrinking when men would hail Him king, craving for Bethany in crowded streets—that was the signet on the hand of God; that was the seal of the divine procedure. The footsteps of Jesus of Nazareth were the footsteps of God, and yet His footsteps were not known.

God's Secrecy Drives Us On

So far, then, upon the spheres of evidence, and now a word or two upon the other aspect. Can we discern the spiritual uses of this great element in God's procedure? I shall tell you how it seems to me to bear upon our triumph or our failure.

In the first place the secrecy of God is meant to be a spur to drive us on. There are things which are better for us not to hear, and God has the gracious strength to keep a secret. How often have we said to someone, "Ah, how I wish you had never told me that!" We can never have the same thoughts again since that one word was whispered in our ear. And we put it away from us and it comes again, and it rises from the dead when we least wish it; and we are brought lower and we are ashamed, just because someone could not keep a secret. There are times when there is strength in speech. There are times when there is strength in silence. There are things that it was very sweet to tell, but life has been far harder since we told them. And that is why God is silent in His love and will not speak although our hearts are craving; and tomorrow we shall thank Him for the silence that seems to be almost cruelty tonight.

"My father," said Isaac, as they went up the hill, "Here is the wood, but where then is the lamb?" Poor child, so wistful and so happy, it would have been cruelty to have told him that. And so with us who are but wistful children, speech may be cruel and secrecy may be kind. When we reach the hilltop we shall see; and seeing we shall understand.

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The Secrecy of God - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

The Secrecy of God Should Give Us Hope

There is hope for the world and there is hope for men when we can say, "God's footsteps are not known." The footsteps of sin and vice are always known. There is nothing unobtrusive about them. They leave their print of filthiness and blood on every pavement and on every newspaper. And that is why a thousand men are pessimists, for these reeking footsteps are before them and they forget that God is also there—-only His footsteps are not known.

Let some drunken husband kill his wife tonight, and you shall hear all about it in tomorrow's newspaper. And any scoundrel may have his doings published there so that any child can read about them. But thousands of homes were very happy yesterday and wives were singing and children were playing, but you shall read nothing in the papers about that. All that is of God, for love is of God; but then, you see, God's footsteps are not known. And no one buys the paper to read that, and it is not at all notorious or flaunting. And what I say is that you must remember that sin is riotous and God's way is in the still, small voice—-or hope will go and hearts will be embittered and faith will die into the cold of death.

God's Secrecy Keeps Us Faithful

And then, in closing, the secrecy of God is surely meant by God to keep us faithful. It is the pattern for our everyday life. It is given to help us on our daily round.

Rarely are we summoned to great deeds. To many of us they never come at all. We are not beckoned along the shining road to anything that might arrest the attention of the world. We make our journey by a quiet way, with crosses that are commonplace and duties that are ordinary duties unlustered by any sparkle of glory.

There are blessings in a life like that, and there are hardships too. We miss the excitement and the music and the cheering. And it is on that level road when we are a little disheartened and discouraged that we should recall the secrecy of God.

When a man is famous, his footsteps are well known. He is not nearer God on that account. From the tiniest violet up to Jesus Christ, God moves in quiet and unobtrusive paths. And if it is thus He lavishes His beauty and makes His infinite sacrifice of love, we can be very near Him in our calling.

His way is in the sea, and so let mine be. Let me live and work where there is depth and freedom. His footsteps are not known—ah! happy God, who hast thus chosen to reveal Thyself. So would I move apart and live unknown and never seek the clamor and the show; for love is not there with gladness in its eyes, nor does the road to the kingdom lie that way.

____________________

George H. Morrison Devotions

Dist. Worldwide in the Great Freeware Bible Study package called
e-Sword by Rick Meyer: http://www.e-sword.net/downloads.html
Full Featured - Outstanding - Completely FREE - No Strings Attached

(The goal of Rick Meyer is to distribute excellent Bible Study
Software to every country on earth in their own language FREE
of charge, and that goal gets closer by the day.)
____________________

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January 31

Drink From the Depths - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

"He... gave them drink as out of the great depths." Psa_78:15

The psalmist is here reviewing the providence of God that sustained the children of Israel in the desert. That providence had made a deep impression on him, and he delights to dwell upon its wonders. There is a sense, I believe, in which the poet is really the best of all historians. He sees by the gift of a trained imagination into the hearts of men and the character of movements. And though he may lack the minute and critical knowledge that is in the keeping of laborious students, yet he often brings us nearer to the truth than the man who discovers and refutes his errors.

One often feels that it is so with the psalmist, and especially when he is dealing with the Exodus. For him the miracles that marked that journey were not isolated and solitary splendors. They were rather the discoveries of that power which is everywhere present and everywhere upholding; only in other lives they dealt with small numbers of people while here in the Exodus they are with large numbers.

Take for example the water from the rock of which the psalmist is speaking in our text. The wonder that God gave them water as out of the great depths comes to him in a flash. He sees the Israelites crowding around the rock and saying in their hearts, "This cannot last long." He sees them watching for the supply to fail as, of course, coming from a rock, it must soon do. And then he sees their look of wild surprise when it dawns on them that the stream is inexhaustible and is fed by channels they know nothing of, from boundless and unfathomable reservoirs.

What the people crave for is a draught of water, and God in His mercy gives them their desire. But He fills their cups, not from a little cistern, but as from some illimitable ocean. And the psalmist knows that that is always true, for whenever the Almighty satisfies His creatures, He gives them to drink as out of the great depths.

All Nature Depends on God's Goodness

Think, then, for a moment of the world of nature as it unfolds itself in all its beauty around us. There is not a bird or beast, there is not a tree or flower, but is ministered to in the way our text describes. I take the tiniest weed that roots among the stones—the flower in the crannied wall of which the poet speaks—and I ask, What does it need to live; what does it need that it may flower and fruit? The answer is that it needs a little warmth; it needs an occasional moistening with rain.

Now in a certain measure that is true, but you can never stop there in this mysterious universe. At the back of the warmth which it needs, there is the sun; and at the back of every raindrop, there is sky and ocean. And it takes the sun and sea and the white cloud of heaven to satisfy that tiniest weed among the stones, which may come to its delicate beauty only to be unregarded and perhaps crushed by a passing foot.

Try to explain the light that a rose needs, and you are carried into the depths of solar energy. Look at the raindrop on the hedge—has it not been drawn "out of the boundless deep"? And so there is not a rose in any garden nor a leaf that unfolds itself on any tree that is not ever whispering to the hearing ear, "He gave me drink as out of the great depths."

Again, think of our senses for a moment—think of our sight and hearing, for example. One of the plainest facts about our senses is the different way they translate what they receive.

To one man a rose is just a rose and no more. To another, in the smallest flower there are thoughts that often lie too deep for tears. And it is not the eye alone that differentiates, it is the life that is hidden deep behind the eye; He giveth them drink as out of the great depths.

Two men may listen to a piece of music, and one, as he listens, is profoundly stirred by it. There seems to pass before him, as he listens, visions of what is high and fair and beautiful. And he hears the calling of his brightest hopes and the cry of regret for all his wasted years and the stooping over him again of faces that he has loved long since and lost awhile. All this is kindled in some hearts by music—this burning of hope and haunting of regret; yet play that very piece before another, and it is sound and fury, signifying nothing.

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Drink From the Depths - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Is not the ear of a dead person perfect? Is not every membrane and convolution there? Yet call to it or whisper to it passionately, and will it play its part and carry the news of love? Yesterday there would have been a smile of recognition; there is not a flicker of response today.

So at the back of every sense we have there is a depth that can never be fathomed. All that a man is, looks through his eyes. All that his soul is, listens through his ears. If the eye could speak or if the ear could speak, would they not echo the language of the text, "He gave us drink as out of the great depths?"

The Common Joy and Sorrow of Mankind

Again let us think for a moment of God's ways in providence—in the ordering and
discipline of our lives. One of the lessons we learn as we grow older is that our discipline is not exceptional. When we are young our joys are all our own; we never dream that others could have known them. When we are young we take our little sorrows as if there were no such sorrows in the world. And much of the bitterness of childish trial lies in its terrible sense of isolation; in the feeling that in the whole wide world there is no one who has had to suffer just like us. It seems as if God has cut a special channel for us out of which no other life has ever drunk. In joy and grief, in sunshine and in shadow, we seem to move apart when we are children. But as life advances and our outlook broadens, and we learn the story of the lives around us, then we see that we are not alone but are being made to drink of the great depths.

It is not by exceptional providence's that we live. It is not by exceptional joys we are enriched. It is not by anything rare or strange or singular that we are fashioned under the hand of God. It is by sorrows that are as old as man, by trials that a thousand hearts have felt, by joys that are common as the wind is common that breathes on the palace and on the poorest street. By these things do we live; by these we grow; by love and tears, by trials, by work, by death; by the things that link us all into a brotherhood, the things that are common to ten thousand hearts. And it is when we come to recognize that truth and to feel our comradeship within a common discipline, that we say, as the psalmist said of Israel, "He gave us drink as out of the great depths."

The Everlasting Word of God

Now there is one thing that always arrests me in the Bible. It is that the Bible is such an ancient book, and yet is so intensely modern and practical. Think of the ages which have fled since it was written and how "heaven and earth have passed away" since then; think of our cities and of the life we live in them and of the stress and strain unknown in the quiet Bible times. To me it is wonderful, when I reflect upon it, that the Bible should be of any use at all now, and should not rather have moved into the quiet of libraries to be the joy of the unworldly scholar.

But if there is one thing certain it is this—-the Bible meets the need of modern life. In spite of all criticism, as a practical guide there is no book to touch it. There is not a problem you are called to face and not a duty you are called to do; there is not a cross you are compelled to carry and not a burden you are forced to bear, but your strength for it all shall be as the strength of ten if you make a daily companion of your Bible. Now this is what you feel about the Bible, that it never offers a draught from shallow waters. You do not find there a set of petty maxims, but you find the everlasting love of God there. You do not find any shallow views of sin there, but a Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. And that is the secret of the Bible's permanence, when our little systems have had their day and ceased to be, then for sin and sorrow and life and death and duty, it gives us to drink as out of the great depths.

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Drink From the Depths - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

The Depths of Jesus Christ

And think for a moment upon Jesus—-of Jesus in relation to His words. If ever words were as water to a thirsty world, surely it was the words that Jesus spoke. How simple they were, and yet how deep! How tender and full of love, and yet how searching! They seemed to pierce into the very heart till a man felt that his secret thought was known.

Now there are men whose lives so contradict their words that when you know the men you cannot listen to them. And there are men who are so much less than their own words that when you come to know them you are disappointed. But what people felt about Jesus Christ was that when all was uttered, the half was never told, for at the back of all His words there was Himself, deeper unfathomable than His deepest speech. That is why the words of Christ will live even when heaven and earth have passed away. You can exhaust the cup or drain the goblet dry, but you cannot exhaust the spring fed from the deeps. And just because the words of Jesus Christ spring from the depths of that divine humanity, they will save and strengthen the obedient heart to the last recorded syllable of time.

____________________

George H. Morrison Devotions

Dist. Worldwide in the Great Freeware Bible Study package called
e-Sword by Rick Meyer: http://www.e-sword.net/downloads.html
Full Featured - Outstanding - Completely FREE - No Strings Attached

(The goal of Rick Meyer is to distribute excellent Bible Study
Software to every country on earth in their own language FREE
of charge, and that goal gets closer by the day.)
____________________

[nChrist]

February 1

The Witness of Locality - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

"He let it fall in the midst of their camp." Psa_78:28

The writer of this noble psalm is meditating upon the past of Israel. He is recalling the wonders of the Exodus. He sings of how God fed the wanderers both with the manna and the quails. He gave them bread from heaven to eat and continued giving it in spite of all ingratitude.

But not only was the supply from God, there was another feature which impressed the poet, and it is this he writes of in our text. That bread might have been rained from heaven in places very difficult to reach. The quails might have fallen far away in regions almost inaccessible. And what impressed the poet was that God did not give His bounty in such a way—He let it fall in the midst of their camp. The gift was not far away from them. It did not call for any tiring journey. They had no long distances to travel to secure the necessities of life. God's gracious bounty, new to them every morning, fell just where they were—and the quick eye of the poet noticed that.

"The Word Is Nigh Thee"

Then one thinks how true that is of other heavenly blessings than the manna. It is true, for instance, of the Bible—"The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth." When we read a confession or a catechism, we feel that it is very far away. The truth it embodies is remote from the beating of the human heart. But the wonderful thing about the Bible is that it is not only the most divine of books. It is that, but it is also the most human. It comes right into these sinful lives of ours, portraying them and understanding them. There is the throb of the human heart in it as well as the throb of the great heart of God. Our joys and sorrows, our victories and failures, our hours of triumph and the shadows on them, all these are mirrored on the pages of the Bible. It can never be treated just like other books. It is one great mark of inspiration that the Bible is not far away from life. He lets it fall in the midst of the camp.

Christ Was Born Among the Multitudes

And think how true this is of that unspeakable event, the Incarnation. In the fullness of the time God gave His Son. In palaces there is a certain isolation; they are remote from the common haunts of men. Even a cottage is a place withdrawn when within the cottage is a woman in travail. But not in a palace nor even in a cottage was our blessed Lord brought into our midst—He was born in the manger of an inn. Men were gathered there from every quarter. The world in miniature was there. Travelers had reached that inn by lonely roads, but it was not on lonely roads they found the Babe. They found Him amid a gathering of folks drawn from every section of society in the welcome afforded by an inn. The Child was born where there were human voices and all the stir and confusion of a crowd, where some were sleeping and others eating and many telling the adventures of the road. Where there was light and noise and the throb of human life, the Bread from heaven was bestowed at Bethlehem. He let it fall in the midst of the camp.

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The Witness of Locality - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

And this marked all the ministry of Jesus, distinguishing it from that of John the Baptist, for the Baptist was a solitary figure loving the lonely spaces of the desert. When men wanted to inquire of John, they had to go out and seek him in the wilderness. When they wanted to inquire of Jesus, they found Him on their trodden ways. He was a lover of the haunts of men, no stranger to their lowly cottages, sitting where the common people sat and perfectly familiar with the crowd. He gave them bread from heaven to eat, and it was given just as was the manna. He never reserved it for the monastic shelter nor for the quietness of the academy. He healed men and He taught men in the places where they lived and toiled, in the dull routine of daily living. In the fields, down by the seashore, in the narrow streets of unimportant hamlets, in the rooms of overcrowded cottages, in the thronged meeting-places of the cities, there He fed them with that wisdom which dwelt with God before ever the earth was (Pro_8:23)—He let it fall in the midst of the camp.

The Rich Provision of the Gospel Today

Equally does this apply to the rich provision of the Gospel now. We do not need to leave our place to gather it: it is given in the places where we are. The promises are not for imaginary circumstances; the promises are for here and now. The offered adequacy of the Holy Spirit is always available for us today. The fellowship of the Lord Jesus with all its cleansing and uplifting is not for the rare hours of mountain vision but for the common hours of ordinary life. Peace and joy are not for a few choice saints who move apart from the heavy cares of men. Serenity was never meant by heaven only for those who are withdrawn from things. The great distinction of the Gospel is that all its blessings are for common people immersed in the care and business of the hour. What struck this poet was that heaven's supply fell right among the places where people tabernacled. That is why God has poets in the Bible, because they see what others never notice. For this poet there was a wealth of meaning, which it has taken the ages to unfold, in the fact that when God gave bread from heaven, He let it fall in the midst of their camp.

____________________

George H. Morrison Devotions

Dist. Worldwide in the Great Freeware Bible Study package called
e-Sword by Rick Meyer: http://www.e-sword.net/downloads.html
Full Featured - Outstanding - Completely FREE - No Strings Attached

(The goal of Rick Meyer is to distribute excellent Bible Study
Software to every country on earth in their own language FREE
of charge, and that goal gets closer by the day.)
____________________

[nChrist]

February 2

Limiting God

"They... limited the Holy One of Israel." Psa_78:41

Sometimes we fall into the sin of limiting God to the greater hours of our life. I take it that all of us are so tempted. When the Syrians were fighting Israel they found they were always beaten on the hills, from which they gathered that the God of Israel was a God of the hills and not of the valleys. And this exclusion of the will of God from the peaceful and lowly valley-land of life is not confined to Syrian mentality. Every life has its dramatic hours and knows the exhilaration of the heights. In such hours, "so nigh to God is man," we often are strangely conscious of His presence.

But to limit the Holy One of Israel to our rarer moments on the hills is to miss the wonder of His fellowship. He is as near us in the dreary day as in the day when all the birds are singing. He is as close to us in lowly duty as in the hours that are going to alter everything. He is present in the lilies of the field, according to the teaching of our Lord, as magnificently as in the earthquake or the storm. Do not confine God to the big things as if these alone lay upon His heart. Never reserve Him for the greater moments as if He had no feeling for the lesser ones. To do so is to fall into the sin which is recorded here against the ancient Jews. It is to limit the Holy One of Israel.

We Limit God in the Use of Human Instruments

We are so ready to forget His sovereignty. It is true that often, when God has work to do, His choice of instruments at once commends itself. The man He chooses is exquisitely fitted for the peculiar task that is allotted him. But very often it is the other way—God's choice is mysterious and sovereign—the whole of history is one long commentary on the unlikely instruments of heaven. He wants a nation which shall bless the world, and He chooses a company of slaves in Egypt. He wants a messenger to carry doom to Eli, and He chooses Samuel, a little child. He wants a cradle for the beloved Son whose name is to be above every name, and He chooses a manger in the inn at Bethlehem.

I believe in an educated ministry. I trust we shall always have it in our land. It is one of the proudest boasts of Scotland that we have always had an educated ministry. But how often when we were priding ourselves upon our education, God in His sovereign fashion has come and put us all to shame by the preaching of uneducated men. You cannot limit the shining of the sun, and the Lord God is a sun. You cannot limit the breathing of the wind, and the Holy Ghost is like the wind. Men must watch when they want to keep their pulpits from the preaching of unordained servants lest they be limiting the Holy One of Israel.

Limiting God in Our Prayers

Or again, aren't we often tempted to limit God in the matter of our prayers? We confine Him to one expected answer. What if our blessed Savior had done that? What if He had limited the Father? What if the only answer He would tolerate had been the passing of the bitter cup? Then we would never have had Calvary nor the blood that keeps the sinner from despair, nor the victorious power of His resurrection. I remember a chaplain saying to me in France that if the Germans won the war, he'd lose his faith. In the mercy of God, the Germans did not win. But there are few things more perilous in prayer than to make one's faith conditional, and that is what the Savior never did. He never said, "This cup must pass from me, or I shall cease to trust the love of heaven." He said, "Father, if it be possible...nevertheless thy will not mine be done." And always we must bear that in mind when we cry for anything upon our knees lest, even in our holiest moments, we limit the Holy One of Israel.

Limiting God in His Power

Lastly, are we not prone to limit God in regard to the compass of His power? We have many instances of that in Scripture. When, for instance, Jairus' daughter died, the servants went hurrying through the streets to Jairus. And when they found him, they cried, "Sir, she is dead. There is no use troubling Jesus any further."

What they meant was that as long as she was living there always was the hope that He might cure her. There was no such hope now that she was dead. They were limiting the power of Jesus. There were certain things that were beyond Him. And sometimes when we view society today, are we not subject to the same temptation? God keep us all, who are praying for revival and for the coming of His kingdom in the world, from limiting the Holy One of Israel.

____________________

George H. Morrison Devotions

Dist. Worldwide in the Great Freeware Bible Study package called
e-Sword by Rick Meyer: http://www.e-sword.net/downloads.html
Full Featured - Outstanding - Completely FREE - No Strings Attached

(The goal of Rick Meyer is to distribute excellent Bible Study
Software to every country on earth in their own language FREE
of charge, and that goal gets closer by the day.)
____________________

[nChrist]

February 3

God's Self-Limitation - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

"God... delivered his strength into captivity." Psa_78:61

These words in their primary and historical reference refer to the taking captive of the Ark of God by the Philistines. What a terrific calamity that seemed to Israel! They thought that the glory of Israel had departed. To the whole world it looked as if God were overcome, as if some power had arisen that was really superior to God, or as if there was something in the world that would ultimately baffle and defeat His purposes. You can understand how, to a religious nation like the Jews, it was a tremendous and terrifying thought, as, of course, it ought to be to every man. And then this inspired writer came along being illuminated by the divine Spirit, and puts a different meaning on the whole thing—says that God designed it, says in his own poetic language that God, nobody else, God delivered His strength into captivity.

Don't you see in a moment how that thought would animate and inspire Israel? It was not enemies who had defeated God, it was God who had deliberately done it. God had not exercised His own omnipotence; He had self-limited Himself. And if we could only understand how God, not only with the Ark for that was typical, but right down the centuries, has voluntarily delivered His strength into captivity, I think it might confirm our faith.

God's Sovereign Will

Well now, let's consider the thought of God's sovereign will. The one jubilant note of the whole Bible is that God's will in itself is sovereign. "I formed the light and I created the darkness. I am God and there is none beside me." Anyone who imagines that there is any will in the universe that can ultimately thwart God is not making the Bible his rule of faith and life. Of course, that does not mean that God's will is arbitrary. God limits His rule of many things just because He is love. As Butler said in his own deep way, "God's being is a kind of law to His working." All God's workings must be love if He is love. But it does mean that God's will in itself is irresistible, that nothing can ever ultimately baffle it, that there is no rival in heaven or in hell who can ever stand against the will of God. Don't you see how that thought is bound up with the ringing note of triumph of the Bible? You have no assurance for the future of the world, but for the future of yourself, and yourself strangely corresponds to the greater progress of the world.

What a great comfort when a man can say, "This is the will of God, even our sanctification." Poor, weak sinners baffled every day, it is God's will that ultimately we will be clothed in white. But if God's will can be thwarted, if there are powers abroad that limit His sovereignty, why, you and I in every effort may be just beating the air. Nothing may come of it. You know that makes life impossible, and therefore all the depths in your heart corroborate the jubilant assurance of the Bible. If it did not it would not be the Bible because the deepest mark of inspiration is within, and if the Bible did not correspond with all the voices from the depths of your heart, you might lay it aside as not being inspired. But when you come to the Lord Jesus, you find the Lord Jesus teaching you to pray, "Thy will be done."

Now if God's will is an irresistible will, and if it is always exercised as an irresistible will, why should you and I pray, "Thy will be done"? It will be done whether you pray or not; it will be done whether you help or not. It must be done if it is exercised as a sovereign will. Don't you see you are faced by this dilemma, though nobody likes the argument of a dilemma—either the will of God is not omnipotent (a thought that is intolerable to the human heart) or else for wise, holy purposes, when God is dealing with mankind, He does not totally exercise His sovereign will—He delivers His strength into captivity. And don't you see what His wise and holy purposes are?

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[nChrist]

God's Self-Limitation - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Fellow-Workers With God

My father used to spend his leisure in editing books, and I remember once, just when I was about to finish school, he was editing one of the cantos of Childe Harold. He had the introduction all shaped out and most of his notes were blocked, and he turned to me and said, "I am very busy. I want you to complete the editing of this book for me." You know, to this hour, I have never forgotten it. To this hour I remember the joy and pride I felt when I was called to be a fellow-worker with my father.

And if God's will for mankind were sovereign, if it just had to be, you could not be a fellow-worker with God. It would not make the least difference what you did, whether you prayed or worked or gave. God is so passionately eager that you and I, His children, should be raised up to the joy and honor of being fellow-workers with Him that He just does not exercise the sovereignty He might—He delivers His strength into captivity, limits Himself that His children may help Him. Surely that is a motive worthy of a father, and that is just the name that Jesus gives Him.

I don't want to be philosophical, but you might put it another way. You might think of the purpose. Well, now, if you are going to be a fellow-worker with a man, that man must have a purpose. If a man has a purpose for building a house, every mason, every bricklayer is a fellow-worker with him. If a shipbuilder has a purpose for building a ship, then the whole labor force can be fellow-workers with him. If a man has no purpose, you cannot be a fellow-worker with him. And it is just so with man and God.

Self. Limitation

But does it ever occur to you that to have a purpose is to limit yourself? The builder would not take months to build the house if he could do it like the palace of Aladdin, all in a moment. The shipbuilder would not spend years and millions if he could create a ship just in an hour. And don't you see, if God limits Himself, if God doesn't complete His purposes in a moment, if God doesn't say in the slums of Glasgow, "Let there be light," as He once said in chaos, it is because He is limiting Himself for a purpose. And only in a purpose can you and I, His children, ever be fellow-workers with Him. I don't have the least doubt that the sovereign will of God could convert Africa just as we worship here; I don't have the least doubt that He could change Ireland and make it in a moment the Island of the Saints, but He does not. Don't you see that if He did, you and I, His children, could never be His fellow-workers? I think if we could only grasp that thought, it might help to explain a good deal of the suffering in the world. It is the suffering of being sharers in a purpose.

Take, for instance, the great French general who commanded at Verdun. Well now, why did he struggle on there? Because he had the purpose of saving France. Not only he, but every man down to the foot soldier shared in his purpose of saving France. They knew perfectly well that if wounds, pain or death came, all was bound up in the purpose which they shared with their general. If God has a great purpose, and if the Lord says, "Thy will be done," we have got to share it; and if it is a purpose in which suffering is inevitable in such a world as this, doesn't it cast a good deal of light upon much of the suffering in the world?

The Conviction That We Are Free

I am quite certain there is no Christian who, when he makes a choice, does not feel that that choice is a real choice, determined by himself. We all recognize that much of our battle is fixed for us by heredity, but there is not one of us who does not know in his heart that his fate is in his own hands. We are free creatures.

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[nChrist]

God's Self-Limitation - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

And don't you see why God made us like that? God's purpose was love; God wanted beings who could be in fellowship with Himself. It would be an awful thing to be a lonely God. God wanted beings who could share His purpose, think His thoughts after Him, enter into His will, pray to Him, be His children. And no one could do that unless he were free. God could easily have made us mechanical so that sin would have been impossible, so that everything we did would have been automatic. Do you think God could ever have shared His thoughts and purpose with beings like that? Don't you see, the moment He made us free, He delivered His strength into captivity? God has created something with which He cannot interfere. The one thing God can never do, for His gifts are without repentance, is to smash and shatter our freedom by the intrusion of omnipotence. God can do just what He does in Christ—He can woo, He can appeal, He can try to win, He can breathe His spirit on each one of us; but if we misuse our freedom, not even God will break in with His omnipotence to make it impossible.

And yet people say, Why does God allow sin? God does not allow sin. Why does God allow the slums of Glasgow? Why did God allow war? God never allows war. God, wanting beings to have fellowship with Him, made us free, and not even God, having made us free, will bring His omnipotence to stop us when our freewill misused gives us sin, misery, slums and war.

When God made us free, He delivered His strength into captivity, and in that sense it is in captivity still. Without our freedom what a poor, miserable thing life would be. I think all that is perhaps corroborated by a very deep feeling that God's children have that they can disappoint Him. If a child does something that is wrong, he disappoints his mother or his father, or a husband may disappoint his wife, and you and I can disappoint God. My dear brother, if our sin was predetermined from all eternity, we could not disappoint God, and there could be no joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth.

Christ Was Delivered for Us

Let us consider the thought for a moment in connection with Christ. Don't you see how it all comes to its climax, how God delivered His strength into captivity when He gave His only-be-gotten Son for you and me? He had done it before in regard to His sovereign will when He created free beings—He had done it because He was love. And then, in His own way, He did it to its utmost when He gave the Lord—He did it because He was love. "God so loved the world that He gave"—-delivered Him to the captivity of the virgin's womb, delivered Him to the captivity of the body that had been prepared for Him so that the Lord emptied Himself and took on Him the form of a servant. Did you ever think how often the word "delivered" is used of the Lord Jesus Christ? "He was delivered to the high priest." "Pilate released Barabbas and delivered Jesus." "He was delivered by the counsel and foreknowledge of God." But most beautiful of all: "He was delivered for our offenses." Christ was the strength of God, and God delivered His strength into captivity. The marvelous and beautiful thing is just this, that by that deliverance you and I are saved.

____________________

George H. Morrison Devotions

Dist. Worldwide in the Great Freeware Bible Study package called
e-Sword by Rick Meyer: http://www.e-sword.net/downloads.html
Full Featured - Outstanding - Completely FREE - No Strings Attached

(The goal of Rick Meyer is to distribute excellent Bible Study
Software to every country on earth in their own language FREE
of charge, and that goal gets closer by the day.)
____________________

[nChrist]

February 4

Refusing to Go Back

"So will not we go back from thee." Psa_80:18

To go back from God is to desert Him. It is to turn away the footsteps of our heart from Him. It is to doubt the vision we have had of Him in our more intense and illumined moments.

To determine that whatever comes, we shall not go back from God, is one of the open secrets of the saints. To cling to Him when life is difficult and we are tempted to question if He cares; to believe in Him with a simple childlike faith when clouds and darkness hide His throne—this is one of the triumphs of the spirit which makes the humblest life a thing of victory and brings it to the sunrise at the end.

When Mallory and Irvine were last seen climbing Everest, they were "going strong for the top." From that top, a thousand feet above them, nothing could turn them back. What a great victory it would be for all of us were we to say, like these heroic climbers, So we shall not go back from Thee.

When Things Eternal Grow Dim

We are tempted sometimes to go back from God by the apparent indifference of heaven. There are seasons of the soul when things unseen are touched with a strange sense of unreality. The lamp that burns upon my study table is as nothing to the radiance of the moon. But then the lamp is near me, and I read by it till I grow oblivious of the moon.

And so there are seasons when the things around us so grip us in their vividness that things eternal tend to grow unreal. At such times we do not renounce God, but we are often tempted to go back from Him. We grow oblivious to His peace and light and there passes a certain deadness over us as the winter, and we forfeit the joy of our salvation. Prayer becomes a chore; the Bible loses its fragrance and its dew. We are in the dark night of the soul and lying under spiritual desertion. But even so (observe the psalmist's word) the true heart will cry out of the darkness, "We will not go back from thee." To cling to God and His great love to us when things grow dim and shadowy and distant, to affirm God to our own souls in the hours when the unseen is as a dream is one of the tasks of all who claim the name of Christ. "So will not we go back from thee."

We are also tempted to this retrogression in hours when all the lights are burning low. None is so strong that he does not now and then have fainting spells. We lose heart, and a dull depression seizes on our spirits. We move on the flat margins of despair, and are all tempted to go back from God as the disciples were tempted to go back from Christ.

To be perfect as our heavenly Father is a standard that often seems impossible. Is it any use striving to be holy with these insurgent and rebellious hearts? Is not sainthood for rare and elect souls, and beyond the compass of our common clay? So are we tempted to take the lower road, thinking it more on the level of our powers, and we settle down into second best. That is the tragedy of many lives—they have settled down into the second best. They had visions once of the summit of Mount Everest; now they are content to dwell below it. But the real victory of this life of ours is not to gain the summit we have seen; it is to keep on climbing to the end. God's best in Christ is not for elect souls. It is for everyone who trusts Him. Things that are impossible with man are possible with God, and in spite of all our failures, we shall not go back from Thee.

____________________

George H. Morrison Devotions

Dist. Worldwide in the Great Freeware Bible Study package called
e-Sword by Rick Meyer: http://www.e-sword.net/downloads.html
Full Featured - Outstanding - Completely FREE - No Strings Attached

(The goal of Rick Meyer is to distribute excellent Bible Study
Software to every country on earth in their own language FREE
of charge, and that goal gets closer by the day.)
____________________

[nChrist]

February 11

Forgiveness and the Cross

"There is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared." Psa_130:4
"In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins." Col_1:14

There are millions of people for whom divine forgiveness is a great and thrilling fact. They could no more doubt it than they could doubt their being. Quite possibly they do not understand it, but one can enjoy things he doesn't understand. We daily use and enjoy a hundred things of whose nature we are ignorant. I light my room with electricity or revel in a glorious summer morning though I know practically nothing about electricity or the sun. And among these things stands out divine forgiveness as the greatest. For millions it is an experienced reality. It is the spring of joy, the source of liberty, the starting-point of victorious endeavor. Forgiven, the barriers are gone that raised themselves between the soul and God. Estrangement from their Creator has given place to sweet communion.

Why Was the Death of Jesus Necessary?

But the difficulty for many people is how forgiveness comes through the death of the Lord Jesus. Why can't a God of love forgive His children as the father of the prodigal forgave his son? When a wife forgives her husband, she doesn't need the intervention of another. She forgives him just because she loves him with a love that expects a brighter tomorrow. When a father forgives his erring child, it is a private and personal transaction where the intrusion of anyone else would be impertinence. Why, then, should our heavenly Father call for more than a repentant heart? Why should restoration to communion demand the agony and death of Jesus?

This difficulty is often aggravated by the glorious ringing note of the Old Testament: "There is forgiveness with thee that thou mayest be feared, and plenteous redemption that thou mayest be sought unto." Well, men say, that is enough for me, I needn't complicate matters by the cross; and they forget that the Old Testament is never final but rather God's avenue leading to the new. I give a child an apple, and tell him to eat it for it is good for him. It is only afterwards that the child learns why that apple should be healthful. A little boy puts coals on the fire, confident that they will warm the room. But why the coals should have their warming properties he only learns when he goes to school or college. That is heaven's universal ordering, first the fact and then the explanation. Life would be impossible to live if we could not use things till we understood them. And as God orders the whole of human life, so He does with Scripture, first proclaiming the eternal truth and then showing us the secret of it. The cross of the New Testament is not an intrusion on an old simplicity. The cross does not complicate forgiveness: it explains it and shows how it is possible. "There is forgiveness with thee," cries the psalmist; and the New Testament interprets that—Yes, there is forgiveness through the blood.

God's Divine Assurance

Surely it is evident that without the cross we could have no assurance of divine forgiveness. It is only in the life and death of Jesus that we can be perfectly sure of a forgiving God. God reveals Himself in nature. Could we be perfectly certain of forgiveness there? Even though nature carries glimpses of it, are these sufficient to assure the heart? Neither in nature nor in human history is there the luminous proof the sinner needs that there is forgiveness with God. That proof is given in Christ, and in Christ only. Only in the life and death of Christ can we be perfectly sure that God forgives. When we see Him dying on the cross for us in a redeeming love that traveled to the uttermost, God's forgiveness becomes certainty. A child in his earthly home needs no such argument. He is perfectly familiar with his father. He sees him every evening and has his kiss before he falls asleep. But the heavenly Father is different from that—-clouds and darkness are about His throne—and so His children need for their assurance something that our children never do.

Again, we must not forget that earthly fatherhood can never exhaust the fullness of the Deity. In Him lies the fount of moral order without which life would be intolerable. A father at home who is a judge may freely forgive his child, but he cannot act like that on the bench. The morale of the State would go to pieces if the judge were to act just as the father does. He is to administer the law, and were every repentant prisoner forgiven, law would become a byword and a joke. That, as one of the Reformers put it, was a problem worthy of God—how to maintain and magnify the law, and yet freely forgive the transgressor; and God's answer is the cross of Christ. There we learn what heaven thinks of sin. There sin is seen in all its awfulness. There we behold the grandeur of the law in the very glance that tells us of forgiveness. The pardon of God is not the worthless pardon of an easy and tolerant good nature. He is just, and the justifier of all them that believe.

____________________

George H. Morrison Devotions

Dist. Worldwide in the Great Freeware Bible Study package called
e-Sword by Rick Meyer: http://www.e-sword.net/downloads.html
Full Featured - Outstanding - Completely FREE - No Strings Attached

(The goal of Rick Meyer is to distribute excellent Bible Study
Software to every country on earth in their own language FREE
of charge, and that goal gets closer by the day.)
____________________

[nChrist]

February 12

The Gifts of Sleep - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

"He giveth his beloved (in) sleep." Psa_127:2

If we take the words of our text just as they stand, they are charged with deep and beautiful significance. They tell us what our own experience confirms, that sleep is the gift of God. The world has gifts which it gives to its favorite children. It loads them with wealth or honor or fame. But God deals otherwise with His beloved, for "He giveth to his beloved sleep."

It would, of course, be very wrong to say that sleeplessness is a mark of the divine displeasure. A man may be wrapt in the gracious peace of God, yet seek in vain the refreshment of sleep. Yet it is true that sleep, when it is given, is such a medicine for the weary and worn, that it can be nothing less than the gift of love. I think of Jesus in the storm-tossed boat, asleep on the pillow when everyone else was running around in wild alarm. I think of Peter fast asleep in prison when the coming morning was to bring his execution. I think of the tired worker when nightfall comes, and the sufferer who has been racked with pain through weary hours, and I learn how tenderly and deeply true it is that "He giveth his beloved sleep." Nor can anyone ever ignore that sweetest of all suggestions wherein the word is whispered over the sleep of death. A thousand memories of shadows and tears have clustered around that interpretation. It is when the fever breaks that one sleeps well, and when the struggle of life has ended and quiet peace has fallen, then love, through the mist of weeping, murmurs: "So he giveth his beloved sleep."

The Stress and Strain of Life

But though that is a comforting and blessed truth, it is not the true interpretation of the words. If you read the verse in relation to its context, you will see that that could hardly be the meaning. The psalmist is warning against overwork which degenerates into worry. He is picturing the man who overdrives himself until he has no rest and no peace. And all this pressure and nervous activity is not only a sin in the sight of God, it is also, says the psalmist, a mistake. It is vain for you to rise up early and to sit up late. You will never gain the choicest things that way. Let a man be nervous, overworked and tired, and he is sure to miss the worthiest and the best. God giveth to His beloved in sleep—when they are at rest like a child within its cradle, when they are free from that turbulence of wild desire in which the still small voice is quite inaudible.

Remember that the psalmist never dreamed of casting a slur on honest, manly labor. He knew too well the blessings that we gain, and the sins that we are saved from, by our work. What was borne in on his soul was that by overwork we lose more than we gain, for many of the richest gifts of heaven only approach us through the path of slumber. It is imperative that the soul should be held passive if we are to have the inflow of His grace. It is imperative that its uproar should be hushed if we are to hear the still, small voice. And it is that which the psalmist hints at here, when, in the intense language of a poet, he cries to men, "Your stress and strain are vanity; God giveth to His beloved in sleep."

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[nChrist]

The Gifts of Sleep - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

The Blessings of Infancy

There is a world of love encompassing an infant, yet how unconscious the baby is of it all! When our Savior was drawing near the cross, He said to His disciples, "I go to prepare a place for you," and they knew from that hour that when they awoke in glory, they would find that all was ready for their coming.

But not only in the land beyond the river is a place prepared for everyone God loves. When into this present life a child comes, hearts have been busy with preparation. Stooping over the little one is a mother's love and all the splendor of a mother's patience. Shielding it is a father's strength and eagerness to provide for all its needs. And it is clothed and fed with food convenient and rocked to sleep and sheltered from the storm. And should it become ill, the best skill in the city is not good enough for the tiny sufferer. What a wealth of love and care is here, yet what is more passive than that little infant! Have these small hands helped in the preparation? Has that little mind done any of the planning? Helpless it lies, and-doomed to certain death, if life depended on its puny efforts. But "God giveth to his beloved in sleep"; He has prepared for His children, too.

The Pursuit of Happiness

If anywhere in life, it is in pleasure-seeking that it is vain to rise up early and to sit up late. Not when we are determined, come what may, to have a pleasant and a happy life does God bestow the music of the heart. He gives it when there is forgetfulness of self and the struggle to be true to what is highest though the path be through the valley of the shadow. The one sure way to miss the gift of happiness is to rise early looking for it and to sit up late waiting for it. To be bent at every cost on a good time is the sure harbinger of dreary days. It is when we have the courage to forget all that and to lift up our hearts to do the will of God that, like a swallow darting out from under the eaves, happiness falls upon us with glad surprise. Had Jesus lived just that He might be happy, He certainly would have escaped the cross. No one would have laughed Him to scorn in Jairus' house; no one would have pierced His hands and feet. But He came not to be ministered unto, but to minister and to give His life a ransom for many; and so you find Him talking of His joy. Brethren, remember that nine-tenths of our unhappiness is selfishness and is an insult cast in the face of God. But the way to be happy is not to seek happiness. It is to be awake to what is higher and asleep to self-satisfaction. And then, as time passes, comes the discovery that God giveth to His beloved in sleep.

Heaven, the Gift of Sleep

The last gift of a kind God is heaven, and God giveth it to His beloved in sleep. We can never know how it would have been had man not sinned and fallen. Like Enoch, man would have walked with God till his never-halting footsteps brought him home. But death has passed upon all men for that all have sinned; yet "O death, where is thy victory?" God makes death's foul embrace His opportunity; He giveth to His beloved while they sleep. As one stands with sorrowing heart beside the dead and looks on him from whom the breath has flown, it is very strengthening and soothing to say, "God giveth sleep to his beloved." But isn't it better to lift our eyes to heaven and, thinking of its liberty and joy, say, "He giveth to his beloved in sleep."

____________________

George H. Morrison Devotions

Dist. Worldwide in the Great Freeware Bible Study package called
e-Sword by Rick Meyer: http://www.e-sword.net/downloads.html
Full Featured - Outstanding - Completely FREE - No Strings Attached

(The goal of Rick Meyer is to distribute excellent Bible Study
Software to every country on earth in their own language FREE
of charge, and that goal gets closer by the day.)
____________________