And ye are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power. Colossians 2:10.
We are to live in the warm, genial rays of the Sun of Righteousness. Nothing but His loving compassion, His divine grace, His almighty power, can enable us to baffle the relentless foe and subdue the opposition of the human heart. What is our strength? The joy of the Lord. Let the melting love of Christ fill the heart, and we are softened and subdued, prepared to receive the power that He has for us.
Let us thank God every day for the blessings that are ours. If the human agent will humble himself before God, realizing how inappropriate it is for him to cherish a feeling of self-sufficiency; realizing his utter inability to do the work that needs to be done in order for his soul to be purified, casting away, making of no account, his own righteousness, Christ will engrave His own image upon his soul….
Christ will never neglect the work that has been placed in His hands. He will inspire the resolute disciple with a sense of the perversity, the sin-stained condition, the depravity, of the heart upon which He is working. The true penitent has learned the uselessness of self-importance. Looking to Jesus, comparing his own defective character with the Saviour’s perfect character, he can say, In my hand no price I bring;
Simply to Thy cross I cling.
With Isaiah he declares, “Lord, thou wilt ordain peace for us: for thou also hast wrought all our works in us. O Lord our God, other lords beside thee have had dominion over us: but by thee only will we make mention of thy name” (Isaiah 26:12, 13).
Beholding Christ for the purpose of becoming like Him, the seeker after truth sees the perfection of the principles of God’s law, and he becomes dissatisfied with everything but perfection. Hiding his life in the life of Christ, he sees that the holiness of the divine law is revealed in the character of Christ, and more and more earnestly he strives to be like Him. A warfare may be expected at any time, for the tempter sees that he is losing one of his subjects. A battle must be fought with the attributes which Satan has been strengthening for his own use.
The human agent sees what he has to contend with—a strange power opposed to the idea of attaining the perfection that Christ holds out. But with Christ there is saving power that will gain for him victory in the conflict. The Saviour will strengthen and help him as he comes pleading for grace and efficiency.—Manuscript 89, August 12, 1903, “First Be Reconciled to Thy Brother.”
The Upward Look p. 238
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Prayer Requests
—-Special Prayer for an entire household of 5 where at least 2 have tested positive for covid. Monica
—-Please pray for Haleigh who has a very severe infection. Chris
—-Please pray for my co-worker Dave, he’s in ICU infected with Covid. Emerson
—-I’ll be going to my doctor today and will undergo some tests. Please pray for my health. Sally
—-Please pray for my family I lost my 35 year old daughter unexpectedly today. Janice
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Dear Friends,
One evening, when Ronnie Jay had just had his third birthday, and I was busy attending to some needs my newborn, Esther Marie, had at the moment, I began hearing him running up and down the hallway trying to sound like he was blowing a trumpet—“toot-tootle-loot-too-too”. Since I was very busy with Esther, I decided to wait and attend to Ronnie Jay’s disobedience when I was finished. He was supposed to be in bed instead of pretending he was one of Gideon’s men trumpeting and running to battle.
Before I had the chance to stop him and send him back to bed, however, he fell. Now that would not have been such a problem if he had not been using my broom for a trumpet. Eileen heard him fall and rushed out of her room. She knew he had the broom and had told him to stop, but he would not obey her. I put Esther down, and before I had a chance to get to him, Eileen came into the room carrying him. He was bleeding from his mouth and nose. I was horrified!
Immediately I called our doctor, but he had left word with his answering service not to disturb him. He played the musical saw, and was recording a record. I kept calling and calling every few minutes until the lady at the answering service finally admitted to me what he was doing. I was really frightened because I could see that the broom had made a hole in the back of Ronnie Jay’s throat. That is a dangerous place to get injured. Finally she called the recording studio and interrupted him. The doctor was not at all happy about being disturbed. He called me and rather gruffly told me to meet him at the hospital. Since Ron had the car and was at work, I called a church member, and she took us at the hospital.
By this time Ronnie Jay was no longer bleeding, and the doctor took a look at him and said he would be alright. Then he chided me for disturbing his recording session for such a “little thing” and for allowing Ronnie Jay to be up so late. I looked at my watch. To my amazement it was 10:00 PM—almost two hours after it had happened. I explained that I had been trying to get in touch with him for all of that time and that if he had come when I first called, he would have seen my son bleeding profusely from his nose and mouth. The doctor was ashamed and did not charge me for his services. He also told the hospital that there was to be no charge.
From that time on, Ronnie Jay got sick easily. For years he went from one sickness to another. He also had allergies from that time. It seemed that some germs from that broom entered into him and did their work. His hearing was affected because of all of the ear infections he got from those germs. That hole in the back of his throat in addition to his hearing problems made talking plainly difficult and it took years of speech therapy to correct that problem.
Just like holding the broom out in front of his mouth had caused Ronnie Jay to fall, so holding on to sin causes us to become spiritually off balance and we will fall even harder than did he. Sin has lasting effects upon us even though we may ask forgiveness. Once the germ of sin enters in, we are never the same. Sin changes us. It weakens us. We become hopelessly trapped by it. Yet, how often we hold on to some cherished idol even when we know better. How many times we continue to disobey our Heavenly Father even though through His Holy Word He has given us warnings of sin’s consequences.
How much we need a Savior! Thank God, there is One who is mighty to save! (Isa 63:1) He is even now waiting with longing desire for us to ask for His help. Praise God! He will answer when we call. He never makes us feel like we have inconvenienced Him. Indeed, He “is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentence.” 2 Peter 3:9 “I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die?” Eze 33:11 “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” Isa 1:18
Let us come to Him just as we are; weak, sinful, poor, and helpless that He may heal us from all of our infirmities. He is willing to save us. He is ready to forgive us. He longs to cleanse us from all unrighteousness, to remove our filthy garments from us, and clothe us with the spotless robe of His righteousness, to anoint our spiritually blind eyes with Heavenly Eye Salve, to help us develop the faith which works by love which is the gold that is tried in the fire. (1 John 1:9; Zech 3:1-7; Rev 3:18)
Rose