The Life of our Adorable Lord!

“And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. For whoever will save his life shall lose it: but whoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it.” Luke 9:23, 24

The life of our adorable Lord was a life of continuous trial. From the moment He entered our world He became leagued with suffering; He identified Himself with it in its almost endless forms. He seemed to have been born with a tear in His eye, with a shade of sadness on His brow. He was prophesied as “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.” And, from the moment He touched the horizon of our earth, from that moment His sufferings commenced. Not a smile lighted up His benign countenance from the time of His advent to His departure. He came not to indulge in a life of tranquility and repose; He came not to quaff the cup of earthly or of Divine sweets—for even this last was denied Him in the hour of His lingering agony on the cross. He came to suffer—He came to bear the curse—He came to drain the deep cup of wrath, to weep, to bleed, to die. Our Savior was a cross-bearing Savior: our Lord was a suffering Lord. And was it to be expected that they who had linked their destinies with His, who had avowed themselves His disciples and followers, should walk in a path diverse from their Lord’s? He Himself speaks of the incongruity of such a division of interests: “The disciple is not above his Master, nor the servant above his Lord. It is enough for the disciple that he be as his Master, and the servant as his Lord.” There can be no true following of Christ as our example, if we lose sight of Him as a suffering Christ—a cross-bearing Savior. There must be fellowship with Him in His sufferings. In order to enter fully and sympathetically into the afflictions of His people, He stooped to a body of suffering: in like manner, in order to have sympathy with Christ in His sorrows, we must, in some degree tread the path He trod. Here is one reason why He ordained, that along this rugged path His saints should all journey. They must be like their Lord; they are one with Him: and this oneness can only exist where there is mutual sympathy. The church must be a cross-bearing church; it must be an afflicted church. Its great and glorious Head sought not, and found not, repose here: this was not His rest. He turned His back upon the pleasures, the riches, the luxuries, and even the common comforts of this world, preferring a life of obscurity, penury, and suffering. His very submission seemed to impart dignity to suffering, elevation to poverty, and to invest with an air of holy sanctity a life of obscurity, need, and trial.

We have seen, then, that our blessed Lord sanctified, by His own submission, a life of suffering; and that all His followers, if they would resemble Him, must have fellowship with Him in His sufferings. The apostle Paul seems to regard this in the light of a privilege. “For unto you,” he says, “it is given in behalf of Christ, not only to believe on Him, but also to suffer for His sake.” It seems, too, to be regarded as a part of their calling. “For even hereunto were you called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that you should follow His steps.” Happy will be that afflicted child of God, who is led to view his Father’s discipline in the light of a privilege. To drink of the cup that Christ drank of—to bear any part of the cross that He bore—to tread in any measure the path that He trod, is a privilege indeed. This is a distinction which angels have never attained. They know not the honor of suffering with Christ, of being made conformable to His death. It is peculiar to the believer in Jesus—it is his privilege, his calling.

DAILY WALKING WITH GOD, Octavius Winslow, 1858

How Awesome Is Our God!

How awesome is our God in His creation! This is a photo I captured from my hotel window in the early morning hours at the Inn at Biltmore Estate in Asheville, NC last December. It is good to remember our God on first awakening and to see His creation in the splendors of its majesty even through a window! I have to admit it, in design I love to capture photos of windows, doors, entrances and perhaps there is a spiritual lesson and story related to them in my mind but nonetheless, as I see these “pictures” in time, I have to capture them even with a simple point and shoot camera and nothing else at hand! Whether a simple morning sunrise from a window or the majesty of our greatest mountain peaks, God’s glory is magnified for our viewing and to remember that we are dust and He is our Creator and God holding all things together in His providence and power. As we approach the fall season here in the Shenandoah Valley, we are preparing many “photo shoots” of the fall foliage on the mountains and in the valleys and to bathe ourselves in these glories for that small window of time to view and capture them. Take a moment today to look around you at all of the gifts our God has given you in this life and remember that life is a “vapor” like the “vapor” hanging over these mountains and will be gone in a moment. Praise Him for today and for His mighty works!

Listen as you reflect:  Morning Song by Nancy Veldman

THE LORD MY HOPE

THE LORD MY HOPE

“The Lord is my portion, says my soul”

“The Lord Jesus Christ, who is our hope.”–1 Tim. 1:1

What a precious possession of the believing soul, springing from the Lord as his Portion, is hope. Rob the poor worldling of his–though it be but earth-bound, and fading as a midsummer’s evening sun–and you have plunged him in the dark and deep abyss of despondency and despair. Man without hope is the most miserable being in the universe. But with the hope of the Christian glowing in his heart–a hope of which God is the Giver, Jesus the Foundation, the Spirit the Author, and heaven the goal–and there lives not among the happy, a happier being than he. Thus the believer is “saved by hope.” Look, my soul, for a moment at this inestimable part of your portion, and learn more thoroughly in what it consists–what the sweet soothing it imparts, the holy obligations it imposes, and the splendid revelations it anticipates and unveils to faith’s far-seeing eye. HOW does the believing soul arrive at the possession of Christ as its hope?

The first step is to relinquish every other. A hope of heaven built upon obedience to the law, upon our personal merits, upon anything of good that we fancy we are or can do, is a false hope; and, persisted in, will most assuredly make its deluded and unhappy possessor lamentably and eternally ashamed. Hope, too, springing from church privileges, religious ordinances, charitable gifts and pious duties, is equally fallacious and fatal.

But you, O believer, have not so learned Christ, if so be you have been taught by Him the truth as it is in Jesus. The Holy Spirit has written the sentence of death upon yourself, and upon all the dead works springing from self; and fleeing as from a plague-tainted garment out of your own righteousness, you have run into Christ, and enfolding yourself by faith in His righteousness, wrought by His obedience and dyed in His blood, you are justified and saved. Accepted in Him you are “beautiful as Tirzah, and all your garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of the ivory palaces, whereby they have made you glad.” And now you have a “good hope through grace,” and “peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Then let us raise loud and high the thanksgiving anthem, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and that fades not away.”

Look well to it that the lamp of your Christian hope is constantly trimmed and brightly burning. The golden oil that feeds the lamp is drawn from Jesus Christ, and the hand that trims the flame is faith. Despond not if at times the sun of your hope–to change the figure–is for a moment shaded, or is partially eclipsed. Built upon, and springing from Jesus Christ, it cannot entirely expire, since He Himself is our hope. Corruption within may strive to weaken it, adversity without may seem to shake it, temptations from concealed sources may fearfully assail it, nevertheless, your hope shall not perish from the Lord, but, built upon Christ, nourished by Christ, kept by Christ, and looking forward to being with and enjoying Christ forever, like a fine setting sun it shall grow larger and brighter as it descends, until dissolving into heaven’s eternal effulgence it is lost in the full fruition of glory.

With such a hope as Christ, how strong and solemn the obligation to deny all ungodliness and worldly lusts, and to live godly, righteously, and soberly in this present evil world. How humbly and submissively should we bow to all our Father’s afflictive discipline, since He has given us His beloved Son to dwell in our hearts “the hope of glory.” Thus “every man that has this hope in him purifies himself, even as He is pure.” Cheer up, then, disconsolate one!

THE LORD MY PORTION, Octavius Winslow, 1870