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Daily Devotionals
Our Daily Homily - Volume 3
Devotional: December 28th

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Galatians 4:19—Until Christ be formed in you.

Christ is in us, if we truly believe in Him, as the sap in the vine, the air in the lung, the steam in the engine; but He may not be formed in us.

Is it not possible that the indefinable sensation of joy and pain, of yearning and unfulfilled desire, are all attributable to this deep-seated process? Christ is being formed within our hearts, dispossessing the old evil self-life, and taking its place.

"O Jesus Christ, grow Thou in me,

And all things else recede;

My heart be daily nearer Thee,

From sin be daily freed.

"Make this poor self grow less and less,

Be thou my life and aim;

Oh, make me daily through thy grace

More meet to bear thy name."

The mention of travail in this connection suggests that this in-forming of Christ does not take place apart from suffering. And probably it is at times when we are in a furnace of pain that the Christ in us grows most quickly. "When my pain became unbearable," says one, "I became conscious that there is a part of our being which no physical pain, and no mental anguish, can disturb. And there came to me such a sense of God—so enfolding, so assuring, so satisfying—that I could as well doubt the shining of the sun." The Comforter had come—Christ was being formed within.

In the egg, when first laid, there is a tiny point of life amid the thick, viscous fluid; but this gradually increases, while the other diminishes, and at last there is hardly a trace of this left, and the chick is formed, the egg-shell is broken, and the tiny feathered thing steps forth. The chick is formed in the shell.

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