Daily Devotionals

Music For the Soul

Devotional: June 12th

OUR GOD FOR EVER AND EVER

I will be to them a God, and they shall be to Me a people. - Hebrews 8:10

God’s gift of Himself to me teaches that all that Godhood, in all the incomprehensible sweep of its attributes, is on my side, if I will. They tell us that there are rays in the spectrum which no eye can see, but which yet have mightier chemical and other influences than those that are visible. The spectrum of God is not all visible, but beyond the limits of comprehension there lie dark energies which are full of blessedness and of power for us. " I will be to them a God." We must understand something of what that name signifies; and all that is enlisted for us. There is much which that name signifies that we do not understand; and all that, too, is working on our side.

Now, remember that this giving of God to us by Himself is all concentrated in one historical act. He gave Himself to us when He spared not His only begotten Son. This text is one of the articles of the New Covenant. And what sealed and confirmed all the articles of that Covenant? The blood of Jesus Christ. It was when " God spared not His own Son," and when the Son spared not Himself on that Cross of Calvary, that there came to pass the ratifying and filling out and perfecting of the ancient typical promise, " I will be to them a God." There was the unspeakable gift in which God was given to humanity.

Here is a treasure - of gold lying in the road. Anybody that picks it up may have it; the man that does not pick it up does not get it, though it is there for him to lay his fingers on. Here is a river flowing past your door. You may put a pipe into it, and bring all its wealth and refreshment into your house, and use it for the quenching of your thirst, for the cleansing of your person, for the cooking of your victuals, for the watering of your gardens. And here is all the fulness of God welling past us. But Niagara may thunder close by a man’s door, and he may perish of thirst. " I will be to them a God." What does that matter if I do not turn round and say, "O Lord! Thou art my God?" Nothing! Beggars come to your door, and you give them a bit of bread, and they go away, and you find it flung round the corner into the mud. God gives us Himself. I wonder how many of us have tossed the gift over the first hedge, and left it there. Yet all the while we are dying for want of it, and do not know that we are.

Brother! you have to enclose a bit of the prairie for your very own, and put a hedge round it, and cultivate it, and you will get abundant fruits. You have to translate "their" into the singular possessive pronoun, and say "mine," and put out the hand of faith, and make Him in very deed yours. Then, and only then, is this giving perfected.