PERSEVERANCE

It's not our love for God that keeps us faithful, but God's love for us. Like Peter, it shatters our arrogant assumptions to discover this. Our greatest danger is to think we can in any way save ourselves. We are indeed our chief enemy, our flesh will plague us to the end.

'Chosen not for good in me,
Wakened up from wrath to flee,
Hidden in the Saviour’s side,
By the Spirit sanctified,
Teach me, Lord, on earth to show,
By my love, how much I owe.'

Robert Murray McCheyne

ASK, SEEK AND KNOCK

We must seek out God. As His children we need to make time for compassionate conversations with our Father. The most important part is to be quiet enough to listen to what He has to say to us. Only then can we hear Him say we are His beloved children, and respond to Him as our beloved Father.

'Christians' talk too much, both to each other and to God. We teach and preach and pray as if there is no tomorrow. Jesus was never in a hurry, knowing His times were in God's hands. He listened to His dearly loved Father before demonstrating Him to His people and teaching them about Him. His followers must do the same.

How else can we understand how precious we are to Him? If we don't, we spend our time in fruitless anxiety and business to prove to Him how good we are. If we listened more we wouldn't have to.

HOLY HYGIENE

Perhaps the 'washing of regeneration' could be described as bathing our minds in Scripture.

PRAYER

If we spent less time telling the Lord what to do for us and more time listening to what He wants us to do for Him we would please Him better and accomplish far more.