The Inextinguishable Blaze {Charles Wesley}

O Thou Who camest from above,

The pure celestial fire to impart,

Kindle a flame of sacred love

Upon the mean altar of my heart.

There let it for Thy glory burn

With inextinguishable blaze,

And trembling to its source return,

In humble prayer and fervent praise.

Jesus, confirm my heart’s desire

To work and speak and think for Thee;

Still let me guard the holy fire,

And still stir up Thy gift in me.

Ready for all Thy perfect will,

My acts of faith and love repeat,

Till death Thy endless mercies seal,

And make my sacrifice complete.

A Ready Mind

These were more noble than those in Thessalonica,

in that they received the word

with all readiness of mind,

and searched the scriptures daily,

whether those things were so.

Acts 17:11

I Purpose to be Busy {John Wesley}

Leisure and I have taken leave of one another. I purpose to be busy as long as I live, if my health is so long indulged to me. In health and sickness I hope I shall ever continue with the same sincerity.

Suffer me now to tell you my principles in this matter. I look upon all the world as my parish; thus far I mean that in whatever part of it I am, I judge it meet, right and my bounden duty to declare, unto all that are willing to hear, the glad tidings of salvation. This is the work which I know God has called me to; and sure I am that His blessing attends it. Great encouragement have I, therefore, to be faithful in fulfilling the work He hath given me to do. His servant am I; and, as such, am employed according to the plain direction of His word — “as I have opportunity, doing good unto all men.” And His providence clearly concurs with His word, which has disengaged me from all things else that I might singly attend on this very thing, and “go about doing good.”

Responsibility of Godly Parents

And these words,

which I command thee this day,

shall be in thine heart:

And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children,

and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house,

and when thou walkest by the way,

and when thou liest down,

and when thou risest up.

And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand,

and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes.

And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house,

and on thy gates.

Deuteronomy 6:6-9

Deep, Spiritual Longing {Tozer}

The loneliness of the Christian results from his walk with God in an ungodly world, a walk that must often take him away from the fellowship of good Christians as well as from that of the unregenerate world. His God-given instincts cry out for companionship with others of his kind, others who can understand his longings, his aspirations, his absorption in the love of Christ; and because within his circle of friends there are so few who share his inner experiences he is forced to walk alone.

The unsatisfied longings of the prophets for human understanding caused them to cry out in their complaint, and even our Lord Himself suffered in the same way.

The man [or woman] who has passed on into the divine Presence in actual inner experience will not find many who understand him. He finds few who care to talk about that which is the supreme object of his interest, so he is often silent and preoccupied in the midst of noisy religious shoptalk. For this he earns the reputation of being dull and over-serious, so he is avoided and the gulf between him and society widens.

He searches for friends upon whose garments he can detect the smell of myrrh and aloes and cassia out of the ivory palaces, and finding few or none he, like Mary of old, keeps these things in his heart.

It is this very loneliness that throws him back upon God. His inability to find human companionship drives him to seek in God what he can find nowhere else.

Knowledge of Christ {Miller}

Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me?”

John 14:9

There seems to be pain in the Master’s question. This disciple had been with Him for three years. He had seen His beautiful and gentle life. He had witnessed His works of power. Surely by this time, after such long and close intimacy, the disciple ought to have known Jesus. Yet Jesus tells him here that he did not really know Him.

We get this lesson — that it is possible to be with Christ a long time, and to know very much about Him, without ‘knowing’ Him in the true sense of the word. Philip knew Jesus as a man, as a worker of miracles, as having a very beautiful character; but he seems never to have gone below the surface in understanding Him. He did not know Him as the revealer of the Father. He never saw divine glory in the radiance that streamed from that blessed life. And not to know Christ in this aspect, to know Him only as a man, is not to know Him at all. To leave out the divine in our thought of Christ is not to have any Christ at all.

We may be quite familiar with the facts of our Lord’s life, from His birth in Bethlehem to His ascension from Olivet, and yet may not know anything of Him as a personal Saviour, saving us from our sins, or as a Helper in our times of need. Such knowledge will do us no good unless it lead us to the true knowledge of Christ as Saviour, Lord, and Friend.

There is something very touching in the thought that for so long the Son of God walked with His disciples, all the glory of divinity dwelling in His humanity, and that they did not recognize Him. But is it any better with us? The divine love is close to us perpetually, flowing all about us, with all its infinite tenderness, but how unconscious we are of it! May our prayer be, ” Lord, make thyself known to us!”

Who God Uses {J.H. Taylor}

God uses men who are

weak and feeble enough

to lean on him.