Daily Devotionals

Devotional: May 24th

GOD’S GREAT DESIRE

God our Saviour, who willeth that all men should be saved, and come to he knowledge of i he truth. - 1 Timothy 2:3-4

God wants to save the world, but God can only save men one at a time. There must be an individual access to Him, as I have said about the conviction of sin, just as if He and I were the only two beings in the whole universe. There is no wholesale reception into God’s Church or into God’s kingdom; God’s mercy is not given to crowds, except as composed of individuals who have individually received it. There must be the personal act of faith; there must be my solitary coming to Him. As the old mystics used to define prayer, so I might define the whole process by which men are saved from their sins, "the flight of the lonely soul to the lonely God." My brother, it is not enough for you to say, "We have sinned"; say, "I have sinned." It is not enough that from a gathered congregation there should go up the united litany, "Lord, have mercy upon us!" "Christ, have mercy upon us!" "Lord, have mercy upon us! " You must make the prayer your own: " Lord, have mercy upon me! " It is not enough that you should believe, as I suppose most of you fancy that you believe, that Christ has died for the sins of the whole world. That belief will give you no share in His blessedness. You must come to closer grips with Him than that; and you must be able to say, "Who loved me and gave Himself for me." Let us have no running away into the crowd. Come out, and stand by yourself, and for yourself stretch out your own hand, and take Christ for yourself.

A man may die of starvation in a granary. You may be lost in the midst of this abundance that Christ has supplied for you. And the difference between really possessing salvation and losing it lies very largely in the difference between saying "us" and "me." " Thou art the man " in regard of the general accusation of sin; "Thou art the man" in regard of the solemn law which proclaims " the soul that sinneth it shall die " And- blessed be God! - "Thou art the man" in regard of the great promise that says, " If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink." Christ gives you a blank cheque in this world: " Whoso cometh unto Me, I will in no wise cast out," Write thine own name in, and by thy personal faith in the Lamb of God that died for thee, thy sins shall pass away; and all the fulness of God shall be thy very own for ever. " If thou be wise, thou shalt be wise for thyself; and if thou scornest, thou alone shalt bear it"

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