FOR THE LOVE OF GOD

Thinking, praying, reading, studying the Bible – when we do these things, we are reflecting on the Word of God. To reflect is to contemplate and/or consider, and God wants us to deeply reflect on His Word so that we can better understand Him.

In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit. – Ephesians 1:13.

Wherever a seal is mentioned in Scripture, you find that it is something that everybody can see. Everybody could see the seal on the mouth of the cave, when Daniel was cast into the den of lions. It would be a seal, perhaps with the king’s likeness on it, or, at any rate, with his name; and this seal, which was wont to be stamped on a document, would, in the case of the den, be stamped upon softened clay. . . . The Lord puts a seal upon His own, that everybody may know them; and this is done “after . . . ye believed.” This must mean something that marks you out to the observation of the world as God’s people, something that the world can see. The sealing in your case is the Spirit producing in you likeness to the Lord,—to the King and to the King’s Son. You have got the seal of God on you when you exhibit likeness to God’s Son. The holier you become, the seal is the more distinct and plain, the more evident to every passer-by, for then will men take notice of you that you have been with Jesus. A seal like that spoken of in Revelation 7:2, “on the forehead” is yours. The sealing is something that cannot be hid. It is not even on the palm of your hand. It is in your forehead: all men see that you are not what you once were. The world takes notice that you are like what they have heard Jesus was. Whenever that takes place, the sealing is begun, and it remains all your lifetime and becomes more and more plain. Every believer is thus “sealed.”
~ BONAR

Scripture for opening text taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®, ESV © 2016 by Crossway Bibles.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Thinking, praying, reading, studying the Bible – when we do these things, we are reflecting on the Word of God. To reflect is to contemplate and/or consider, and God wants us to deeply reflect on His Word so that we can better understand Him.

He has blessed us in the Beloved. – Ephesians 1:6.

There are many locks in my house, and all with different keys; but I have one master-key which opens all. So the Lord has many treasuries and secrets, all shut up from carnal minds with locks which they cannot open; but he who walks in fellowship with Jesus possesses the master-key which will admit him to all the blessings of the covenant; yea, to the very heart of God. Through the Well-beloved we have access to God, to heaven, to every secret of the Lord.
~ SPURGEON

Scripture for opening text taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®, ESV © 2016 by Crossway Bibles.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Thinking, praying, reading, studying the Bible – when we do these things, we are reflecting on the Word of God. To reflect is to contemplate and/or consider, and God wants us to deeply reflect on His Word so that we can better understand Him.

Far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. – Galatians 6:14.

The cross of our Lord Jesus Christ is the center of human history. It is the sun around which the firmament circles; the key to all Scripture history and type; the fact which gives meaning and beauty to all other facts. To ignore the cross is to repeat the error of the old philosophers, who thought that the earth, and not the sun was the centre of our system, and to whom therefore the very heavens were in confusion. To know and love the cross—to stand beside it as the faithful women did when Jesus died—is to obtain a deep insight into the harmonies of all things in heaven and in earth. . . . The radiance that streams from the cross illumines all events and banishes all darkness. When an artist in music, color, or stone, conceives a beautiful idea he seems reluctant to let it drop: he hints at it before he expresses it in complete beauty; nor is he satisfied until he has exhausted his art by the variety of ways in which he has embodied his thought. The practiced sense may detect it now in the symphony, and then in the chorus; now in the general scheme, and again in the minute detail. It recurs again and again. There is the hint, the outline, the slight symptom, anticipating the fuller, richer revelation. Is not this true also of the death of our beloved Lord? The Great Artist of all things, enamored with the wondrous cross, filled the world with foreshadowing and anticipations of it long before it stood with outstretched arms on the little hill of Calvary. You may find them in heathen myths, or in ancient sayings and songs. You may find them in touching incidents of human history. You may, above all, find them upon the pages of the Bible. . . . The sun which now shines, so to speak, from the other side of the cross, so as to fling its shadow forward clear and sharp on the canvas of the present, once shone from where we now stand, and flung its shadow backward upon the canvas of the past.
~ F. B. MEYER

Scripture for opening text taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®, ESV © 2016 by Crossway Bibles.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Thinking, praying, reading, studying the Bible – when we do these things, we are reflecting on the Word of God. To reflect is to contemplate and/or consider, and God wants us to deeply reflect on His Word so that we can better understand Him.

Let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. – Galatians 6:9.

Are we preparing for the true heavenly feast of tabernacles—the great reaping-day of glory? That well-known feast and season in the land of Canaan was a joyous one of old only to the Hebrew who had been unremitting in spring and summer toil. To the sluggard who had left his fields unsown, uncultured, untended, there could be no participation in the songs of the jubilant multitude: he had gone forth before the fall of the early or the latter rains, bearing no precious seed; he could not, therefore, on that festive week, come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him. It was he, who had used with laborious fidelity and drudgery, spade and plough and pruning-hook, who had utilized for field and vineyard the precious rains of heaven, that would bear his palm-branch with most exultant joy, and repose with grateful satisfaction within his shady arbor. If there were no harvest to divide, there could be no gladness. “They joy before Thee according to the joy in harvest, and as men rejoice when they divide the spoil.”

It is so, on a vaster scale, with the spiritual sower and reaper in the prospect of immortality. While we never dare lose sight of the foundation-truth of the gospel, that salvation is of grace, not of works; yet neither dare we reject or overlook the great counterpart assertion, which contains at least no paradox or inconsistency to the eye gifted with spiritual discernment, that “faith without works is dead, being alone.” No waving of the festal palm, by those who have abandoned their fields of heart and life labor to the thorn and the thistle,—who have left the seed unsown, the ground untitled, the vine to languish; and whom God, the great Husbandman, will address with the withering words on the great day of harvest—“What could I have done more to My vineyard than I have done; wherefore, then, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes?” If we would have the joyous song of the heavenly reaper, we must now be among the faithful and diligent sowers.

The rest of the feast of tabernacles above, is only possible to such. No toil here,—no repose, no festal hosanna yonder. “Let us labor, therefore, to enter into that rest.” Up! sow your fields and plant your vineyards; do noble work while you have space and opportunity to do it (in your own hearts and in the world around you) for God and His Christ, encouraged by the assurance—“Be not weary in well-doing, for in due season ye shall reap if ye faint not.” To all such willing and devoted laborers; to all who have listened to the summons of the Master, “Go, work in my vineyard”; to all who have done battle with sin, manfully struggled with temptation, eradicated from the seed-plot of the heart its roots of bitterness; who in a spirit of earnest self-sacrifice have renounced the world, and in a spirit of holy self-consecration and self-surrender have given themselves to God,—the invitation of Christ to the heavy-laden here, will have a new and glorious significance as He welcomes them hereafter at heaven’s great harvest-home, the eternal feast of tabernacles—“Come unto Me, I will give you rest!”
~ MACDUFF

Scripture for opening text taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®, ESV © 2016 by Crossway Bibles.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.