Truth for Life - February 1, 2016
February 1
Speak of Jesus' Wonderful Love
Come, dear readers, let each one of us speak for himself of the wonderful love, not of Jonathan, but of Jesus. We will not relate what we have been told, but the things that we have tasted and handled--of the love of Christ. Your love to me, O Jesus, was wonderful when I was a stranger wandering far from You, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind. Your love restrained me from committing the sin that is unto death and withheld me from self-destruction. Your love held back the axe when Justice said, "Cut it down! Why does it clutter the ground?"
Your love drew me into the wilderness, stripped me there, and made me feel the guilt of my sin and the burden of my iniquity. Your love spoke comfortably to me when I was deeply troubled--"Come to Me, and I will give you rest." Oh, how matchless Your love when, in a moment, You washed my sins away and made my polluted soul, which was crimson with the blood of my nativity and black with the grime of my transgressions, to be white as the driven snow and pure as the finest wool.
How You commended Your love when You whispered in my ears, "I am yours, and you are Mine." Those were kind words when you declared, "The Father Himself loves you." And sweet were the moments when You commended to me the love of the Spirit.
My soul shall never forget those chambers of fellowship where You unveiled Yourself to me. Moses had his cleft in the rock, where he saw the train, the back parts, of his God. We, too, have had our clefts in the rock, where we have seen the full splendors of the Godhead in the person of Christ. Did David remember the tracks of the wild goat, the land of Jordan and the Hermonites? We, too, can remember spots dear to our memory, equal to these in blessedness. Precious Lord Jesus, give us a fresh taste of Your wondrous love with which to begin the month. Amen.
Family Bible reading plan
verse 1 Esther 9, 10
verse 2 Romans 4
Respectable Sins
Whatever happened to sin? Author Jerry Bridges asks if Christians have become so preoccupied with the major sins of society that we’ve lost sight of our need to deal with our own more subtle sins? Bestselling author Dr. Bridges returns to his trademark theme of holiness and addresses a dozen clusters of specific “acceptable” sins that we tend to tolerate in ourselves – such as jealously, anger, pride, unthankfulness, and judgmentalism. Writing not from a height of spiritual accomplishment, but from the trenches of his own battles with sin, Jerry Bridges offers a message of hope in the profound mercy of the Gospel and the transforming grace of God as the means to overcome our subtle sins
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From Morning & Evening revised and edited by Alistair Begg copyright © 2003. Used by permission of Crossway Books, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, IL 60187, www.crossway.org.
