Two For

Yesterday I was reading this first devotional and was so blessed by reading it, I knew God wanted me to share with someone. See being obedient means doing what is asked of you. As what happens sometimes is I ran out of minutes in the day and I didn't get to posting and commenting on what the devotional meant to me and what God was speaking to me through it.

Today as I read another of A. B. Simpson's devotional, which I also added to this posting, I am in awe how I am so touched by someone else words and then realize God was speaking to them and that is what brings me to the devotionals. The common thread between both is "God!"

January 30 [A devotional by A. B. Simpson]
"Cast down but not destroyed" (II. Corinthians iv. 9).

[How did God bring about the miracle of the Red Sea? By shutting His people in on every side, so that there was no way out but the divine way. The Egyptians were behind them, the sea was in front of them, the mountains were on every side of them. There was no escape but from above.

Some one has said that the devil can wall us in, but he cannot roof us over. We can always get out at the top. Our difficulties are but God's challenges, and He makes them so hard, often, that we must go under or get above them.

In such an hour, if there is a divine element, it brings out the highest possibilities of faith and we are pushed by the very emergency into God's best.

Beloved, this is God's hour. If you will rise to meet it you will get such a hold upon Him that you will never be in extremities again, or if you are, you will learn to call them not extremities, but opportunities, and like Jacob, you will go forth from that night at Peniel, no longer Jacob, but victorious Israel. Let us bring to Him our need and prove Him true.]

As I read that devotional I thought of in my life the many times I almost went under. The Red Sea and Egyptians were represented by daily problems, work, family, friends, financial and constant sin that surrounded me. When I looked up and cried out, I was embraced in "God's hour"!

January 31 [A devotional by A. B. Simpson]

"Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption" (I. Corinthians i. 30).

[More and more we are coming to see the supreme importance of getting the right conception of sanctification, not as a blessing, but as a personal union with the personal Saviour and the indwelling Holy Spirit. Thousands of people get stranded after they have embarked on the great voyage of holiness.

They find themselves failing and falling, and are astonished and perplexed, and they conclude that they must have been mistaken in their experience, and so they make a new attempt at the same thing and again fall, until at last, worn out with the experiment, they conclude that the experience is a delusion, or, at least, that it was never intended for them, and so they fall back into the old way, and their last state is worse than their first.

What people need to-day to satisfy their deep hunger and to give them a permanent and Divine experience is to know, not sanctification as a state, but Christ as a living Person, who is waiting to enter the heart that is willing to receive Him.]

My friends, today's post is "Two for", two blessing for you from God. Even in today's times as back when A. B. Simpson was writing down these devotionals people were failing, falling, perplexed, worn out, delusion-ed and why? Not knowing Christ as a living Person. See at my lowest point I cried out, reached up, grabbed hold and never let go. Jesus will not let go, why would any of us want to let go of Him?

Grab Hold

I started to fall
and didn’t know why.
I needed help
and started to cry.

I looked around
for someone to see.
I started to yell,
please someone help me.

I looked to my left
and then to my right,
my worst fear was known
there was no one in sight.

No one to my back
or to my front,
I couldn’t walk
and I couldn’t run.

I cried out to the Lord,
where are You to behold?
He said, “Lookup My child,
and just grab hold”!

E. P. Shagott
1/31/10

From God's heart, to mine, to yours,
Ed Shagott