| Devotional | Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow
It is said that a mother found her small boy standing beside a tall sunflower, with his feet stuck in the ground. When she asked, "What in the world are you doing there?" he naively answered, "Why, I am trying to grow to be a man." His mother laughed heartily at the idea of his being planted in the ground in order to grow like the sunflower. Th ...read |
| Devotional | Continue ye in my love
There are many different atmospheres in which one may live. Some people live in an atmosphere of thought. Their faces are thoughtful, their minds intellectual. They live in their ideas, their concepts of truth, their tastes and aesthetic nature. Other people live in their animal nature, in the lusts of the flesh and eye, the coarse, low atmosphere ...read |
| Devotional | Count it all joy
We do not always feel joyful, but we are to count it all joy. The word "reckon" is one of the key words of Scripture. It is the same word used about our death to self (Romans 6: 11). We do not feel dead. We are painfully conscious of something that would gladly return to life. But we are to treat ourselves as dead and neither fear nor obey the ol ...read |
| Devotional | Count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations
The battle does us good. The conflict educates us, strengthens us, establishes us. It is necessary that we be grounded and settled and finally approved and rewarded. One of the best results of temptation is that it shows us what is in our hearts. Until temptation comes, we feel strong and self-confident; but when the keen edge of the adversary's w ...read |
| Devotional | Delight thyself also in the Lord
Daniel's heart was filled with God's love for His work and kingdom, and his prayers were the mightiest forces of his time. Through them God gave to him the restoration of Israel to their own land, and the acknowledgment by the rulers of the world of the God of whom he testified and for whom he lived. There is a beautiful promise in Psalm 37: Deli ...read |
| Devotional | Denying ungodliness
Let us say no to the flesh, the world and the love of self, and learn the holy self-denial of which so much of the life of obedience consists. We must make no provision for the flesh, give no recognition to our lower life. We must say no to everything earthly and selfish. How very much of the life of faith consists in simply denying ourselves. We b ...read |
| Devotional | Dwell deep
God's presence blends with every other thought and consciousness, flowing sweetly and evenly through our business plans, our social interactions, our hearts' affections, our manual toll, our entire lives. Like the fragrance of a flower or the presence of a friend consciously near, and yet not hindering in the least the most intense and constant p ...read |
| Sermon | Emblems And Aspects Of The Holy Spirit
The Seven Spirits which are before His Throne.- Rev. i:4.
This expression denotes the fullness of the Holy Spirit. The number seven is expressive of divine completeness, and the benediction of the seven spirits is equivalent to the ascription of Paul in the first chapter of Ephesians: "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who ...read |
| Sermon | Enlarged Work
"Enlarge the place of thy tent." Isa. liv: 2a
About one hundred years ago a humble Baptist preacher stood in an English pulpit and announced this text at the opening of what was perhaps the first Missionary Convention of modern times. He then proposed the two following divisions as the themes of his discourse. 1. Attempt great things for God. 2 ...read |
| Devotional | Epbraim, he hath mixed himself
It is a great thing to learn to take God first. Then He can afford to give us everything else without the fear of its hurting us. As long as you want anything very much, especially more than you want God, it is an idol. When you become satisfied with God, however, everything else so loses its charm that He can give it to you without harm. Then you ...read |
| Devotional | Even as he is pure
God is now aiming to reproduce in us the pattern which has already appeared in Jesus Christ, the Son of God. The Christian life is not an imitation of Christ, but a direct new creation in Christ, and the union with Christ is so complete that He imparts His own nature to us and lives His own life in us. This, then, is not an imitation but simply the ...read |
| Devotional | Even Christ pleased not himself
Let this be a day of self-forgetting ministry for Christ and others. Let us not once think of being ministered unto, but rather say with Him: I am among you as he that serveth (Luke 22:27). Let us not drag our burdens through the day but drop all our loads of care and be free to carry His yoke and His burden. Let us make the happy exchange, relinqu ...read |
| Devotional | every thought to the obedience of Christ
If we would abide in Christ we must have no confidence in self. Self-repression must be ever the prime necessity of divine fullness and efficiency. How quickly we want to spring to the front when any emergency arises. When something in which we are interested comes up, we say what we think under some sudden impulse. Then perhaps there are weeks of ...read |
| Devotional | Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die
Death and resurrection are the central ideas of nature and Christianity. We see them in the transformation of the chrysalis, in the buried seed bursting into the bud and blossom of spring, in the transformation of the cold shroud of winter into the tinted robes of spring. We see it throughout the Bible in the symbol of circumcision with its signifi ...read |
| Devotional | Faint, yet pursuing
It is a good thing to learn to depend upon God to work through our feeble resources and yet, while so depending, to be absolutely faithful and diligent and not allow our trust to deteriorate into indolence. We find no sloth or negligence in Gideon or his three hundred; though they were weak and few, they were completely loyal, and everything in th ...read |
| Devotional | Faith is . . . the evidence of things not seen
True faith drops its letter in the post office box and lets it go. Distrust holds onto a corner of it and wonders why the answer never comes. In my desk are some letters that I wrote weeks ago. But there was some slight uncertainty about the address or the contents so they are yet unmailed. As yet they have not done me or anyone else any good. They ...read |
| Devotional | Faithful in that which is least
The man who missed his opportunity and met the doom of the faithless servant was not the man with five talents, or the man with two, but the man who had only one. The people who are in danger of missing life's great meaning are the people of ordinary capacity and opportunity who say to themselves, There is so little I can do that I will not try to ...read |
| Devotional | Fear thou not; for I am with thee
Satan is continually trying to weaken our faith by fear. He is a great metaphysician and knows the paralyzing effect of fear-the great enemy of faith. If he can cause us to fear, he will stop us from trusting and hinder the very blessing we need. Job found the peril of fear and gives us the sorrowful testimony I feared a fear, and it came upon me ( ...read |
| Devotional | Fight the good fight of faith
How must God feel when we disappoint Him after He has given us His heart's blood, put so many advantages in our way and expended upon us so much grace and care. it makes the spirit cry, "Who is sufficient for these things?" In my mind's eye I can see before me the time when we shall stand on heaven's shore and look back upon the years that hav ...read |
| Sermon | Filled with the Spirit
"Be filled with the Spirit." Eph. v: 18. "Ye are complete (filled) in Him." Col. ii: 10.
The emphatic word in both these verses "filled." It is the Greek plaroo which means to fill full, so full that there will be no room left empty. This is the thought which, with the assistance of the Holy Spirit, we desire to impress in this message. It does ...read |
A.B. Simpson