Sunday, December 26, 2021

HYMN OF THE DAY

Mercy is welcome news indeed
To those that guilty stand
Wretches that feel what help they need,
Will bless the helping hand.

Who rightly would his alms dispose,
Must give them to the poor;
None but the wounded patient knows
The comforts of His cures.

We all have sinned against our God;
Exception none can boast;
But he that feels the heaviest load
Will prize forgiveness most.

No reckoning can we rightly keep;
For who the sums can know?
Some souls are fifty pieces deep,
And some five hundred owe.

But, let our debts be what they may,
However great or small,
As soon as we have nought to pay
Our Lord forgives us all.

‘Tis perfect poverty alone
That sets the soul at large;
While we can call one mite our own
We have no full discharge.

Tune: “Amazing Grace”, pg. #236

THE TRUE PEOPLE OF GOD

“For we are the circumcision, which worship God in the Spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh” (Phil. 3:3).

The believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, having been given a new heart in regenerating grace, now worships God as He is revealed by the Holy Spirit. He rejoices in Christ Jesus Who has eternally stood as his Surety, has established the righteousness of God in which he’s robed, has purged his sins before God being made sin for His people at Calvary and now ever liveth to make intercession for him. And now, by the grace of God, that redeemed and regenerated sinner has no confidence in the flesh...all his confidence is in Him Who loved him and gave Himself for His sheep. - Marvin Stalnaker

CHRISTIANS

When we become Christians, it is very natural for us to say to ourselves, “We don’t want to be second-rate, or half-hearted Christians; or prove to be like the Laodicean professors, neither cold nor hot; or like those of whom the apostle John wrote, “They went out from us, but they were not of us.” We all said that we had a holy ambition to bring forth fruit to the glory of God, to love our Lord much, and manifest that love in every possible act of devotion to Him. But…as the years have gone by, we feel that our hearts and souls are not as tender towards our Saviour as at the first, our zeal is not as hot. Let me tell you one thing that often makes me feel a great tenderness of soul and helps rekindle that love for my Master: It is a sense of His glorious love. If you ever offend a person, and that person, instead of being the least bit angry, lets fall a tear, but says nothing, and you hear later that he has been doing everything for your good, and that the very thing which made you angry was really intended to be a blessing to you, oh, you feel that you can never forgive yourself. To do a wrong thing is bad at any time, but to do a wrong to One who is so good and kind as God, is infinitely wrong.

Haven’t you often asked yourself, “How could I have done this?” I am one of God’s chosen people; He loved me before the foundation of the world, though I didn’t know it. Christ wrote my name on His hands and on His heart. He shed His blood to redeem me long before I knew it or Him. I reviled His name, yet He prepared a place for me in Heaven, in the very presence of God almighty. His holy will purposed from eternity that He was going to save me, that His grace would seek me out, that his love would not take all the “NO’s”, and all the resistance of my heart and will. He said you are mine, I bought you with my blood, and I WILL HAVE YOU!