Streams in the Desert

Devotional For

October 29

      Specialize in the Impossible
      
      "The hill country shall be thine" (Josh. 17:18, RV).
      
      There is always room higher up. When the valleys are full of Canaanites, whose iron chariots withstand your progress, get up into the hills, occupy the upper spaces. If you can no longer work for God, pray for those who can. If you cannot move earth by your speech, you may move Heaven. If the development of life on the lower slopes is impossible, through limitations of service, the necessity of maintaining others, and such-like restrictions, let it break out toward the unseen, the eternal, the Divine.
      
      Faith can fell forests. Even if the tribes had realized what treasures lay above them, they would hardly have dared to suppose it possible to rid the hills of their dense forest-growth. But as God indicated their task, He reminded them that they had power enough. The visions of things that seem impossible are presented to us, like these forest-covered steeps, not to mock us, but to incite us to spiritual exploits which would be impossible unless God had stored within us the great strength of His own indwelling.
      
      Difficulty is sent to reveal to us what God can do in answer to the faith that prays and works. Are you straitened in the valleys? Get away to the hills, live there; get honey out of the rock, and wealth out of the terraced slopes now hidden by forest. --Daily Devotional Commentary
      
      Got any rivers they say are uncrossable,
      Got any mountains they say 'can't tunnel through'?
      We specialize in the wholly impossible,
      Doing the things they say you can't do.
      --Song of the Panama builders
      
      Rejoice Evermore
      
      "And again I say, Rejoice" (Phil. 4:4).
      
      It is a good thing to rejoice in the Lord. Perhaps you have tried this, and the first time seemed to fail. Never mind, keep right on and when you cannot feel any joy, when there is no spring, and no seeming comfort and encouragement, still rejoice, and count it all joy. Even when you fall into divers temptations, reckon it joy and delight and God will make your reckoning good. Do you suppose your Father will let you carry the banner of His victory and His gladness on to the front of the battle, and then coolly stand back and see you captured or beaten back by the enemy? NEVER! The Holy Spirit will sustain you in your bold advance, and fill your heart with gladness and praise, and you will find your heart all exhilarated and refreshed by the fullness within. Lord teach me to rejoice in Thee, and to "rejoice evermore." --Selected
      
      "The weakest saint may Satan rout,
      Who meets him with a praiseful shout."
      
      "Be filled with the Spirit...singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord" (Eph. 5:18-19).
      
      Here the Apostle urges the use of singing as one of the inspiring helps in the spiritual life. He counsels his readers not to seek their stimulus through the body, but through the spirit; not by the quickening of the flesh, but by the exaltation of the soul.
      
      "Sometimes a light surprises
      The Christian while he sings."
      
      Let us sing even when we do not feel like it, for thus we may give wings to leaden feet and turn weariness into strength. --J. H. Jowett
      
      "At midnight Paul and Silas prayed, and sang praises unto God: and the prisoners heard them" (Acts 16:25).
      
      Oh, Paul, thou wondrous example to the flock, who could thus glory, bearing in the body as thou didst "the marks of the Lord Jesus"! Marks from stoning almost to the death, from thrice beating with rods, from those hundred and ninety-five stripes laid on thee by the Jews, and from stripes received in that Philippian jail, which had they not drawn blood would not have called for washing! Surely the grace which enabled thee to sing praises under such suffering is all-sufficient grace. --J. Roach
      
      "Oh, let us rejoice in the Lord, evermore,
      When darts of the tempter are flying,
      For Satan still dreads, as he oft did of yore,
      Our singing much more than our sighing."