YESTERDAY
In summer 2004, Consecrated (or as I call her, my mami) got me for a gift My Utmost for His Highest, a daily devotional by Oswald Chambers. At first, I couldn't get enough of reading it, and then...well sadly, it faded away as a dust collector on my shelf. I only of recent started reading it in the morning, and it has been quite a blessing. As today is the last day of 2005, I thought I would share what Oswald Chambers had to say for the closing of the year:
Yesterday - ...and the God of Israel will be your rereward ~Isaiah 52:12
Security from Yesterday. "God requireth that which is past." (This verse is form Ecc. 3:15) At the end of the year we turn with eagerness to all that God has for the future, and yet anxiety is apt to arise from remembering the yesterdays. Our present enjoyment of God's grace is apt to be checked by the memory of yesterday's sins and blunders. But God is the God of our yesterdays, and He allows the memory of them in order to turn the past into a ministry of spiritual culture for the future. God reminds us of the past lest we get into a shallow security in the present.
Security for Tomorrow. "For the Lord will go before you." (This verse is from Isaiah 52:12) This is a gracious revelation, that God will garrison where we failed to. He will watch lest things trip us up again into like failure, as they assurdly would do if He were not our rereward. God's hand reaches back to the past and makes a clearing-house for consciense.
Security for Today. "For ye shall not go out with haste." (Also from Isaiah 52:1) As we go forth into the coming year, let it not be in the haste of impetuous, unremembering delight, nor with the flight of impulsive thoughtlessness, but with the patient power of knowing that the God of Isreal will go before us. Our yesterdays present irreparable things to us; it is true that we have lost opportunities which will never return, but God can transorm this destructive anxiety into a constructive thoughtfulness for the future. Let the past sleep, but let it sleep on the bosom of Christ.
Leave the irreparable Past in His hands, and step out into the Irresistable Future with Him.
I hope this has been an encouragment to you, as it has been to me.
Good night, and God Bless
