Streams in the Desert - Jan 17

Daniel, servant of the living God, has your God, whom you serve continually, been able to rescue you? (Daniel 6: 20)

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We find the expression “the living God” many times in the Scriptures, and yet it is the very thing we are so prone to forget. We know it is written “the living God,” but in our daily life there is almost nothing we lose sight of as often as the fact that God is the living God. We forget that He is now exactly what He was three or four thousand years ago, that He has the same sovereign power, and that He extends the same gracious love toward those who love and serve Him. We overlook the fact that He will do for us now what He did thousands of years ago for others, simply because He is the unchanging, living God. What a great reason to confide in Him, and in our darkest moments to never lose sight of the fact that He is still, and ever will be, the living God!

Be assured, if you walk with Him, look to Him, and expect help from Him, He will never fail you. An older believer who has known the Lord for forty-four years wrote the following as an encouragement to you: “God has never failed me. Even in my greatest difficulties, heaviest trials, and deepest poverty and need, He has never failed me. Because I was enabled by God’s grace to trust Him, He has always come to my aid. I delight in speaking well of His name.”
~George Mueller

Martin Luther, deep in thought and needing to grasp hidden strength during a time of danger and fear in his life, was seen tracing on the table with his finger the words, “He lives! He lives!” This is our hope for ourselves, His truth, and humankind. People come and go. Leaders, teachers, and philosophers speak and work for a season and then fall silent and powerless. He abides. They die but He lives. They are lights that glow yet are ultimately extinguished. But He is the true Light from which they draw their brightness, and He shines forevermore.
~Alexander Maclaren

“One day I came to know Dr. John Douglas Adam,” wrote Charles Gallaudet Trumbull. “I learned he considered his greatest spiritual asset to be his unwavering awareness of the actual presence of Jesus. Nothing sustained him as much, he said, as the realization that Jesus was always actually present with him. This realization was totally independent of his own feelings, his worthiness, and his perceptions as to how Jesus would demonstrate His presence.

“Furthermore, he said Christ was the center of his thoughts. Whenever his mind was free from other matters, it would turn to Christ. Whenever he was alone, and no matter where he was, he would talk aloud to Christ as easily and as naturally as to any human friend. That is how very real Jesus’ actual presence was to him.”

Reference

Cowman, L. B. E.; Reimann, Jim (2008-09-09). Streams in the Desert: 366 Daily Devotional Readings (pp. 36-37). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

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