[b]April 11th - What Kind of Revival Do We Need?[/b]
How is the church to be lifted up to the abundant life in Christ, which will fit her for the work that God is putting before Her? Nothing will help but a revival, nothing less than a tremendous spiritual revival. Great tides of spiritual energy must be put into motion if this work is to be accomplished. Now there may be great differences in what we understand by revival. Many will think of the work of evangelists like Moody and Torrey. We need a different and mightier revival than those were. In them the chief object was the conversion of sinners, and incidentally, the quickening of believers. But the revival that we need calls for a deeper and more entire upheaval of the Church. The great defect of those revivals was that the converts were received into a Church that was not living on the high level of consecration and holiness, and speedily sank down to the average standard of ordinary religious life. Even the believers who had been roused by it, also gradually returned to their former life of clouded fellowship and lack of power to testify for Christ.

_________________
SI Moderator - Greg Gordon

[b]April 12th - Our First Priority[/b]
If this be the root of the tree, its nature must be seen in every branch and leaf and fruit. If humility be the first, the all-inclusive grace of the life of Jesus - if humility be the secret of His atonement - then the health and strength of our spiritual lives will entirely depend upon our giving this grace first priority in our lives. We need to make humility the chief thing we admire in Him, the chief thing we ask of Him, and the one thing for which we sacrifice all else. Is it any wonder that the Christian life is so often feeble and fruitless when the very root of Christ's life is neglected - is unknown? We must have a humility in which we rest in nothing less than the end and death of self. A humility which gives up all the honor of men, as Jesus did, to seek the honor that comes from God alone. A humility which absolutely makes and counts itself nothing so that God may be all and the Lord alone may be exalted.

_________________
SI Moderator - Greg Gordon

[b]April 13th - Humility[/b]
When I look back upon my own Christian experience, or at the church of Christ as a whole, I am amazed at how little humility is seen as the distinguishing feature of discipleship. In our preaching and in our living, in our daily interaction in our families and in our social life, as well as fellowship with other Christians, how easy it is to see that humility is not esteemed the cardinal virtue, the root from which grace can grow and the one indispensable condition of true fellowship with Jesus. The fact that it is possible for anyone to say of those who claim to seek holiness that the profession has not been accompanied with increasing humility, is a loud call to all earnest Christians, whatever truth there be in the charge, to prove that meekness and lowliness of heart are the chief marks by which they who follow the Lamb of God are to be known.

_________________
SI Moderator - Greg Gordon

[b]April 14th - God Expects Your Surrender[/b]
You know in daily life what absolute surrender is. You know that everything has to be given up to its special, definite object and service. I have a pen in my pocket, and that pen is absolutely surrendered to the one work of writing. That pen must be absolutely surrendered to my hand if I am to write properly with it. If another holds it partly, I cannot write properly. This coat is absolutely given up to me to cover my body. This building is entirely given up to religious services. And now, do you expect that in your immortal being, in the divine nature that you have received by regeneration, God can work His work, every day and every hour, unless you are entirely given up to Him? God cannot. The temple of Solomon was absolutely surrendered to God when it was dedicated to Him. And every one of us is a temple of God, in which God will dwell and work mightily on one condition-absolute surrender to Him. God claims it, God is worthy of it, and without it God cannot work His blessed work in us.

_________________
SI Moderator - Greg Gordon

[b]April 15th - The Cause Of This Discrepancy Between God's Gifts, And Our Low Experience[/b]
The believer is complaining that God has never given him a kid. Or, God has given him some blessing, but has never given the full blessing. He has never filled him with His Spirit. "I never," he says, "had my heart, as a fountain, giving forth the rivers of living water promised in John vii. 38." What is the cause? The elder son thought he was serving his father faithfully "these many years" in his father's house, but it was in the spirit of bondage and not in the spirit of a child, so that his unbelief blinded him to the conception of a father's love and kindness, and he was unable all the time to see that his father was ready, not only to give him a kid, but a hundred, or a thousand kids, if he would have them. He was simply living in unbelief, in ignorance, in blindness, robbing himself of the privileges that the father had for him. So, if there be a discrepancy between our life and the fulfillment and enjoyment of all God's promises, the fault is ours. It our experience be not what God wants it to be, it is because of our unbelief in the love of God, in the power of God, and in the reality of God's promises.

_________________
SI Moderator - Greg Gordon

[b]April 16th - Pray Without Ceasing[/b]
[i]Who can do this?[/i] How can one do it who is surrounded by the cares of daily life? How can a mother love her child without ceasing? How can the eyelid without ceasing hold itself ready to protect the eye? How can I breathe and feel and hear without ceasing? Because all these are the functions of a healthy, natural life. And so, if the spiritual life be healthy, under the full power of the Holy Spirit, praying without ceasing will be natural. Pray Without Ceasing. - Does it refer to continual acts of prayer, in which we are to persevere till we obtain, or to the spirit of prayerfulness that should animate us all the day? It includes both. The example of our Lord Jesus shows us this. We have to enter our closet for special seasons of prayer; we are at times to persevere there in importunate prayer. We are also all the day to walk in God's presence, with the whole heart set upon heavenly things. Without set times of prayer, the spirit of prayer will be dull and feeble. Without the continual prayerfulness, the set times will not avail.

[i]Does that refer to prayer for ourselves or others?[/i] To both. It is because many confine it to themselves that they fail so in practicing it. It is only when the branch gives itself to bear fruit, more fruit, much fruit, that it can live a healthy life, and expect a rich inflow of sap. The death of Christ brought Him to the place of everlasting intercession. Your death with Him to sin and self sets you free from the care of self, and elevates you to the dignity of intercessor - one who can get life and blessing from God for others. Know your calling; begin this your work. Give yourself wholly to it, and before you know it you will be finding something of this "Praying always" within you.

[i]How can I learn it?[/i] The best way of learning to do a thing - in fact the only way - is to do it. Begin by setting apart some time every day, say ten or fifteen minutes, in which you say to God and to yourself, that you come to Him now as an intercessor for others. Let it be after your morning or evening prayer, or any other time. If you cannot secure the same time every day, do not be troubled. Only see that you do your work. Christ chose you and appointed you to pray for others. If at first you do not feel any special urgency or faith or power in your prayers, do not let that hinder you. Quietly tell your Lord Jesus of your feebleness; believe that the Holy Spirit is in you to teach you to pray, and be assured that if you begin, God will help you. God cannot help you unless you begin and keep on.

[i]How do I know what to pray for?[/i] If once you begin, and think of all the needs around you, you will soon find enough. But to help you, this little book is issued with subjects and hints for prayer for a month. It is meant that we should use it month by month, until we know more fully how to follow the Spirit's leading, and have learned, if need be, to. make our own list of subjects, and then can dispense with it. In regard to the use of these helps, a few words may be needed.

_________________
SI Moderator - Greg Gordon

[b]April 17th - He Died For Everyone[/b]
He died for sin, bearing its curse, and suffering death as God's righteous judgment on account of it. His death opened up the way to God for us. It did for us what we cannot and need not do; it wrought out a finished salvation, which we have but to accept and repose upon. According to the other aspect, He died to sin. His death was a proof of His resistance to sin and its temptation, of His readiness rather to give up life than yield to sin; a proof that there is no way of being entirely free form the flesh and its connection with sin, but by yielding the old life to death, in order to receive afresh and direct from God a life entirely new. The faith in the death for sin, must lead us into the death to sin. The one view is that of substitution: Christ doing what I cannot do. The other that of fellowship: Christ working in me what I see in Himself. The former is a finished work, and gives me boldness at once and forever to trust God. The latter is the power of sanctification, as the death and the life of Christ work in me. It is because of the suffering of death, that He has been crowned with glory and honor. "He was made a little lower than the angels that He might taste death for everyman," might drink the cup of death, as the fruit of sin, for all. . . Jesus tasted its bitterness, as the curse of sin, in full measure. . . to make reconciliation for the sins of the people. All these expressions--suffering death, tasting death for all, bringing to nought the devil, making reconciliation for the sins of the people--refer to the finished work which Christ wrought, the sure and everlasting foundation on which our faith and hope can rest. Begin here and strike the roots of our faith deep in the work which Christ, as our Substitute, wrought on Calvary. Let us study the words carefully, and remember them well, and believe them fully: Christ has tasted death for all, and emptied the cup; Christ has brought to naught the devil; Christ has made reconciliation for sin. Death and the devil and sin: these have been put away, have been brought to naught. a complete deliverance has been effected. The sufferings and death of Christ have such an infinite worth and preciousness in God's sight that no soul, who is resolved to have nothing more to do with sin, need any longer fear, but may with boldness meet its God. The death of Christ has wrought with mighty power in heaven and earth and hell. It has finished, and delighted God; it has conquered death and sin and hell; it has redeemed and delivered mankind. Let that death live in your heart; it will work there its mighty wonders too. And you shall find Jesus in your heart, for the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor.

_________________
SI Moderator - Greg Gordon

[b]April 18th - Power Of Our Prayer[/b]
"Christ teaches us to pray not only by example, by instruction, by command, by promises, but by showing us Himself, the ever-living Intercessor, as our Life. It is when we believe this, and go and abide in Him for our prayer-life too, that our fears of not being able to pray aright will vanish, and we shall joyfully and triumphantly trust our Lord to teach us to pray, to be Himself the life and the power of our prayer."

_________________
SI Moderator - Greg Gordon

[b]April 19th - The Power of Persevering Prayer[/b]
Of all the mysteries of the prayer world the need of persevering prayer is one of the greatest. That the Lord, who is so loving and longing to bless, should have to be asked, time after time, sometimes year after year, before the answer comes, we cannot easily understand. It is also one of the greatest practical difficulties in the exercise of believing prayer. When, after persevering pleading, our prayer remains unanswered, it is often easiest for our lazy flesh, and it has all the appearance of pious submission, to think that we must now cease praying, because God may have His secret reason for withholding His answer to our request. It is by faith alone that the difficulty is overcome. When once faith has taken its stand on God's word and the Name of Jesus, and has yielded itself to the leading of the Spirit to seek God's will and honor alone in its prayer, it need not be discouraged by delay. It knows from Scripture that the power of believing prayer is simply irresistible; real faith can never be disappointed. It knows that just as water, to exercise the irresistible power it can have, must be gathered up and accumulated until the stream can come down in full force, so there must often be a heaping up of prayer until God sees that the measure is full, when the answer comes. It knows that just as the peasant farmer has to take his ten thousand steps to sow his tens of thousands seeds, each one a part of the preparation for the final harvest, so there is a need for often repeated persevering prayer, all working out some desired blessing. It knows for certain that not a single believing prayer can fail of its effect in heaven, but has its influence, and is treasured up to work out an answer in due time to him who perseveres to the end. It knows that it has to do, not with human thoughts or possibilities, but with the word of the living God. And so, even as Abraham through so many years "who against hope believed in hope" (Romans 4:18), and then "followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises." (Hebrews 6:12)

_________________
SI Moderator - Greg Gordon

[b]April 20th - Power for Praying and Working[/b]
In prayer the power for work is obtained. Wher Jesus was here on earth, He did the greatest works Himself. Devils that the disciples could not cast out d at His word. When He went to be with the Fether, He was no longer here in body to work directly. The disciples were now His Body. All His work from the throne in heaven must and could be done here on earth through them. Now that Christ was leaving the scene and could only work through commissioners, it might have been expected that the works would be fewer and weaker. He assures us of the contrary: "Verily, verily I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father" (John 14:12). His approaching death was to be a breaking down of the power of sin. With the resurrection, the powers of the eternal life were to bake possession of the human body and obtain supremacy over human life. With His ascension, Christ was to receive the power to communicate the Holy Spirit completely to His Body. The union-the oneness between Himself on the throne and those on earthwas to be so intensely and divinely perfect, that He meant it as the literal truth: "Greater works than these shall he do, because I go to the Father."

_________________
SI Moderator - Greg Gordon