Daily Devotionals

Bowen's Daily Meditations

Devotional: July 4th

’’ Many sorrows shall be to the wicked; but he that trusteth in the Lord, mercy shall compass him about." - Psalms 32:10.

These parallelisms of Scripture seem sometimes very rude. This one, for instance, teaches us that the wicked are they who trust not in the Lord. Men know not what to make of this definition. As for the wicked, they say, we know well who they are; these men that are brought up at the sessions of the Civil Courts, and tried for felonies, murders, misdemeanors; and besides these, certain other persons who have given us annoyance without rendering themselves amenable to the law. Men that beat slaves to death, women that destroy their infants, children that expose their parents to the waves or to wild animals, - these, too, are wicked.

But do you trust in God? have you made the everlasting God your refuge? do you walk by faith? do you condemn yourself and recognize Christ as the source of all your goodness, wisdom, strength? If not, then you need not go out of yourself to find the wicked. " Thou art the man;" the very man the Bible talks so much about, as needing to be born again, being under condemnation, a child of wrath, led captive by the god of this world. How deplorable is it that in reading the descriptions of the wicked in the Bible, you should always be thinking of another, rather than of yourself. For what we are now pressing upon you, though it may seem rude, yet has in it a well-head of exquisite consolation. For observe, it is a very simple matter to pass out of the ranks of the wicked, to escape their many sorrows, and to find yourself compassed about by mercy, as by a legion of angels. You have only to trust in the Lord; to discover yourself ruined, and hasten to a throne of grace; to let faith rule in your heart; to receive and be governed by the Holy Spirit. The best of men that ever lived, were once wicked like yourself, and only by faith in God’s goodness, through Christ, were they made to differ.

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