the Fourth Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
Bowen's Daily Meditations
"Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked." - Revelation 3:17.
Take away the sense of need, and blessings are bestowed in vain. They are no longer blessings. Food is of no avail to a man whose appetite is satisfied. Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness; they shall be filled, but not in any sense that shall leave them unacquainted with need. They shall never hunger, as those who have not the means of satisfying their hunger; but only as those who have much goods laid up for everlasting days in Christ. The spring of our happiness is not in ourselves, but in Christ, and so it shall ever be; and the spiritual life that flows to us from him, meets and must ever meet, a desire in us. Desire is not banished from heaven; it walks hand in hand with satisfaction. The branch receives from the vine what the branch needs. Desire brings us to the throne of grace and desire keeps us there.
A Christian without a sense of need; what an unhappy spectacle! The Laodicean church had need of nothing: "Was it that their cup was running over through the unmeasured outpouring of the Holy Spirit? Was the love of God so shed abroad in their hearts that they had no room for more? Not so. Could you satisfy the personal need of the true follower of Christ, he would immediately annex the need of his neighbor; and while there remained a single discoverable need in all the world, he would refuse to know himself unneeding.
The abundance of grace bestowed upon the Christian, has not the tendency to destroy his sense of need. Unto him that hath shall be given, and he shall have more abundance, more and more; for the Spirit of God so gives as to make us value his gifts and desire what he has yet to bestow. The sense of fulness accompanies very low degrees of attainment. If desire goes to sleep, it is because we loiter so much in the path of life, or turn aside to bypaths.
Worldly prosperity has ever been a great snare to the Church. Account for it as we may, desire for spiritual blessings is very much overborne by the acquisition of worldly wealth. A Christian community has some advantages over others, in the pursuit of wealth. Their personal expenditure is limited, in some degree at least, by their professed principles. They are the followers of one who made himself poor. They are industrious, provident, economical, self-subduing, guarded and thoughtful. They gradually become wealthy. Their wealth they look upon as the expression of God’s favor. Pride, self-confidence, worldliness, are pretty sure to follow. Where your treasure is there will your heart be also. The place in their regard occupied by their earthly riches, interferes decidedly with the absorbing attractions that should belong to the things which pertain to life and godliness. "Were there grace enough to maintain unbroken the consecration of our all to Christ, then the flowing in of worldly substance would not be harmful; it would be understood that Christ is just availing himself of our stewardship to pour abroad upon a needy world, not merely spiritual but temporal goods. But too commonly, this consecration fails, when the amount of what is to be consecrated, increases. As there never was a time, probably, when Christians had so large a share of the gold and silver of this world, as they now have, we may well believe that the admonitions contained in this epistle to the Laodiceans, deserve to be seriously pondered at this day, and zealously acted upon.
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