Daily Devotionals

Music For the Soul

Devotional: June 17th

DELIGHT IN GOD’S WILL

I delight to do Thy will, O my God: yea, Thy law is within my heart. - Psalms 40:8

To have Christ shrined in the heart is the heart of Christianity, and Christ Himself is our law. So, in another sense than that which I have been already touching, the law is written on the heart on which, by faith and self-surrender, the name of Christ is written. And when it becomes our whole duty to become like Him, then He, being enthroned in our hearts, our law is within, and Himself to His " darlings " shall be, as the poet has it about another matter, " both law and impulse." Write His name upon your hearts, and your law of life is thereby written there. The very specific gift of Christianity to men is the gift of a new nature, which is " created in righteousness and holiness that flows from truth." The communication of a Divine life kindred with, and percipient of, and submissive to, the Divine will, is the gift that Christianity - or, rather, let us put away the abstraction and say that Christ - offers to us all, and gives to every man who will accept it. And thus, and in other ways on which I cannot dwell now, this great article of the New Covenant lies at the very foundation of the Christian life, and gives its peculiar tinge and cast to all Christian morality, commandment, and obligation

But let me remind you how this great truth has to be held with caution. The evidence of this letter (Hebrews) itself shows that, whilst the writer regarded it as a distinctive characteristic of the Gospel, that by it men’s wills were stamped with a delight in the law of God, and a transcript thereof, he still regarded these wills as unstable, as capable of losing the sharp lettering, of having the writing of God obliterated, and still regarded it as possible that there should be apostasy and departure. So there is nothing in God’s promise which suspends the need for effort and for conflict. Still " the flesh lusteth against the spirit." Still there are parts of the nature on which that law is not written. It is the final triumph, that the whole man, body, soul, and spirit, is, through and through, penetrated with and joyfully obedient to the commandments of the Lord. There is need, too, not only for continuous progress, effort, conflict, in order to keep our hearts open for His handwriting, but also for much caution, lest at any time we should mistake our own self-will for the utterance of the Divine voice. " Love, and do what thou wilt," said a great Christian teacher. It is an unguarded statement; but, profoundly true as in some respects it is, it is only absolutely true if we have made sure that the "thou" that "wills" is the heart on which God has written His law.

Only God can do this for us. One Man has transcribed the Divine will on His will without blurring a letter or omitting a clause. One Man has been able to say, in the presence of the most fearful temptations, "Not My will, but Thine, be done." One Man has so completely written, perceived, and obeyed the law of His Father, that, looking back on all His life. He was conscious of no defect or divergence, either in motive or in act, and could affirm on the Cross, "It is finished." He who thus perfectly kept that Divine law will give to us, if we ask Him, His Spirit, to write it upon our hearts, and "the law of the spirit of life which was in Christ Jesus shall make us free from the law of sin and death."