Light for Our Life

Psalm 36:9

    So completely do we depend upon God for our salvation, that we receive not one part of it that did not come from God, and was given us because He wanted us to have it. As surely as every heartbeat comes from Him, as surely as all our sunshine comes from Him, so every aspect and phase of our salvation comes from God as a free gift.

    In Psalm 36:9, which we considered briefly yesterday, David wrote: ''For with Thee is the fountain of life: in Thy light shall we see light."   That last clause surely presents an awesome and wonderful truth. In God's light we see light. If God does not turn on the light, we are not going to see any of the works of salvation which He performed for us in His Son, and in us by His Son's Spirit.   The cross will mean nothing to us. We will not really know what a blessing is but will continue to call the things lying under the curse blessings. The works of darkness we will call beautiful. Worldly fools we will call wise.

    Having caused us to be born again, God also enlightens us and makes us see His work for us in Christ, understand it, and call it beautiful. In God's light we shall see what spiritually is light and not darkness. We shall see Christ as "the light to lighten the Gentiles", Luke 2:32. Then we will sing (PRC Psalter):

    Lord to me Thy ways make known
    Guide in truth and teach Thou me;
    Thou my Savior art alone,
    All the day I wait for Thee.

    We need life: but we also need instruction. We must be spiritually alive; but we must also receive spiritual enlightenment. We are saved by grace: but we are saved in order to be able to serve God and praise and magnify His name. It is good that we have been saved; but we are saved in order to do good and must be called away from our unbelief and evil works.

    Therefore we must see God as God, but also as our Savior. We must see Christ and the truth that is in Him. The new life we received must be activated. With spiritual light shining in our souls we shall walk in the light and reveal ourselves as children of light.

Read: Psalm 25 
Psalter versification: #67:1

Daily Meditations on the Heidelberg Catechism

Song for Meditation: Psalter #149
Why not sing along??

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Through the Bible in One Year
Read today:
Hosea 4 ; Hosea 5:1-15 
2 John 1:1-13 
Psalm 125:1-5 
Proverbs 29:9-11 
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Quote for Reflection:

“Praise is quite inevitable in view of what we have already seen in this Epistle. If we realize truly what “grace” and “peace” mean we cannot help praising…There is no more true test of our Christian profession than to discover how prominent this note of praise and thanksgiving is in our life. Is it to be found welling up out of our hearts and experience as it invariably did with the Apostle Paul? Is it constantly breaking forth in us and manifest in our lives? …All must surely agree that it is impossible to read through the New Testament without seeing that this is to be the supreme thing in the Christian life. It must of necessity be so, because if this gospel is true, that God has sent His own Son into the world to do for us the things we have been considering, then you would expect Christians to be entirely different from unbelievers; you would expect them to live in a relationship to God that would be evident to all, and that should above everything else produce this quality of joy…Hence we find this constant exhortation in the New Testament to praise God and offer up thanksgiving. This is what differentiates us from the world. The world is very miserable and unhappy; it is full of cursing and complaints. But praise, thanksgiving and contentment mark out the Christian and show that he is no longer “of the world”.  ~ D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones on the “praise” of Ephesians 1:3 and our lives