Having completed for now my review of The Complete Green Letters by Miles Stanford, I’m going to return to my habit of sharing various musings from an assortment of devotional readings. Like today, I will frequently refer, but not limit myself to, Stanford’s devotional offerings found in None But The Hungry Heart. This was originally published in twelve booklets, each containing 31 short devotionals from various authors. None But The Hungary Heart carries forward the spiritual growth themes we’ve studied in The Complete Green Letters. Here is a link to an on-line resource of the book: http://www.abideabove.com/hungry-heart/ It can also be found at Bibleportal.com, a recently discover excellent resource: https://www.bibleportal.com/devotionals/none-but-the-hungry-heart
As a reminder, Miles Stanford’s approach to theology is not within the Reformed context, therefore there are places in None But The Hungry Heart (and The Complete Green Letters) were I may differ and part company. When Miles was living, we had amenable discussions on points where we differed. It is my conviction that God has provided Christ’s church with many different and diverse gifts and talents (1Cor. 3:5-8). And in keeping with godly humility in the pursuit of peace and purity of the church, we would do well to follow Paul directive in Ephesians 4 to walk worthy of the calling… with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (Eph 4:1-3). The key word there is “endeavoring,” the ongoing task that we as the followers of Christ are individually and collectively called to perform until our Lord calls us home. (John 17:20ff). One of my favorite axioms is:
In essentials unity,
In nonessentials liberty,
In all things, charity
——Rupertus Meldenius
So with that, here’s the opening read found in None But The Hungry Heart by Miles Stanford; a recurring thought that has always stuck with me over the years. I’m going to refrain from adding an introductory comment and just get right to it.
In the inexorable riches of Christ,
Joe
Neh. 8:10; Isa 30:15; Job 2:10; Jas. 1:2; Prov. 21:30
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1-1. Nothing Daunted
“Blessed are they that … seek Him with the whole heart” (Ps. 119:2).
Once the Holy Spirit instills within our hearts the hunger for God’s very best, all must and will become secondary to this supreme goal: “ . . .the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:14). Our puny, worthless all exchanged for the One who is All in all! “For of Him, and through Him, and to Him, are all things: to Whom be glory for ever. Amen” (Rom. 11:36).
“A sage of India was asked by a young man how he could find God. For some time the sage gave no answer, but one evening he asked the youth to come and bathe with him in the river. While there he gripped him suddenly and held his head under the water until he was nearly drowned. When he released him the sage asked him: ‘What did you want most when you were under the water?’ ‘A breath of air,’ he replied. To which the sage answered, ‘When you want God as you wanted the breath of air, you will find Him.’” -G.G.
“Every Christian will become at last what his desires have made him. We are all the sum total of our hungers. The great saints have all had thirsting hearts. Their cry has been, ‘My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God….’ Their longing after God all but consumed them; it propelled them onward and upward to heights toward which less ardent believers look with and entertain no hope of reaching.”
“For He satisfieth the longing soul, and filleth the hungry soul with goodness” (Ps. 107:9)
