WE return to our walk through None But the Hungry Heart, Miles Stanford’s devotional. As a reminder, it contains 12 months of 31 readings each, focusing on growth principles centered on Not I, But Christ. I recently discovered a great on-line resource, The Bible Portal that contains among many other things, a daily posting from None But the Hungary Heart, https://www.bibleportal.com/devotionals/none-but-the-hungry-heart
As I’ve been looking through my personal copy of NBTHH, I see many underlined sections and marginal comments, coming across one that simply had a “check mark” by the title. Reading it made my heart smile thinking how much of this material – dating back to the late 1970’s – planted spiritual seeds of thought that took root and govern much of my thinking and walk today. I have often counseled others of the need for daily visits into devotional studies with Isa 28: 9a-10:
Whom will he teach knowledge?
And whom will he make to understand the message?
For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept,
Line upon line, line upon line,
Here a little, there a little.” Is. 28:9a-10
So, with that reminder, here is another reading from None But the Hungry Heart, the one I just referenced with the check mark by the title – Internal Priority.
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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4-4. Internal Priority
“Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col. 1:27).
Beware! The world, both secular and religious, is seeking to destroy your individuality by conforming you to the mass of faceless ones. But our heritage and destiny in the Lord Jesus Christ is to be conformed to His image-not at the loss of our individual personality, but by the gain of His nature and character. “I in you”; “Christ liveth in me” (John 15:4; Gal. 2:20).
“Something has got to be done in us as well as for us. We want to proceed on the line of having things done for us, heaven intervening for us, our difficulties removed for us, having a straight path made for us. Heaven may be ready to come in, the Lord may be prepared to work for us, but it is not sufficient for Him-and it would not prove good enough for us-if that were all. The very principle of spiritual growth and maturity demands that He keep the objective and the subjective balanced; that is, that something is done in us as well as for us.” -T. A-S.
“We are apt to think that if and when the circumstances and conditions of our lives are changed and we are in another position than the one we now occupy, then something will happen, the purpose of God will begin to be fulfilled. But the Lord says, ‘No, it is not circumstances, not conditions, at all; it is you.’“
“Being confident of this very thing, that He who hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:6).
