December 29

Know your right to God's promises. This is the hinge on which the dispute between you and Satan will move in the day of trouble. How pathetic for a Christian to stand at the door of promise in the darkest night of affliction and be afraid to turn the knob! That is the very time when we should go right in and find shelter as a child runs into his father's arms. "Come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee: hide thyself as it were for a little moment, until the indignation be overpast" (Isaiah 26:20).

When a believer holds the title to a promise proved true to his conscience from Scripture, he will not easily be wrangled out of his comfort. Job produced his evidence from heaven: "Til I die I will not remove mine integrity from me" (Job 27:5). Satan did his best to make Job tear it up, but his title was clear and Job knew it. Even when God seemed to disown him he testified before heaven and hell that he refused to let Satan dispute him out of his right: "Thou knowest that I am not wicked" (Job 10:7). This assurance was what kept the chariot of his hope on its wheels along the rough road of suffering; it shook and rattled but nothing could overturn it.

The promises are not a pigpen for swine to root in; they are Christ's sheep walk for His flock to feed in. "If ye be Christ's, then ye are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise" (Galatians 3:29). The promise is the joining which takes place only when the Person of Christ is taken in marriage. And faith is the grace by which the soul gives consent to accept Christ as the Gospel offers Him, a union called the receiving of Christ.

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