July 6

The loaf in your bread box is not enough to feed you the rest of your life. But you have a covenant! Has not God taught you to pray for your "daily bread"? If you diligently follow His calling every day, His blessing supplies everything you need.

And you have a Provider of spiritual "daily bread" as well. You have a precious Brother, a Husband who purposely has gone to heaven, where there is plenty of grace, so He can sustain our soul in this demanding world of stress and pressure. All power is in His hands: He goes to the Supply and sends whatever you need. Can you ever starve, then, when he who has fullness of grace has undertaken to provide for you?

The two coins which the Samaritan left were not enough to pay for the board and recovery of the wounded traveler: so he left his word that he would pay whatever was required when he came again. Christ does not just give a little grace from His hand, but "more grace" (James 4:6), as much as necessary to take us to heaven with Him. "The Lord will give grace and glory: no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly" (Psalm 84:11).

You should not glory in your sincerity. It is true-- sincerity empowers you to resist temptation and will lift you out of sin; but who empowers sincerity? Where does the root grow which feeds your grace? Not in your own ground but in heaven. It is God alone who gave it and will keep it. The Lord is your strength; let Him be your song. What can the axe do, even a sharp one, without the workman? Shall the axe brag that it has cut down something? Or the chisel boast that it has carved? Is it not the skill and art of the workman? When you resist temptation there is only one truth you can speak: "If the Lord had not been on my side I would have fallen."

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