May 24

If you love to walk in God's company, you must abide in your place and calling. Every step in a different direction is a departure from Him. How much more blessed to stay at home in a humble place and low calling and there enjoy God's sweet presence, than to go to a sumptuous palace and live without Him. Truly, when you are in any place or about any work which you are not called, you may be sure God is not in that place or enterprise. And what a bold adventure it is to stay where you cannot expect His presence to assist or protect!

In doing the duty of our place we have heaven's word for our security; but if we wander, we have heaven's word for our peril. It is just as dangerous to do what we are not called to do as to neglect or leave undone the duty of our place. As the earth could not bear the act of Korah and his company in usurping another's authority (Numbers 16:30-33), so the sea could not harbor Jonah, the runaway prophet. Refusing to be his escape route from God's command, the raging sea caused Jonah to be cast overboard (Jonah 1:14-15). Nor would heaven harbor the angels once they had left their God-appointed place and office (Jude 6).

The ruin of many souls rushes in upon them at this door. First they break rank, then they are led further into temptation. Absalom first looked over the hedge in his ambitious thoughts: He would be king! This wandering desire to go beyond his place let in the bloody sins of rebellion, incest, and murder, and these at last delivered him into the hands of divine vengeance. The apostle joins order to steadfastness: "I am with you in the spirit, joying and beholding your order, and the steadfastness of your faith" (Colossians 2:5). That army alone is invincible in which every soldier stands in close order, attending to his duty and content with his work.

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