May 7 Daily Devotional

Bible Verse

"For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh" (Rom. 7:18).

Devotional

The Lord will cause his people to know their total weakness and insufficiency to keep themselves. He will do so, not just abstractly nor theoretically, nor from what they hear or read. He will do so from their own deep personal experience of this truth. Yes, he is perpetually causing them to learn this.

I do not allude merely to that blessed period when the Holy Spirit first lays his axe to the root of their self-righteousness. Truly they do first learn it then. But it is a truth they become increasingly acquainted with. It is a lesson they are made daily to learn. And he becomes the most perfectly schooled in it who watches most narrowly his own heart, who most observes his own way, and who deals most constantly and simply with the cross of Jesus.

With regard to the way which the Lord adopts to bring them into this knowledge, it varies. Sometimes it is by bringing them into extreme distress and difficulties, hedging up their path with thorns, or paving it with flints. Sometimes it is by deep adversity after great prosperity—as in the case of Job—stripped of all, and laid in dust and ashes, in order to be brought to the conviction and the confession of deep and utter vileness. Sometimes it is by circumstances of absolute prosperity, when he gives the heart its desire but sends leanness into the soul. Oh, how this teaches a godly man his own utter nothingness! Sometimes it is by permitting the messenger of Satan to buffet—by sending and perpetuating some heavy, lingering, lacerating cross. Sometimes it is by removing some beloved prop on which we too fondly and securely leaned—putting a worm at the root of our pleasant outspreading gourd, drying up our refreshing spring, or leading us down deep into the valley of self-abasement and humiliation.

But the greatest school in which we learn this painful yet needed and wholesome lesson is in the body of sin which we daily bear about with us. It was here that Paul learned this lesson, as the seventh chapter of his letter to the church at Rome shows (and for which Epistle the saints of God will ever have reason to praise and adore the blessed and eternal Spirit). In this school and in this way did the great apostle of the Gentiles learn that in himself the most holy, deeply taught, useful, privileged, and even inspired saint of God was nothing but the most perfect weakness and sin.

Do not be cast down, dear reader, if the Lord is teaching you the very same lesson in the very same way—if he is now plowing up the hidden evil, breaking up the fallow ground, revealing to you more of the evil principle of your heart, the iniquity of your fallen nature—and that, too, it may be, at a time of deep trial, of heavy, heart-breaking affliction. Ah! you are ready to exclaim, "All these things are against me. Am I really a child of God? Can I truly be a subject of God's grace and at the same time be the subject of so much hidden evil and of such deep, overwhelming trial? Is this the way he deals with his people?"

Yes, dear believer, you are not alone; for along this very path all the covenant people of God are traveling to their better and brighter home. Here they become acquainted with their own weakness, their perpetual liability to fall. Here they renounce their former thoughts of self-power and of self-keeping. And here, too, they learn more of Jesus as their strength, their all-sufficient keeper, more of him as their "wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption" (1 Cor. 1:30). Cheer up, then, for the Lord your God is leading you on by a safe and a right way to bring you to a city of rest.

I need thee, precious Jesus,
for I am full of sin;
my soul is dark and guilty,
my heart is dead within.
I need the cleansing fountain
where I can always flee,
the blood of Christ most precious,
the sinner's perfect plea.

I need thee, precious Jesus,
for I am very poor;
a stranger and a pilgrim,
I have no earthly store.
I need the love of Jesus
to cheer me on my way,
to guide my doubting footsteps,
to be my strength and stay.

I need thee, precious Jesus,
and hope to see thee soon,
encircled with the rainbow
and seated on thy throne.
There, with thy blood-bought children,
my joy shall ever be,
to sing my Jesus' praises,
to gaze, O Lord, on thee.

(Frederick Whitfield, 1855)

Be sure to read the Preface by Octavius Winslow and A Note from the Editor by Larry E. Wilson.

Larry Wilson is an ordained minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. In addition to having served as the General Secretary of the Committee on Christian Education of the OPC (2000–2004) and having written a number of articles and booklets (such as God's Words for Worship and Why Does the OPC Baptize Infants) for New Horizons and elsewhere, he has pastored OPC churches in Minnesota, Indiana, and Ohio. We are grateful to him for his editing of Morning Thoughts, the OPC Daily Devotional for 2025.