May 28 Daily Devotional

Bible Verse

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come" (2 Cor. 5:17).

Devotional

A believer's experience of the truth of God is no mere fancy. However severely an unrenewed world may stigmatize experiential godliness as the offspring of a morbid imagination, the product of an enthusiastic mind, "whoever believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself" (1 John 5:10) that he has yielded the consent of his judgment and his affections to no "cleverly devised myths" (2 Pet. 1:16).

A sense of sin; brokenness and contrition before God; faith in the atoning blood of Christ; a sweet consciousness of pardon, acceptance, adoption, and joy in the Holy Spirit—these are no mere hallucinations of a disordered mind. To read your pardon, fully, fairly written out; to look up to God as one accepted, adopted; to feel the spirit going out to him in filial love and confidence, breathing its tender and endearing epithet, "Abba, Father"; to refer every trial, cross, and dispensation of his providence to his tender and unchangeable love; to have your will, naturally so rebellious and perverse, completely absorbed in his; to be as a weaned child, simply and unreservedly yielded up to his disposal; and to live in the patient waiting for the glory that is to be revealed—oh, this is reality, sweet, blessed, solemn reality!

Holy and happy is he whose heart is no stranger to these truths.

I know not why God's wondrous grace
to me he hath made known,
nor why, unworthy, Christ in love
redeemed me for his own.

Chorus:
But "I know whom I have believed,
and am persuaded that he is able
to keep that which I've committed
unto him against that day."

I know not how this saving faith
to me he did impart,
nor how believing in his Word
wrought peace within my heart.
(Chorus)

I know not how the Spirit moves,
convincing men of sin,
revealing Jesus through the Word,
creating faith in him.
(Chorus)

I know not what of good or ill
may be reserved for me,
of weary ways or golden days,
before his face I see.
(Chorus)

I know not when my Lord may come,
at night or noonday fair,
nor if I'll walk the vale with him,
or "meet him in the air."
(Chorus)

(Dan. W. Whittle, 1840–1901)

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.