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September 4 Daily Devotional

A First Book of Daily Readings

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (selected by Frank Cumbers)

September 4

Vive hodie (Live for today)

Do not carry yesterday or tomorrow with you; live for today and for the twelve hours you are in. It is very interesting to notice as you read biographies how many men have failed in life because they have not done that. Most men who have been successful in life have been characterized by this wonderful capacity for forgetting the past. They have made mistakes. ‘Well,’ they say, I have made them and I cannot undo them. If I meditated upon them for the rest of my life, it would make no difference.... I will let the dead past bury its dead.’ The result is that when they make a decision they do not spend the night worrying about it afterwards. On the other hand, the man who cannot help referring back keeps himself awake saying, ‘Why did I do that?’ And so he saps his nervous energy.... As a consequence he makes more mistakes, completing the vicious circle of worry by saying, ‘If I am making these mistakes now, what about next week?’ The poor man is already down and defeated.

Here is our Lord’s answer to all that. Do not be foolish, do not waste your energy, do not spend your time thus in worrying over what has passed, or about the future; here is today, live to the maximum today ... the God who helps us today will be the same God tomorrow, and will help us tomorrow....

Some people fail very grievously in this matter because they are always trying to anticipate God; they are always sitting down, as it were, and asking themselves, ‘Now I wonder what God is going to ask me to do tomorrow or in a week’s time or in a year? What is God going to ask of me then?’ That is utterly wrong... Live day by day; live a life of obedience to God every day; do what God asks you to do every day.... You must learn to trust God day by day for every particular occasion, and never try to go ahead of Him.

Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, ii, pp. 150–1

 

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