April 27 Daily Devotional

Bible Verse

"Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and today, and forever" (Heb. 13:8).

Devotional

You will make no progress in the divine life if you keep looking at yourself instead of Jesus Christ.

Even though today's experience is the opposite of yesterday's—yesterday was all brightness, but today is all cloudiness; yesterday your soul was like a well-tuned instrument, but today every string is loose and cannot find the melody; yesterday, Jesus felt so near and precious, but today he does not seem to awaken a loving emotion in your heart; yesterday, communion with God was so sweet, but today there seems to be none whatever; yesterday, you wanted to walk uprightly, holily, and humbly, but today you detect so much in yourself that is vacillating, weak, and vile—nevertheless, Jesus has not changed.

The work of Christ is the same! Your acceptance in him is the same! His intercession in heaven for you is the same!

Why then should you look to your spiritual experiences for support, strength, and consolation—rising when they rise and falling when they fall—when all your standing, joy, peace, and hope are entirely outside of yourself and are solely in the Lord Jesus Christ?

What though you change a thousand times in one day? He never changes. The Lord may change his arrangements. He may alter his mode of dealing. He may change the nature of his discipline. He may vary the lessons. But his loving-kindness and his truth are as unchangeable as his very being.

God may dry up the earthly cistern, but he will never seal up the heavenly fountain! That will flow on in grace through all time, and in glory through all eternity.

Come, thou Fount of ev'ry blessing,
tune my heart to sing thy grace;
streams of mercy, never ceasing,
call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! I'm fixed upon it,
mount of God's unchanging love.

Here I raise my Ebenezer;
hither by thy help I'm come;
and I hope, by thy good pleasure,
safely to arrive at home.
Jesus sought me when a stranger,
wand'ring from the fold of God:
he, to rescue me from danger,
interposed his precious blood.

O to grace how great a debtor
daily I'm constrained to be.
Let that grace now, like a fetter,
bind my wand'ring heart to thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
prone to leave the God I love—
here's my heart, O take and seal it,
seal it for thy courts above.

(Robert Robinson, 1758)

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.