June 28 Daily Devotional

Bible Verse

"But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until full day" (Prov. 4:18).

Devotional

The first light that dawns upon the soul is the daybreak of grace. When that blessed time arrives, when the Sun of Righteousness rises upon the long-benighted mind, how the shadows of ignorance and of guilt instantly disappear! What a breaking away then takes place of, perhaps, a long night of alienation from God, of direct hostility to God, and of ignorance of the Lord Jesus.

This state, however, is not always conspicuous at first. The beginning of grace in the soul is often like the beginning of day in the natural world. The dawn of grace can be so faint at first, the daybreak so gentle, that only a very skillful eye can observe its earliest tints. The individual himself is perhaps ignorant of the extraordinary transition through which his soul is passing. It may be that the discovery of darkness which that day-dawn makes, the revelation it brings to view of the desperate depravity of his heart, the utter corruption of his fallen nature, the number and the gravity of his sins, well near overwhelm the individual with despair!

But what leads to this discovery? What reveals all this darkness and sin? Oh! it is the daybreak of grace in the soul! One faint ray, what a change has it produced! And is it real? Ah! just as real as that the first beam, faintly painted on the eastern sky, is a real and an essential part of light. The daybreak, faint and glimmering though it be, is as really day as high noon is day. And so is it with the day-dawn of grace in the soul. The first serious thought, the first real misgiving, the first conviction of sin, the first downfall of the eye, the first bending of the knee, the first tear, the first prayer, the first touch of faith, is as really and as essentially the daybreak of God's converting grace in the soul as is the utmost perfection to which that grace can arrive.

Oh, glorious dawn this is, my reader, if now for the first time in your life the daybreak of grace has come, and the shadows of ignorance and guilt are fleeing away before the advancing light of Jesus in your soul. If you are now seeing how depraved your nature is; if you are now learning the utter worthlessness of your own righteousness; if you are now fleeing as a poor, lost sinner to Christ, relinquishing your hold of everything else, and clinging only to him; even though this is but in weakness and fear and hesitancy, yet sing for joy, for the day is breaking. This is the prelude to the day of eternal glory, and the shadows of unregeneracy are fleeing away forever.

And as this day of grace has begun, so it will advance. Nothing will impede its course, nothing will arrest its progress. "He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus" (Phil. 1:6 NIV). The Sun of Righteousness, now risen upon you with healing in his wings (Mal. 4:2), shall never stand still. It shall never go back. "He has set a tabernacle for the sun" (Ps. 19:4) in the renewed soul of man. And that sun will roll onward in its glorious orbit, penetrating with its beams every dark recess, until all mental shadows are merged and lost in its unclouded and eternal splendor.

Jesus, keep me near the cross;
there a precious fountain,
free to all—a healing stream—
flows from Calvary's mountain.

(Fanny J. Crosby, 1869 [st. 2 alt., LEW, 1984])

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 2011.