August 12 Daily Devotional

Bible Verse

"For we are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh" (Phil. 3:3).

Devotional

The first step the Holy Spirit takes in his great work of leading you is to lead you away from yourself.

He leads you away from all reliance on your own righteousness, as well as from all dependence upon your native strength.

But do not suppose that this divorce from the principle of self takes place entirely the moment that you "belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead" (Rom. 7:4). It is the work of a life. Alas! Christ has at best but a portion of your affections. Your heart is divided. It is true, there are bright and blissful moments when you sincerely and ardently desire the full, unreserved surrender. But the ensnaring power of some rival object soon shows you how partial and imperfect that surrender has been.

This severing from yourself—from all your idols—is a perpetual, unceasing work of the Spirit. And who but this Divine Spirit can so lead you away from self—in all its forms—as to constrain you to trample all your own glory in the dust, and acknowledge with Paul that you are "the very least of all the saints" (Eph. 3:8).

But more than this, he also leads you from an opposite extreme of self—from a despairing view of your personal sinfulness. How often, when your eye has been intently bent within, gazing as it were upon the gloom and confusion of a moral chaos, the Spirit has gently and graciously led you away from yourself to an Object, the sight of which has at once raised you from the region of despair! How many walk in painful and humiliating bondage, from not having thus been sufficiently led out of themselves! Always contemplating their imperfect repentance, or their weak faith, or their small fruitfulness, they seem ever to be moving in a circle, and to know nothing of what it is to walk in a large place.

Thus the Spirit of God leads you both from sinful self and from righteous self.

And to what does he lead? He leads you to the Lord Jesus Christ.

To whom else would you, in your deep necessity, wish to be led? Now that you know something experientially of Jesus, to whom would you go except to him?

Having severed you in some degree from yourself, he would bring you into a closer realization of your union with the Savior. "He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you" (John 16:14). And this promise is fulfilled when, in all your need, he leads you to Christ.

Are you guilty? The Spirit leads you to the blood of Jesus. Are you weary? The Spirit leads you to abide in Jesus. Are you sorrowful? The Spirit leads you to the sympathy of Jesus. Are you tempted? The Spirit leads you to the protection of Jesus. Are you sad and desolate? The Spirit leads you to the tender love of Jesus. Are you poor, empty, and helpless? The Spirit leads you to the fullness of Jesus.

And still it is to the Savior he conducts you. The Holy Spirit is your Comforter, but the holy Jesus is your Comfort. And to Jesus—to his person, to his offices, and to his work—in life and in death—the Divine Guide ever leads you.

Gracious Spirit, Dove Divine,
let your light within me shine;
all my guilty fears remove,
fill me full of heav'n and love.

(John Stocker, 1777; mod. LEW, 2009)

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.