September 25 Daily Devotional

Whom have I on earth below?
Thee, and only Thee, I know;
Whom have I in heaven, but Thee?
Thou art all in all to me

(Charles Wesley)

Can you say quite honestly, ‘Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee’? [Psalm 73:25] ... That is how the Psalmist can speak of his relationship to God ... the whole business of the New Testament gospel and its salvation is simply to bring us to this.... Whatever else we may have, whatever else we may be able to say, we must never be satisfied until we can come to this. This is the goal, this is the objective. To be satisfied with anything short of this, however good, is in a sense to deny the gospel itself, for the great and grand end and object of the whole gospel is to bring us ... to this particular position.

Let us then face this tremendous statement.

What does he mean? What is he saying? I am sure the first thing in his mind was a negative and that he was making a negative statement. By his very question he is saying that, as the result of his experience, he has found that there is no one else anywhere who can help him, that nowhere is there any other Saviour. ‘Who is there who can help me in heaven or earth but thou?’ he asks. There is no one else. When things have gone wrong, when he is really at the end of his tether, when he does not know where to go or to whom to turn, when he needs comfort and solace and strength and assurance, and something to hold on to, he has found that there is no one apart from God.

Faith on Trial, pp. 107–8