January 12 Daily Devotional

Bible Verse

"With you is the fountain of life" (Psalm 36:9).

Devotional

Behold, what a fountain of life is God! All intelligences, from the highest angel in heaven to the lowliest creature on earth, draw every breath of their existence from him. "In him we live, and move, and have our being" (Acts 17:28).

But he is more than this to the church. He is the fountain of love, as well as of life. Both "the spirits of the righteous made perfect" (Heb 12:23) and the redeemed on earth, satisfy their thirsty souls at the overflowing fullness of the Father's love.

How much we need this truth! What restricted views, unjust conceptions, and wrong interpretations have we cherished of him, simply because we overlook his character as the Fountain of living waters! We "limit the Holy One of Israel" (Ps. 78:41 KJV). We judge him by our poor, narrow conception of things. We think that he is such as we ourselves are. We forget, in our approaches, that we are coming to an infinite Fountain. We forget that the heavier the demand we make upon God, the more we shall receive. And we forget that the oftener we come, the more we are welcome. We forget that we can never ask too much. We forget that our sin and his dishonor are that we ask so little. We forget that he is glorified in giving. And we forget that the more grace he metes out to his people, the richer the revenue of praise which he receives in return.

How worthy of such an infinite Fountain of love and grace is his "inexpressible gift" (2 Cor. 9:15). It came from a large heart. And the heart that gave Jesus will withhold no good thing from those who walk uprightly (Rom. 8:32; Ps. 84:11).

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.