February 9 Daily Devotional

Bible Verse

"This illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God might be glorified through it" (John 11:4).

Devotional

The season of sickness is schooling for the soul. Then God unfolds more of himself than in perhaps any other circumstances. You learn more of his truth. Oh, how the Spirit of truth unfolds God's character, his perfections, his government! He clears up dim views. He ripens undeveloped notions. He corrects errors. You contemplate God in a new light. You see truth through another medium.

But the sweetest effect of all is the personal appropriation of God to your own soul. You can now say, "This God is my God, and is my Father, and is my portion forever"—words of assurance previously strange to you. You never realized God's promises as so precious. You never felt the doctrines of grace as so establishing. You never saw the precepts as so obligatory and so sanctifying as now. These are blessed results of a hallowed acceptance of the season of sickness!

And what a pruning of this living branch has taken place! How you have been weaned from the absorbing claims of your earthly calling, from an undue attachment to created good. How you have been weaned from the creation, from the world, and what is greatest of all, from the wedded idol, self! What humility of mind, what meekness of spirit, what self-renunciation follow!

You enter that chamber as a proud man; you come out as a little child. You go in with much of the spirit of a grasping, covetous, worldly-minded professor; you emerge with the world under your feet. "Consecration to Christ and Holiness to God" is written upon your essence, and engraved upon your forehead. You have been near to eternity! You have been looking within the veil! You have been reading your own heart! You have been dealing with Christ! You have seen and felt how solemn it is to approach the gate of death, to enter the presence of God. And from that dreadful vantage point, you have contemplated the world, and life, and human responsibility, as they are. And you have come back like a spirit from another sphere, clothed with all the solemnities of eternity—to live now as one soon to be there in reality. Truly, your sickness was "for the glory of God, so that the Son of God might be gloried through it."

Not haughty is my heart,
not lofty is my pride;
I do not seek to know the things
God's wisdom has denied.

With childlike trust, O Lord,
in thee I calmly rest
contented as a little child
upon its mother's breast.

Ye people of the Lord,
in him alone confide;
from this time forth and evermore
his wisdom be your guide.

(Psalm 131, The Psalter, 1912)

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.