Today's Bible Question ?

What creature supposedly melts away as it moves?

Previous question and Answer:

What nation did God say would have its towns and fields cursed because of disobedience?

Israel — Deuteronomy 28:15-16

Excerpts from today's Spurgeon's Devotions
Spurgeon's Morning for March 21	Spurgeon's Evening for March 21
	"Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion?" - Job 38:31
"Ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone." - John 16:32	If inclined to boast of our abilities, the grandeur of nature may soon show us how puny we are. We cannot move the least of all the twinkling stars, or quench so much as one of the beams of the morning. We speak of power, but the heavens laugh us to scorn.
To some selected spirits it is given, for the good of others, and to strengthen them for future, special, and tremendous conflict, to enter the inner circle and hear the pleadings of the suffering High Priest; they have fellowship with him in his sufferings, and are made conformable unto his death.

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March 21 Deuteronomy 29:1 - 31:30

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What to Feed

The cuckoo is a common bird in England. The first sign of spring is that bird's call. The cuckoo never builds its own nest. When it feels an egg coming on, it finds another nest with eggs and no parent bird. The cuckoo lands, hurriedly lays its egg, and takes off again. That's all the cuckoo does in terms of parenting. (We have a lot of cuckoos in our society today!)

The thrush, whose nest has now been invaded, comes back, circles, and comes into the wind to land. Not being very good at arithmetic, it can't imagine why it immediately begins to list to starboard. It gets to work hatching the eggs. Four little thrushes and one large cuckoo eventually hatch. The cuckoo is two or three times the size of the thrushes.

Mrs. Thrush, having hatched the five little birds, goes off early in the morning to get the worm. She comes back, circles the nest to see four petite thrush mouths and one cavernous cuckoo mouth. Who gets the worm? The cuckoo.

Guess what happens. The cuckoo gets bigger and bigger; the little thrushes get smaller and smaller.

To find a baby cuckoo in a nest, simply walk along a hedge row until you find little dead thrushes. The cuckoo throws them out one at a time. Here's an adult thrush feeding a baby cuckoo that is three times as big as the thrush.

And the moral of the story is this: you have two natures in one nest and the nature you go on feeding will grow, and the nature you go on starving will diminish. If there's going to be anything resembling that which God has in mind for us, it is going to come not through an annual attempt at the spirit of Christmas but a perpetual recognition of the Spirit of Christ.

-- Stuart Briscoe, "Christmas 365 Days a Year,"

Today's Devotion

Faces Of Mercy

"...an angel of God came to him and said,..."Your gifts and alms..."

(Acts 10:4)

Might we picture such a scene happening before us today as we would retreat for a few moments of prayer: an angel appearing to reveal to us our "prayers and alms have come up as a remembrance before God." What a longed for declaration, that God would all along have been deceiving our prayers as profoundly!

God was about to do something historically, and for that reason this encounter undoubtedly was very deliberate. Nevertheless, if we might focus it was Cornelius' "prayers and alms" that his prayers "have come up before" (ana-rise + baino-place; going up from one place to another, to arrive in a place) and were a memorial in the very Presence of the One we seek. What in them would pleasingly arise?

lit. "the prayers of you and the alms of you." The continual exercise of mercy, from which alms (eleemon - merciful) comes, bore out the fact of his continual praying (10:2). His disposition of mercy formed him into a "continual" pray-er, whose intercessions would ascend.

When Jesus illustrated prayer (Lu 11:5-8), he pictured before us a needy friend coming at an untimely hour with no bread and no money to buy it. The urgency was apparent. All friendship aside and hindered by the untimeliness, the friend could not turn away. Mercy would win ("eleos - outward manifestation of pity, assuming need on the part of him who receives and resources adequate to meet the need on the part of him who shows it" - Vine).

Will we allow mercy to interrupt us? And when it does, do we have adequate resources? Yes, we do, and especially through continual praying. Might we become these very blessers of men.

"The power of the Church to truly bless rests on intercession - asking and receiving heavenly gifts to carry to men...[we would be] "set free for that steadfast continuance in prayer which would uninterruptedly secure the downflow of the powers of the heavenly world."* downward flow...pouring out...shedding...

What brought God into our living pit of "malice and envy, hating and being hated" (Titus 3:3)? works? our level of trust? No, mercy: "but according to His mercy..." (3:5). He manifests His mercy, and what resulted? SHEDDING..."poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior"(3:6).

As we see in Cornelius, mercy weaved from a life into prayer, and great shedding and pouring out resulted (see Acts 10:44-46!). In our deep, helpless yearning for prayers that would "go up before," may we also glory in the result of pouring out heaven upon others. We may truly become blessers of men.

*Andrew Murray

Will we allow mercy to interrupt us? And when it does, do we have adequate resources? Yes, we do, and especially through continual praying. Might we become these very blessers of men.

More Whispers from the Wilderness