April 21

"The joy of Jehovah is your strength.” Nehemiah 8:10

The worst kind of life to live is the life of reactions, in which we are all the time affected by persons or circumstances. When we speak and somebody responds warmly to our words we are full of joy; but we are the very opposite when our message is not well received. Being thus easily affected will inevitably produce an up-and-down experience. Don't mistake me—it is natural to feel things deeply, but he who is governed by such feelings will always be lacking in divine strength.

It is when we lose our joy that our strength seeps away. The joy of the Lord Jesus when he was here on earth never rested on the seeming success of his mission. It was not in fact attributable to anything outward, but only to his steadfast pursuit of the will of the Father—“the joy that was set before him.” Thank God that we do not have to try to copy Jesus, but only to keep our eyes on his goal. His joy is ours by the Holy Spirit.

April 20

Spiritual reality has this outstanding characteristic, that it bears no mark of time. The time-factor vanishes the instant you touch that reality. Take, for example, prophecy. From the human point of view there is such a thing as prophecy, but from the divine point of view no such thing exists.

Our Lord says that he is the First and the Last, the Alpha and Omega; but remember, he is both together, both at once. It is not true that at or time he is First and at another time he is Last; He is the First and Last simultaneously. Nor is it that having for a while been Alpha, he later becomes Omega; he is Alpha and Omega from eternity to eternity.

Of course in the sight of men he is not Omega until he is so manifested, but the sight of God he is Omega now. With me the “I” of yesterday differs from the “I” of today, and the “I” of tomorrow differs still further; but Jesus Christ is the eternal “I AM.”

April 19

 “Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death no more hath dominion over him.” Romans 6:9

The resurrection of the Lord Jesus is different from the resurrection of other people mentioned in the Bible. For example, in calling Lazarus out of the grave Jesus merely returned him to the life-situation he had just left. He was even still bound with grave-clothes, and until loosened from them could not walk freely.

When Peter and John ran to the tomb of Jesus and entered in, they saw the wound grave clothes lying empty with no body inside. Until Lazarus, the Lord Jesus had passed out through them unbound. Nothing, absolutely nothing, could restrict him any more. Before his resurrection, he too was subject to human limitations; after it, he knew no restriction at all. Death could not hold him, and now nothing would.