h
a hold upon Him that you will never be in extremities again, or if you
are, you will learn to call them not extremities, but opportunities, and
like Jacob, you will go forth from that night at Peniel, no longer Jacob,
but victorious Israel. Let us bring to Him our need and prove Him true.

JANUARY 31.

"Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness and
sanctification and redemption" (I. Cor. i. 30).

More and more we are coming to see the supreme importance of getting the
right conception of sanctification, not as a blessing, but as a personal
union with the personal Saviour and the indwelling Holy Spirit. Thousands
of people get stranded after they have embarked on the great voyage of
holiness.

They find themselves failing and falling, and are astonished and
perplexed, and they conclude that they must have been mistaken in their
experience, and so they make a new attempt at the same thing and again
fall, until at last, worn out with the experiment, they conclude that the
experience is a delusion, or, at least, that it was never intended for
them, and so they fall back into the old way, and their last state is
worse than their first.

What people need to-day to satisfy their deep hunger and to give them a
permanent and Divine experience is to know, not sanctification as a state,
but Christ as a living Person, who is waiting to enter the heart that is
willing to receive Him.

FEBRUARY 1.

"A well of water springing up" (John iv. 14).

In the life overflowing in service for others, we find the deep fountain
of life running over the spring and finding vent in rivers of living water
that go out to bless and save the world around us. It is beautiful to
notice that as the blessing grows unselfish it grows larger. The water in
the heart is only a well, but when reaching out to the needs of others it
is not only a river, but a delta of many rivers overflowing in majestic
blessing. This overflowing love is connected with the Person and work of
the Holy Spirit which was to be poured out upon the disciples after Jesus
was glorified.

This is the true secret of power for service, the heart filled and
satisfied with Jesus, and so baptized with the Holy Ghost that it is
impelled by the fulness of its joy and love to impart to others what it
has so abundantly received; and yet each new ministry only makes room for
a new filling and a deeper receiving of the life which grows by giving.