Bowen's Daily Meditations

" That put their trust in thee." Among all the people on the face of the earth, these are the only ones that properly speaking have anything to do with joy.

In thee - in the God of the Bible - the God of whom Moses wrote, whom David feared, whom Elijah served, whom Isaiah saw in the temple, whose angel succored Daniel, who was manifest in Christ, and who for Christ's sake gave the Spirit to the apostles and giveth it unto us. Some believe that they can improve upon the character of...

Help is needed to discharge duties that are too great for us, to encounter dangers that are too severe for us, to face enemies that are too powerful for us, to bear up under sore disappointments, under the loss of friends, of health, of fortune, to sustain the consciousness of our deep demerit, and in fact it is difficult to exhaust the catalog of the ends for which we need help. Yet there are very few who are visited with a sense of any such need as this. The reason is that men generally...

It is especially when a feeling has taken possession of the mind that the Lord calls us to enter some new sphere, to engage in some new labor for his glory, that we long for an explicit revelation of his will. It is to be feared that too many grieve the Spirit of God by dismissing this conviction of duty from their mind, when there cometh not some plain providential notice of what the Lord would have them to do. The Lord still teaches by his word, and the way is this. He shows us the...

Perhaps throughout the wide domains of God, there is hardly any sight more remarkable than that presented by the little flock of believers who, in this world of iniquity and of misery where Satan's seat is, regard the Lord as their King and are kept by him through faith unto salvation. Their existence is a marvel; their peace and joy another; their triumphs another. They are without a visible Leader, and have no visible Comforter; yet they pursue their way and have an invincible hope....

The context sheds all the light that we need upon this passage, explaining both the nature of the diligence that we are to use, and the object to be obtained by it. "If ye do these things, ye shall never fall." The things are mentioned before: " Giving all diligence, add to your faith, virtue; and to virtue, knowledge; and to knowledge, temperance, etc. The words " shall never fall" have an immediate reference to the words " to make sure." Let no one bring in here his theory of election to...

The true life of the soul is in union with God. The souls of men are dead, because they are separated from God. Each man walketh apart, liveth unto himself, cleaveth to the earth; he calls it solitude when his fellow-men are not there. The word of God is life-giving. We have not to go to a distant planet for the bread of life. "Without any movement of ours, it has already been introduced into this world. We have not to pay for the liberty to appropriate it. All the price required has been...

If God withholds from us the tokens of his love, an explanation may almost always be found in the fact that we had made light of them in some way or another. God gives his love unto us that he may draw us by its sweet influences to renounce evil and to embrace good. If we receive the expressions of his loving-kindness and manifest no corresponding readiness to forsake sin, then it becomes needful that we should take lessons in the value and virtue of his love, through the privation of it....

This stony heart is not what is commonly understood by a hard heart, an unfeeling heart. A person of a gentle tender yielding disposition may yet have what God regards as a stony heart. A heart insensible to the word of God is what is here spoken of The commands, the promises, the invitations all fail to make an impression upon one with such a heart; he refuses to see his sin, his helplessness, his danger, his need, the holiness, the grace, the love of God. The mighty and countless motives...

The instability of many of the things with which we have to do in this world, only tends to make the believer appreciate the more, by contrast, the immutability of his God. The Lord of all sits upon his throne, and before him the universe passes like a panorama. He is unchangeable in character as well as in sovereignty. As we follow the indications of geology into the dim chambers of what seems to be a past eternity, it is a comfort to think there was then the same God that we now know;...

A sublime expression of sovereignty; but let none therefore say, " We must remain as we are until he puts his Spirit within us." For God observes a process in this as in his other works; and in every step of this process he requires the co-operation of man. He shows an individual that he is without the Spirit of God; that he is spiritually dead; excites in him desires after life and blessedness; shows him what he is not to trust in; what he is to trust in; teaches him to pray; answers his...

From the context, the meaning is evident. He casts off his people from certain experiences of his love of which they have shown themselves unworthy, until they are humbled and penitent, fervent and believing. God does not arbitrarily resume his benefits. There is ever an adequate reason, and if we search the records of our experience, we shall find it. We should very carefully note what it was in our conduct, what remissness or sluggishness or waywardness or worldliness, that caused the...

Great and mighty things had been shown unto Jeremiah. Great discoveries of the glory of God had been permitted him. He had walked with God on most intimate terms. He had experience of the power of God to render him as a brazen column in the midst of hostile Jerusalem, and to sustain him in his most trying ministry. God also had shown him the great and mighty things of his wrath that he intended to bring to pass upon Judea, and upon the nations round about. Yet Jeremiah was not to rest...

God taketh pleasure in them that fear him, and who manifest their fear to displease him by constantly and carefully pressing forward in that good path which he has opened up to them. When a man is pressing forward in the path of God, all heaven and earth rejoice, reflecting the joy of God. The sun shines not in vain for him; it lights him along the pathway of holiness. The earth is encouraged to run cheerfully her race of a thousand miles a minute.

The Bible lives with reference to...

If you ask me to show you a wise man, I will ask you to find for me a man who, morning, noon, and night, offereth to God this prayer. You find him, and you say to me, " Why, this is a poor man, a mean man, an ignorant man, an obscure man; I asked him some ordinary questions, and he could not answer them. In his hand was a book, and he told me frankly that having no wisdom of his own, he was obliged to make use of that book. And yet you tell me he is the wisest of men. His wisdom multiplied...