Most Gracious God and Father! again do I thank Thee for that wondrous
salvation, through sanctification of the Spirit, which has made us holy
in Christ. And I thank Thee that the Spirit can so make us partakers of
the life of Christ, that we too may be unblameable in holiness. And that
it is the Lord Himself who makes us to increase and abound in love, to
the end our hearts may be so established; that the abounding love and
the unblameable holiness are both from Him.
Blessed Lord and Saviour! I come now to claim and take as my own, what
Thou art able to do for me. I am holy only in Thee; in Thee I am holy.
In Thee there is for me the power to abound in love. O Thou, in whom the
fulness of God's love abides, and in whom I abide, the Lord, my Lord,
make me to abound in love. In union with Thee, in the life of faith in
which Thou livest in me, it can be and it shall be. By the teaching of
Thy Holy Spirit lead me in all the footsteps of Thy self-denying love,
that I too may be consumed in blessing others.
And thus, Lord! mightily establish my heart to be unblameable in
holiness. Let self perish at Thy presence. Let Thy Holiness, giving
itself to make the sinner holy, take entire possession, until my heart
and life are sanctified wholly, and my whole spirit and soul and body be
preserved blameless unto Thy coming. Amen.
1. Let us pray very earnestly that our interest in the study of
holiness may not be a thing of the intellect or the emotions,
but of the will and the life, seen of all men in the daily walk
and conversation. 'Abounding in love,' 'unblameable in
holiness,' will give favour with God and man.
2. 'God is Love;' Creation is the outflow of love. Redemption is
the sacrifice and the triumph of love. Holiness is the fire of
love. The beauty of the life of Jesus is love. All we enjoy of
the Divine we owe to love. Our holiness is not God's, is not
Christ's, if we do not love.
3. 'Love seeketh not its own.' 'Love never faileth.' 'Love is the
fulfilling of the law.' 'The greatest of these is love.' 'The
end of the commandment is love.' To love God and man is to be
holy. In the intercourse of daily life, holiness can have its
simple and sweet beginnings and its exercise; so, in its
highest attainment, holiness is love made perfect.
4. Faith has all its worth from love, from the love of God, whence
it draws and drinks, and the love to God and man which streams
out of it. Let us be strong in faith, then shall we abound in
love.
5. 'The love of God hath been shed abroad in our hearts by the
Holy Ghost which was given unto us.' Let this be our
confidence.
Twenty-sixth Day.