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"The God of Israel will be Your Reward"
Isaiah 52:12
Security from Yesterday.
"God requireth that which is past." At the end of the year we turn with eagerness to all that God has for the future, and yet anxiety is apt to arise from remembering the yesterdays. Our present enjoyment of God`s Grace is apt to be checked by the memory of yesterday`s sins and blunders. But God is the God of yesterdays, and He allows the memory of them in order to turn the past into ministry of spiritual culture for the future. God reminds us of the past lest we get into a shallow security in the present.
Security for Tomorrow:
"For the Lord will go before you"
This is a gracious revelation, that God will carry on where we have failed to.He will watch lest things trip us up again into like failure, as they assurely would do if He were not our rereward. God`s hand reaches back to the past and makes a clearing-house for the conscience.
Security for Today:
"For ye shall not go out with haste." As we go forth into the coming year,let it not be in haste of impetuous,unremembering delight,nor with the flight of impulse thoughtlessness, but with the patient power of knowing that the God of Israel will go before us. Our yesterdays present irrepairable things to us, it is true that we have lost opportunities which will never return, but God can transform this destructive anxiety into a constructive thoughtfulness for the future. Let the past sleep, but let it sleep on the bottom of Christ.
So leave the Irreparable Past in His hands, and step out into the Irresistable Future with God.
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