Voices From The Past
Reviews (113)
"God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever" (Psalm 73:26)
Jan 1 "If God is for us, who can be against us?" (Rom 8:31) Do not be discouraged at the difficulties and oppositions that will rise up before you when you begin resolvedly to walk with God. In the day you entered into a covenant with God, and He with you, you entered into the most impregnable rock and fortress, and covered yourself in a castle of defense, where you may (modestly) defy all adverse powers of earth or hell. Jan 16 God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world (Eph 1:4). O, how God must love that creature He has carried so long in the womb of His eternal purpose! Jan 18 "Do all to the glory of God" (1 Cor 10:31). The best of us, when we come to pray, what a deep sense we have of our own needs, and no desire of the glory of God. How necessary it is that the Lord should have His glory. The world serves no other purpose; it was made and continues for God's glory. "For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen" (Rom 11:36). Feb 2 "'The Lord is my portion,' says my soul" (Lam 3:24) All that the soul needs is found in God. There is light to enlighten the soul, wisdom to counsel the soul, power to support the soul, goodness to supply the soul, mercy to pardon the soul, beauty to delight the soul, glory to ravish the soul, and fullness to fill the soul. Nothing can satisfy the soul without God. Feb 8 "Why are you cast down, O my soul?...Hope in God" (Ps 43:5). It is a sin for a child of God to be too much discouraged and cast down in afflictions. The soul is cast down too much when our sorrow does not bring us to God, but away from God. We must trust Him for new supplies of grace. Feb 11 "But when you pray, go into your room" (Mt 6:6). God reveals Himself most to His people when they have been in secret prayer. Ah! How often has God kissed a poor Christian at the beginning of private prayer, and spoken peace to him in the midst of private prayer, and filled him with light and joy and assurance upon the close of private prayer! Ambrose said, "I am never less alone, then when I alone; for then I can enjoy the presence of my God most freely, and sweetly, without interruption." Feb 26 "You who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart" (Rom 6:17). You cannot mortify a specific lust that is troubling you, unless you are seeking to obey the Lord from the heart in all areas. If we seek to correct a coarse or filthy outbreak of sin in the soul, but neglect basic duties of prayer and reading the Scriptures that promote spirituality, we labor in vain. Mar 5 "Lord, teach us to pray" (Lk 11:1). To pray is not easy. To pour out your heart and soul before God, to believe He hears and will come to help you; to pray in faith and to wrestle with God; to strive for a blessing and hope against hope; being delayed, yet waiting for Him until He comes; this is exceedingly hard to be done. We have a false image of God, and view Him more like one of us, and not as one filling heaven and earth with His majesty and glory. Do not be discouraged. If you keep trying, your striving and endeavors shall bring you through at last. Mar 13 "He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ" (Phil 1:6). All that we have is by His gracious gift. What can we be proud of? All of the excellencies that we might have, alas! they are borrowed. "What do you have that you did not receive?" (1 Cor 4:7). From the first to the last we are indebted to God's grace (Gal 2:20). We can do nothing without it. Mar 27 "Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more" (Rom 5:20). The Lord looks more upon your graces more than He does upon your weaknesses. The Lord did not cast off Peter for his horrid sins (his three-fold rejection of Jesus), but rather looked upon him with an eye of love and pity. "But go, tell Christ's disciples and Peter that He is going before you to Galilee" (Mk 16:7). O admirable love! O matchless mercy! Christ looked more upon Peter's sorrow than his sin, more upon his tears than his oaths. May 14 "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us" (Gal 3:13). The curse of the Law condemns the sinner to death in soul and body. Nothing can free the soul, but Christ. The Law requires infinite satisfaction that no mere creature can give. Christ frees the believer from this curse. He dissolves the obligation to punishment and cancels all the bonds and chains of guilt. This is done by the full price being paid in place of the sinner, making a complete and full satisfaction. The ransom was paid in full and is sufficient. Christ was made a curse for us. It was an act of the God-man; no other was capable of giving satisfaction for an infinite wrong to God. May 15 "Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, 'Abba! Father!'" (Gal 4:6). "Our Father" is the most proper name with which to address our prayers to God. If God does not give us what we ask, it is not for our good, and we have no reason to complain. But if we beg of Him those things which are most agreeable to His will, He will certainly roll and yearn towards you. Is it temporal mercies that you need? Why go about dejected and destitute, when you have a Father so able and so willing to relieve you? May 16 "Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them" (Rev 21:3). The glorious and infinite God takes notice of your sorrows. He stands close by when you do not see Him and feel He has forsaken you (Ps 34:18). He attends you with the greatest tenderness when you say He has forgotten you. He numbers your sighs and bottles up your tears (Ps 56:8). May 17 "If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God" (Col 3:1). It is contrary to the nature of faith for a believer to seek peace in his earthly enjoyments. We are grieved at crosses, losses, wrongs of our enemies, unkind dealings of our friends, sickness, or for contempt and scorn in the world. Was it property, riches, credit, and friends that God called for you to believe? Do you have any promises for these things in His Word? We must seek far more from God, and less from the earth. May 22 "I am mute; I do not open my mouth, for it is You who have done it" (Ps 39:9). It is the duty of gracious souls to see God as the author of all our afflictions. Instead of Job bemoaning the Chaldeans who plundered him, he discerned God's hand in his sufferings and said, "The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord" (Job 1:21). Joseph saw the hand of God in his brothers selling him into Egypt. "It was not you who sent me here, but God" (Gn 45:8). Those who see the hand of God in their afflictions will, like David, be silent. "Let him alone and let him curse [me], for the Lord has told him" (2 Sam 16:11). May 26 & 27 "But if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous" (1 Jn 2:1). Christ stands as our advocate alone before God's bar and pleads before the Father. Whatever can be rightly charged upon us, He accepts the whole charge upon Himself, acknowledging the crimes to be His own. Having acknowledged them to be His own, the quarrel is no more between us and Satan, for the Lord Jesus has adopted our quarrel. Look then to Jesus when you have sinned. He will plead with the Father for you. Jun 17 God is my God. The pronoun "my" is worth so much to the soul. All our consolation indeed consists in this pronoun. I have sometimes thought how David rolls this word as a lump of sugar under his tongue. "I love you, O Lord my strength. The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, m shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold" (Ps 18:1,2). Jun 19 "They shall call His name Immanuel (which means, God with us)" (Mt 1:23). The clearest manifestation of God to us is made only in Jesus Christ, who is "the image of the invisible God" (Col 1:15). Christ is the exact copy or character of the Father's person and perfections (Heb 1:3). When Philip desired for Christ to show him the Father, Jesus said, "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. Believe me, I am in the Father and the Father is in me" (Jn 14:9,11). In the works of creation, God is above us. In His works of providence He is outside us. In the Law, He is against us. In Himself, He is invisible to us. Only in Christ is God Immanuel, with us, in us, and for us. Jun 23 "Put on the full armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil" (Eph 6:11). It is easier for Satan to tempt when he has the presence of an object to excite the lust that lies dormant in the heart. If the Christian lets the object of temptation draw near, Satan anticipates that his scheme will soon be effective. Therefore, if it is our desire to not yield to sin, we must not walk by or sit at the door of occasion. Do not look with a wandering eye at the beauty by which you would be taken captive. Do not parley in your thoughts with that which you do no wish to take into your heart. Jul 8 "Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving" (Col 4:2). Distractions haunt us in prayer. Out thoughts stray in and out. What causes these vain thoughts in our prayers? 1. Satan is ready to resist us in prayer. He is afraid of prayer. 2. We are restless creatures. It is difficult for us to concentrate on one subject for any length of time. 3. We are distracted by practical atheism. We have little sense of the unseen world of spirits. Things we see have a greater force upon us than the true God who is Spirit and invisible power. 4. Lust will distract us – the covetous man about the world, the fleshly about his pleasures, and the ambitious about his honors. If distractions are resisted, God will gather up the broken fragments of our prayers in mercy and answer us. Jul 20 If we fill ourselves with the world, the less we will delight in Christ. There is infinite fullness in Jesus Christ. He is suited to all the needs of poor undone sinners. No king was anointed with such power, no prophet with such wisdom, no priest with such grace, for God gave Him the Spirit without measure (Jn 3:34), and of His fullness we receive grace upon grace (Jn 1:16). Christ infinitely transcends all the beauty and glory of the world. Aug 19 "If we ask anything according to His will, He hears us" (I Jn 5:14). Nothing comes to pass without our heavenly Father's permission or ordination. There is nothing that comes to pass but God has His purpose in it. Though the world seems to run at random in blind confusion and rude disorder, yet God governs it to make perfect harmony out of the discord. We cannot even by our most fervent prayers alter God's decrees. So why pray? God has not only ordained all things, but appointed the means by which these things come about, including the means of prayer. We pray to obtain that which God has ordained us to receive when we pray. We ask God that we may be fit to receive what He from all eternity determined to give by prayer, and not otherwise. So when we lie under any affliction, prayer is necessary because God has possibly ordained not to remove it unless we pray. Aug 24 "Hallowed by Your name" (Mt 6:9). Honoring God's name is before all other petitions. In heaven, there will be no need to pray "give us our daily bread" or "forgive us our trespasses," because there will be no hunger or sin in heaven. To hallow His name is to set it apart from common use. We hallow and sanctify God's name when we never make mention of it but with the highest reverence. We praise God's name even under affliction, as Job did. "The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord" (Job 1:21). Sept 2 "They will perish, but You will remain" (Ps 102:26). God in His perfections is without any variation from eternity to eternity. He is the same in nature, and the same in will and purpose. He changes all other things as He pleases, but is immutable in every respect, and his wisdom, power and knowledge are always the same. God lacks nothing, loses nothing, and exists by Himself. He is without any new nature, new thought, new will, or new purpose. He is infinitely good, wise, holy, and without change. If God could change, He would not be a perfect being. Oct 3 "See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are" (I Jn 3:1). "He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself" (Eph 1:5). "The Lord is my portion" (Ps 119:57). We are God's adopted children. What greater ground of joy imaginable is there than this? With God as our portion, all He is and all He has is our inheritance. We have title to all our Father's riches and honors. God is our Father forever. How we should rejoice in this! To be a son or daughter of God, our everlasting Father, is the highest title in the world. Oct 18 "I can do all things through Him who strengthens me" (Phil 4:13). You are not to conquer difficulties and oppositions in your own strength, but by the Spirit of God. The power of His grace is sufficient, and His strength appears the greatest in our weakness (2 Cor 12:9). All the saints in heaven have gone this way. They were tempted, troubled, scorned, opposed, and now they triumph in glory (Rev 7:14). Your enemies are like grasshoppers before the power of the Almighty (Isa 40:22). Oct 29 "Train yourself for godliness" (1 Tim 4:7). God is our chief good and portion. Godliness is the worshiping of God in our heart and action. In a godly person's heart, though some sin is left, no sin is liked; in his life, though sin remains, yet no sin reigns. He allots time every day for spiritual duties. Like the lark, he is up early, singly sweetly to the , or praise of His Maker; and often with the nightingale up late, singing the same pleasant tune. He gives God all the cream of his affection. He loves God without measure. Nov 5 "Trust in the Lord with all your heart" (Prov 3:5). Satan seeks to stir up harsh thoughts of God when His providence is hard to understand. Some have questioned His care and faithfulness in not providing better for His servants or in allowing their afflictions. But what God takes from me is less than I owe Him, and what He leaves me is more than I deserve. It is fitting for Christians to bless God in the saddest condition that can befall them. Faith finds mercy in the greatest affliction and in the saddest mixture of providence. Praise God for His past mercies and it will not be long before you have a new song in your mouth for the present mercy. Nov 19 "You will find Him, if you search for Him with all your heart and with all your soul" (Dt 4:29). By prayer the Christian can open his heart to God as a friend, and obtain fresh testimony of God's friendship to Him. Prayer is a sincere, sensible, affectionate pouring out of the heart to God through Christ, in the strength and assistance of the Holy Spirit for such things as God promised, or that are according to God's Word for the good of the church, with submission in faith to the will of God. True prayer feels, sighs, groans, and bubbles out of the heart as some heavy burden lies upon it or some sweet sense of mercy received is appreciated. "As the deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God" (Ps 42:1). Dec 26 "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses" (Heb 4:15). We have a High Priest who knows all our infirmities. He knows what is it to be in need, to have nothing upon which to ride, and nowhere to lay His head. He knows what it is to be in pain, and to be despised, abused, reproached and hated. He knows what it is to be tempted by Satan. He knows what it is to be deserted by His friends and to be forsaken of God. He became like us in all things except sin. He suffers with us.
Illumine your mind & ignite your heart with profound biblical meditations from titans of the faith.
(4.75 stars) First, a practical point: potential buyers need to be aware that this is only Volume I of Voices from the Past. You are not buying both volumes. As of January 2022, the publisher (Banner of Truth) does offer a package deal at a discounted price for both books. The bottom line is that this is one of the best daily devotionals you can buy. The editor has accomplished a righteous task in mining the deep spiritual catalog of the Puritans to produce this biblically sound and rich theological compendium of God-glorifying meditations and golden nuggets of wisdom. For every day of the calendar year, the reader is treated to one Bible verse and then a 1-2 paragraph pastoral exposition that is both heavenly minded yet also ridiculously practical. Although not explicit, the devotionals are grouped around a theme: for example, faith, mortification of sin, temptation, perseverance under trial, comfort, contentment and how to pray. All of these reflections stir the soul, so remove the spiritual crust from your eyes and cobwebs from your heart and taste and see that the Lord is good. Furthermore, this book gives a synoptic view of who God is: awesome, holy, sovereign, merciful and good. Hence, you will undoubtedly read this book and be challenged to meditate on how big the God of heaven is compared to all your troubles and worries here on earth. And, for those readers who are unfamiliar with the Puritans, this book introduces you to these faithful pastors and preachers (e.g., Jonathan Edwards, John Owen, Richard Sibbes and Thomas Watson) and some of their most famous works (e.g., The Existence & Attributes of God, The Christian in Complete Armor). What oozes from every page is a sense of awe and a reverent “weightiness” of God’s glory; these are attributes often absent in the writings of modernity, whose authors are often flippant and treat the name of God with a cheeky casualness. Finally, this devotional is very well organized: it has a bibliography of all the works referenced, an author index, a topical index and a Scripture index. Clearly, the editorial team wanted to make this devotional as accessible as possible. Truly, this text will yield spiritual dividends for years to come.
love the Puritan writings!
Great Amazon service, wonderful book, needs to be read!
One of the Best Devotional Books to Deepen Our Faith
All believers desire to deepen their relationship with God. After the Bible, devotional books are popular among believers because it is quick and easy. However, not all devotional books are of equal worth. Some are fluff and others are motivational, but not necessarily Biblically deep. If you want to grow deeper, and become thoroughly Biblical in all aspects of devotional life, strongly consider Puritans. And this book, Voices From The Past meets that void. I was hooked on the Puritans after reading Richard Sibbes' The Bruised Reed and John Owen's The Mortification of Sin. And I longed to find a daily devotional reading that covered the Puritans. One was
The best Christian devotional I've ever seen...
I bought Voices From The Past after a VERY long search for a good devotional that is scripturally faithful, challenging, easy to read, and relevant. Now, this isn't exactly the thing you think of when you read the word "Puritan," but compared to every other devotional I've encountered, this is by far the best. I ended up purchasing about 3-4 more copies for some others who were looking for a good devotional as well. The format of the book is a one-page-per-day reading (around 300-350 words per day), like Faith's Checkbook by Charles Spurgeon. Each of the articles are taken directly from the work of a particular Puritan author. Sometimes they are re-worded, shortened, or made more understandable, in order to give the reader a good reflection for the day. Other times, the reading for the day is a more exact copy of what they wrote. If the reader pays careful attention, they'll be able to see various themes that the reflections focus upon, over a number of days. There are citations at the bottom of each page, so that the reader can have a reference as to where this particular reflection comes from, unlike The Valley of Vision (though this prayer book is a must-read for all, in my opinion). I give it five-stars because of its clarity, accessibility, relevancy, and integrity.
The best of the best!
This volume and its companion are the two best devotional books I have read. The Puritans were careful physicians of the soul. Their writings are rich spiritual food. Richard Rushing draws out the cream from the riches of the Puritan writers. These books challenge, comfort and convict me. The theology is rich and the practical applications are pointed. Caution: This may tempt you to read the full sermons! I use them in my personal worship, in family worship and for devotionals in a variety of gatherings. The three indices in each volume (author, Scripture references, topic) are very helpful.
We need to go back and listen to the Puritans
We all need to go back and listen to the voices, the writings of the Puritans. Get back to the real Word of God, all of it, live it, take it to heart, and in reading the writings of the Puritans anyone can see how off course and walking along the wrong path so many of us are on while still deluding ourselves we're Christians. The writings of the Puritans will help shed light, clean things up, purify the water to see the depths, and help get anyone back on the straight and narrow.
What a gem!
I only read books by the Puritans. I feel they are the closest thoughts to the Word of God. My favorite daily devotional for years has been My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers. I never thought I’d find another to compare until I read this daily devotional. What a masterpiece it is! God bless Richard Rushing and Banner of Truth for this publication! It’s a true gem! Just as meaty as Oswald and a great opportunity to be exposed to many Puritan writings. Love this devotional!
Perfect gift for a pastor or ministry leader
I received this book as a gift from my ministry team at my church. I became familiar with it after reading excerpts quoted in another Bible study. I was thrilled to realize all these quotes from puritan authors had been compiled into one source: this devotional! As a disclaimer, I am usually not a fan of devotionals. I find them shallow and anecdotal. Not this one!! Day after day is packed with rich doctrinal truths which are edifying and truly encouraging. I cannot recommend this enough. I had previously purchased a copy for a friend, but had a hard time letting it go until I got my own copy! Highly recommended!
Very good.
Very deep devotional that gets you thinking.
Comments
Post a Comment