Dear Friends,
The Christian life as been described as spiritual warfare, and so it is. A good general looks over the battlefield and asks where is my army most likely to fail. He then beefs up that area and does all in his power to see that the line holds there. So must we fight the good fight of faith. Today’s devotional warns us of where we are most likely to fail so we can beware and strengthen that area. God bless you.

Because of Calvary,
John Janney

• James 4:17-18 (ESV)

  So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.

“We used to have, in England, a great leader who is still called ‘The Iron Duke.’ I think we might have called Elijah ‘The Iron Prophet.’ He seemed to leap into the field of action like a lion from the forest; what strength and courage he had! He seemed to have nothing of the timidity, and trembling, and weakness of ordinary manhood; he was a very athlete in the service of God, girding up his loins, and running before Ahab’s chariot. Yet here we see that he was indeed a man of like passions with ourselves. He, too, could be impatient; he, too, could be petulant; he, too, could grow weary of his appointed service, and ask to be allowed to die…. Elijah failed in the very point at which he was strongest, and that is where most men fail. In Scripture, it is the wisest man who proves himself to be the greatest fool; just as the meekest man, Moses, spoke hasty and bitter words. Abraham failed in his faith, and Job in his patience; so, he who was the most courageous of all men, fled from an angry woman.” [Charles Haddon Spurgeon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit XLVII, (London: Passmore and Alabaster, 1901), p. 206]