Grace an Educator

[Daily Devotional]

Grace an Educator 

     I thank my God always on your behalf, for the grace of God which is
given you by Jesus Christ; . . . who shall also confirm you unto the
end, that ye may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. 1
Cor. 1:4-8.  

     In this world we have temporal duties to perform, and in the
performance of these duties we are forming characters that will either
stand the test of the judgment or be weighed in the balances and found
wanting. We may do the smallest duties nobly, firmly, faithfully, as if
seeing the whole heavenly host looking upon us. Take a lesson from the
gardener. If he wishes a plant to grow he cultivates and trims it; he
gives water, he digs about its roots, plants it where the sunshine will
fall upon it, and day by day he works about it; and not by violent
efforts, but by acts constantly repeated, he trains the shrub until its
form is perfect and its bloom is full.  

     The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ works upon the heart and mind as
an educator. The continued influence of His Spirit upon the soul trains
and molds and fashions the character after the divine model. Let the
youth bear in mind that a repetition of acts, forms habits, and habit,
character. . . . Is the love of Christ a living, active agent in your
soul, correcting, reforming, refining you, and purifying you from your
wrong practices? There is need of cultivating every grace that Jesus
through His suffering and death has brought within your reach. You are
to manifest the grace that has been so richly provided for you, in the
small as well as in the large concerns of life. . . . Great truths can
be brought into little things, and religion can be carried into the
little as well as into the large concerns of life.  

     The commandments of God are exceeding broad, and the Lord is not
pleased to have His children disorderly, to have their lives marred by
defects and their religious experience crippled, their growth in grace
dwarfed, because they persist in cherishing hereditary and  cultivated
deficiencies in wrong habits that will be imitated by others and thus be
perpetuated. If the grace of Christ cannot remedy these defects, what
then constitutes transformation of character?  

>From That I May Know Him - Page 157