He asked her, “What hast thou in the house?” And she said, “Nothing but a pot of oil.” But that pot of oil was adequate for all her wants, if she had only known how to use it. In truth it represented the Holy Spirit, and the great lesson of the parable is that the Holy Ghost is adequate for all our wants, if we only know how to use Him. All that she needed was to get sufficient vessels to hold the overflow, and then to pour out until all were filled. And so the Holy Spirit is limited only by our capacity to receive Him, and when God wants us to have a larger fulness, He has to make room for it by creating greater needs. God sends us new vessels to be filled with His Holy Spirit in the needs that come to us, and the trials that meet us. These are God’s opportunities for God to give us more of Himself, and as we meet them He comes to us in larger fulness for each new necessity. Lord, help me to see Thee in all my trying situations and to make them vessels to hold more of Thy grace. AUGUST 27. “Take no thought for your life” (Matt. vi. 25). Still the Lord is using the things that are despised. The very names of Nazarene and Christian were once epithets of contempt. No man can have God’s highest thought and be popular with his immediate generation. The most abused men are often most used. There are far greater calamities than to be unpopular and misunderstood. There are far worse things than to be found in the minority. Many of God’s greatest blessings are lying behind the devil’s scarecrows of prejudice and misrepresentation. The Holy Ghost is not ashamed to use unpopular people. And if He uses them, what need they care for men? Oh, let us but have His recognition and man’s notice will count for little, and He will give us all we need of human help and praise. Let us only seek His will, His glory, His approval. Let us go for Him on the hardest errands and do the most menial tasks. Honor enough that He uses us and sends us. Let us not fear in this day to follow Him outside the camp, bearing His reproach, and by-and-by He will own our worthless name before the myriads of earth and sky. AUGUST 28. “According to the power that worketh in us” (Eph. iii. 20). When we reach the place of union with God, through the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, we come into the inheritance of external blessing and enter upon the land of our possession. Then our physical health and strength come to us through the power of our interior life; then the prayer is fulfilled, that we shall be in health and prosper, as our soul prospereth. Then, with the kingdom of God and His righteousness within us, all things are added unto us.