Unstaggering Trustfulness

He shall not be afraid of evil tidings; his heart is fixed, trusting in the LORD"   (Psalm 112:7).
 
Suspense is dreadful. When we have no news from home, we are apt to grow anxious, and we cannot be persuaded that "no news is good news."

Faith is the cure for this condition of sadness; the LORD by His Spirit settles the mind in holy serenity, and all fear is gone as to the future as well as the present.

The fixedness of heart spoken of by the psalmist is to be diligently sought after.

It is not believing this or that promise of the LORD, but the general condition of unstaggering trustfulness in our God, the confidence which we have in Him that He will neither do us ill Himself nor suffer anyone else to harm us.

This constant confidence meets the unknown as well as the known of life.

Let the morrow be what it may, our God is the God of tomorrow.

Whatever events may have happened, which to us are unknown, our Jehovah is God of the unknown as well as of the known.

We are determined to trust the LORD, come what may.

If the very worst should happen, our God is still the greatest and best.

Therefore will we not fear though the postman's knock should startle us or a telegram wake us at midnight.

The LORD liveth, and what can His children fear.

~Charles Spurgeon~

Hear So As To Be Heard

John 15:7  If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.

Note well that we must hear Jesus speak if we expect Him to hear us speak.

If we have no ear for Christ, He will have no ear for us. In proportion as we hear we shall be heard.

Moreover, what is heard must remain, must live in us, and must abide in our character as a force and a power.

We must receive the truths which Jesus taught, the precepts which He issued, and the movements of His Spirit within us; or we shall have no power at the Mercy Seat.

Suppose our LORD's words to be received and to abide in us, what a boundless field of privilege is opened up to us!

We are to have our will in prayer, because we have already surrendered our will to the LORD's command.

Thus are Elijahs trained to handle the keys of heaven and lock or loose the clouds.

One such man is worth a thousand common Christians.

Do we humbly desire to be intercessors for the church and the world, and like Luther to be able to have what we will of the LORD?

Then we must bow our ear to the voice of the Well-beloved, treasure up His words, and carefully obey them.

He has need to "hearken diligently" who would pray effectually.

~Charles Spurgeon~

The I AM Has Come Down

Exo 3:8  And I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey; unto the place of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites.  

THIS is a marvelous chapter, because it is so full of God. If the previous one, in its story of human striving, reminds us of Romans 7--this as surely recalls Rom. 8.

There is little mention of the part that Moses was to play, but much is said of what God was about to do. "I am come down." "I will bring you up." "I will put forth Mine hand."

O weary soul, bitter with weary bondage, groaning beneath cruel taskmasters, afflicted and tossed with tempest, the I AM has come down!

God comes down to our lowest to lift us to His highest. - This is the theme of the Magnificent, and of Hannah's song.

God comes down to the dust for the poor, and to the dunghill for the needy.

You cannot be too lonely or broken in spirit for Him to notice and help.

In proportion to your humiliation will be your exaltation.

He comes down to our saddest to lift us to His joyfullest. - How great the contrast between the cry of the Hebrews, because of their taskmasters, and the exultant note that smote on the rocks of the Red Sea!

Such shall be your experience also. If you suffer in the line of God's will and providence, you are sowing the seeds of light and gladness. Oh, anticipate the harvest!

He comes down...our helplessness to succor with His great might. - Israel could not help herself; but the resources of I AM were sufficient for every need, and they will be for yours and mine.

This is God's blank check; fill it in!

Insert after these majestic words, wisdom, or courage, or love, or whatever you need most.

And He will be all this, and more also: not for a moment, but always; not spasmodically, but unchangeably.

~F. B. Meyer~

Patient Endurance In Trial

And it is well for us to bear in mind that in no way is God more glorified, and the souls of others benefited than by the patient endurance of His people in trial. 

Perhaps you may be ready to repine at a period of apparent uselessness being allotted to you.

Were you able actively to labor in the vineyard, you may imagine that you might do far more good than it is possible for you to do now.

You may say to yourself, "The cup of suffering which Christ drank brought great blessings to the world...but what good to any one can come about through my affliction?"

Now it is certain that we can judge very little indeed about a matter like this. God's ways are not our ways.

By the most likely means, a very small amount of good may be effected...while by means we have never thought of, He may bring great glory to Himself and good to man.

An aged clergyman was accustomed for many years to visit a long confirmed invalid, who patiently bore up under great suffering. "I wonder why God keeps me here," she would say... 

I can do no good to anyone. Yes, God has a work for you to do.

Impossible! I never see any one.

Yes, God uses the weakest instrument, and you may be able to teach me.

Well, then, she replied, "I am willing to suffer as long as God pleases."

And so it happened as her pastor had said.

During the long illness which preceded his death, he remarked that he knew not how he could have borne the pain, had it not been for the remembrance of the meekness and submission which that Christian woman had displayed.

A similar example might be found in the account that has been given of the farewell counsels of an eminent French pastor. 

During his last illness he assembled a few Christian people in his chamber from Sunday to Sunday, and, in the midst of extreme weakness and suffering, gave them the fruits of his own ripened experience.

Perhaps never during his whole ministry did his words make so deep an impression, and "The Farewells of Adolphe Monod" have likewise brought a message of consolation to many a one in our own land.

Besides, however, the way in which God often employs the weakness and suffering of His servants to effect a work for His name...it is to be remembered also that He often uses it as a preparation, that when the season of affliction has passed, His servant may be able the better to teach and comfort others.

Lessons practically learned for the first time in the day of sorrow may be intended for the benefit not only of the sufferer himself, but also for very many besides in future years.

It is not too much to say that the ministry which has often been most richly blessed, has received its tone and character from trials which seemed at the time almost unbearable.

Hence, reader, in every trying hour strive in the strength of Jesus, in the might of His Spirit; meekly to bow beneath your Father's hand, yes, even to kiss the hand that presents the bitter cup. 

~George Everard~

Mixture Of Truth And Error

It does not require a great deal of intelligence in order to recognize that, throughout the history of God's work, the master-stroke of the great perverter has been confusion.

God is not the God of confusion, but of order. 

Satan is the god of confusion. To get order out of chaos, God said: "Let there be light".

To get chaos out of order, Satan says 'Let there be confusion'.

His it is to confuse issues and elements.

To do this, he must - as the word suggests - fuse (or try to fuse) elements which are constitutionally different and do not belong to each other.

Thus there is a constitutional contradiction and inconsistency.

It is only when his master-method runs amok that we have utter and unmitigated wickedness.

His main work is deception by mixture. 

It is just here that the place, meaning, and sovereignty of the Holy Spirit in the life of the child of God has its meaning and importance. 

 

He is 'The Spirit of Truth'. He alone knows where truth ends and falsehood begins.

Only as we truly "walk in the Spirit" shall we know the truth and be made free from error.

A walk in the Spirit demands a 'circumcised heart', a heart in which the severance has been made between flesh and spirit, Christ and self.

 

There has never been a heresy that has not had in it sufficient truth to deceive very good people.

Likewise, there has never been anything wholly of God but the strategy of the Evil One has been to fasten on to it some implication, insinuation, interpretation, or suggestion, that would make it questionable or 'dangerous'.

He even did this with the LORD Jesus Himself. 

He did it with Paul all through his life.

Let a demon-possessed girl in Philippi sponsor the preaching of Paul and Silas, and it is damned and discredited.

 

So, we come to this. A good thing can be made its own enemy, by being either confused, or taken out of its true meaning.

~T. Austin Sparks~

The Lukewarm

Elijah made it as difficult as he could for the LORD. He wanted fire, but yet he soaked the sacrifice with water!

GOD loves such holy boldness in our prayers.

Ask of Me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. Psalm 2:8

Oh, my ministering brethren! Much of our praying is but giving GOD advice.

Our praying is discolored with ambition, either for ourselves
or for our denomination.

Perish the thought! Our goal must be GOD alone.

It is His honor that is defiled, His blessed Son who is ignored,
His laws broken, His name profaned, His book forgotten, His house made a circus of social efforts.

Does GOD ever need more patience with His people than when
they are "praying"?

We tell Him what to do and then how to do it.

We pass judgments and make appreciations in our prayers.

In short, we do everything except pray!

No Bible school can teach us this art. What Bible school has "prayer" on its curriculum?

The most important thing a man can study is the prayer part of the book. But where is this taught?

Let us strip off the last bandage and declare that many of our presidents and teachers do not pray, shed no tears, know no travail.

Can they teach what they do not know?

The man who can get believers to praying would, under GOD,
usher in the greatest revival that the world has ever known. 

There is no fault in GOD. He is able. 

GOD "is able to do according to the power that worketh in us." 

GOD'S problem today is not communism, nor yet Romanism, nor liberalism, nor modernism.

GOD'S problem is - dead fundamentalism!

Rev 3:16  So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.

Sin today is both glamorized and popularized, thrown into the ear by radio, thrown into the eye by television, and splashed on popular magazine covers.

Churchgoers, sermon-sick and teaching-tired, leave the meeting as they entered it - visionless and passionless!

Oh GOD, give this perishing generation ten thousand John the Baptists!

Just as Moses could not mistake the sight of the burning bush,
so a nation could not mistake the sight of a burning man!

GOD meets fire with fire.

John the Baptist was a new man with a new message.

As a man accused of murder hears the dread cry of the judge, "Guilty!" and pales at it, so the crowd heard John's cry, "Repent!" until it rang down the corridors of their minds, stirred memory, bowed the conscience and brought them terror-stricken to repentance and baptism!

After Pentecost, the onslaught of Peter, fresh from his fiery baptism of the Spirit, shook the crowd until as one man they cried out: "Men and brethren, what shall we do?"

Imagine someone telling these sin-stricken men, "Just sign a card! Attend church regularly! Pay your tithes!" No! A
thousand times no!

If in our cultivated unbelief and our theological twilight and our spiritual powerlessness, we have grieved and are continuing to grieve Thy Holy Spirit, then in mercy spew us out of Thy mouth!

If Thou cannot do something with us and through us, then please GOD, do something without us!"

~Leonard Ravenhill~

The Cross Comes Against Any Changed State

There is one thing against which the Cross always stands: namely, a state that is other than that which GOD intended

The Cross stands over the nature of things when that nature has become different.

Whenever the nature of things has changed from what GOD either made it at the beginning, or intended it to be, GOD has brought in the Cross in some way or another; at once He has introduced the Cross.

The nature of man was changed at the beginning; he became something different in nature from what GOD intended. We all know that by our inheritance.

And immediately the LORD introduced the Cross in the law of travail, of passion, of diversity; He wrote immediately over that state, Despair and Death.

The Cross stood over against that changed state.

The only hope for recovering the divinely intended state, condition, nature of things, lay in the Cross.

The Cross is the great purifying agent; and purifying simply means getting rid of mixture.

When there are things which do not correspond or tally, they are of two natures, two realms, two opposing elements; when there is impurity, adulteration, the Cross stands four-square against it in order to purify.

The very first thing with GOD whether in the individual, or in any company of His people locally, or in the Church universal is its purity, its cleanness, its separation from all iniquity and all mixture.

Our Christian life is based upon the Cross, individually, locally, and universally.

The Cross sees GOD'S mighty, terrible, eternal declaration against impurity, the contamination and corruption that has come in to make a state, in man and in the world, which He never intended to be.

If, therefore, the LORD sees any state that He never intended to be, that contradicts His mind in this matter.

He will bring in the Cross as a working power; and, where that is found, there will begin to arise a situation.

~T. Austin Sparks~

Our Great Opportunities

Job 38:22  Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow? or hast thou seen the treasures of the hail,
 
Job 38:23  Which I have reserved against the time of trouble, against the day of battle and war?

Our trials are great opportunities. Too often we look on them as great obstacles.

It would be a haven of rest and an inspiration of unspeakable power if each of us would henceforth recognize every difficult situation as one of GOD'S chosen ways of proving to us His love and look around for the signals of His glorious manifestations;

Then, indeed, would every cloud become a rainbow, and every mountain a path of ascension and a scene of transfiguration.

If we will look back upon the past, many of us will find that the very time our Heavenly Father has chosen to do the kindest things for us, and given us the richest blessings, has been the time we were strained and shut in on every side.

GOD'S jewels are often sent us in rough packages and by dark liveried servants, but within we find the very treasures of the King's palace and the Bridegroom's love.

~A. B. Simpson~

Trust Him in the dark, honor Him with unwavering confidence even in the midst of mysterious dispensations, and the recompense of such faith will be like the molting of the eagle's plumes, which was said to give them a new lease of youth and strength.

~J. R. Macduff~

If we could see beyond today As GOD can see; If all the clouds should roll away, The shadows flee; O'er present griefs we would not fret. 

Each sorrow we would soon forget, For many joys are waiting yet For you and me.

If we could know beyond today As GOD doth know, Why dearest treasures pass away And tears must flow; 

And why the darkness leads to light, Why dreary paths will soon grow bright; Some day life's wrongs will be made right, Faith tells us so.

If we could see, if we could know, We often say, But GOD in love a veil doth throw Across our way; 

We cannot see what lies before, And so we cling to Him the more, He leads us till this life is o'er; Trust and obey.