Being Proven

Exodus 15:25  And he cried unto the LORD; and the LORD shewed him a tree, which when he had cast into the waters, the waters were made sweet: there he made for them a statute and an ordinance, and there he proved them,

I stood once in the test room of a great steel mill. 

All around me were little partitions and compartments. 

Steel had been tested to the limit, and marked with figures that showed its breaking point. 

Some pieces had been twisted until they broke, and the strength of torsion was marked on them. 

Some had been stretched to the breaking point and their tensile strength indicated. 

Some had been compressed to the crushing point, and also marked. 

The master of the steel mill knew just what these pieces of steel would stand under strain. 

He knew just what they would bear if placed in the great ship, building, or bridge. 

He knew this because his testing room revealed it.

It is often so with God's children. 

God does not want us to be like vases of glass or porcelain. 

He would have us like these toughened pieces of steel, able to bear twisting and crushing to the uttermost without collapse.

He wants us to be, not hothouse plants, but storm-beaten oaks; not sand dunes driven with every gust of wind, but granite rocks withstanding the fiercest storms. 

To make us such He must needs bring us into His testing room of suffering.

Many of us need no other argument than our own experiences to prove that suffering is indeed God's testing room of faith.

~J. H. McC

It is very easy for us to speak and theorize about faith, but God often casts us into crucibles to try our gold, and to separate it from the dross and alloy. 

Oh, happy are we if the hurricanes that ripple life's unquiet sea have the effect of making Jesus more precious. 

Better the storm with Christ than smooth waters without Him.

~Macduff

What if God could not manage to ripen your life without suffering?                                                                                              

Satan Is Trying To Weaken Our Faith By Fear

Satan is continually trying to weaken our faith by fear. 

He is a great metaphysician and knows the paralyzing effect of fear-the great enemy of faith. 

If he can cause us to fear, he will stop us from trusting and hinder the very blessing we need. 

Job found the peril of fear and gives us the sorrowful testimony I feared a fear, and it came upon me.

Job 3:25  For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me.

Fear is born of Satan, and if we would only take time to think a moment we would see that everything Satan says is founded upon a falsehood. 

He is the father of lies. 

Even his fears are falsehoods and his terrors ought to serve as encouragements.

When Satan tells you, therefore, that some ill is going to come, you may quietly look in his face and tell him he is a liar. 

Instead of ill, goodness and mercy shall follow you all the days of your life. 

And then turn to your blessed Lord and say, What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee (Psalm 56:3). 

Every fear is distrust, and trust is the remedy for fear.

A. B. Simpson

Isa 41:10  Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness. 

A Whore's Forehead!

You Have A Whore's Forehead You Refuse To Be Ashamed!

Jeremiah 3:3  Therefore the showers have been withholden, and there hath been no latter rain; and thou hadst a whore's forehead, thou refusedst to be ashamed.

Are They Ashamed Of Their Loathsome Conduct? 

No, They Have No Shame At All!
 
Jeremiah 6:15  Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? nay, they were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush: therefore they shall fall among them that fall: at the time that I visit them they shall be cast down, saith the LORD.

They had sinned away shame - instead of being ashamed of sin.  

Continuance in sin had quite banished all sense of sin and all shame for sin; so that they would not allow nature to draw her veil of blushing before their great abominations. 

How applicable these scriptures are to the present time, I will leave the prudent reader to judge.

But what does the prophet do, now that they were as bold in sin, and as shameless as so many harlots...

Now that they were grown up to that height of sin and wickedness...

Now that they were above all shame and blushing...

Now that they were grown so proud, so hardened, so obstinate, so rebellious, so bent on self-destruction...

That no mercies could melt them or allure them, nor any threatenings or judgments could in any way terrify them or stop them?

The prophet goes into a corner, he retires into the most secret places, and there he weeps bitterly; there he weeps as if he were resolved to drown himself in his own tears. 

Jer 13:17  But if ye will not hear it, my soul shall weep in secret places for your pride; and mine eye shall weep sore, and run down with tears, because the LORD'S flock is carried away captive.

In the times wherein we live, Hell seems to be broken loose, and men turned into incarnate devils! 

Soul-damning wickednesses walk up and down the streets with A Whore's Forehead, without the least check or restraint.

Ah, England, England! What pride, luxury, lasciviousness, licentiousness, wantonness, drunkenness, cruelties, injustice, oppressions, fornications, adulteries, falsehoods, hypocrisies, atheisms, horrid blasphemies, and hellish impieties, are now to be found rampant in the midst of you! 

Ah, England! England! How are the Scriptures rejected, God derided, and wickedness tolerated!

And what is the voice of all these crying abominations...but every Christian to his closet and there weep, with weeping Jeremiah, bitterly for all these great abominations whereby God is dishonored openly. 

Oh weep in secret for their sins who openly glory in their sins, which should be their greatest shame. 

Oh blush in secret for those who are past all blushing for their sins; for who knows, but that the whole land may fare the better for the sakes of a few, who are mourners in secret! 

~Thomas Brooks~

You Have A Testimony

                                              
Out of  his inner being shall flow rivers of living water.

You are now born again, a child of God, you are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, and He has become your Life utterly.

What must be the result of that?

That you have a testimony. Thereby you become constituted a witness.

What is the temple for? 

It is the place of the testimony of the Lord, the ministry of God from which there should go forth to the ends of the earth that testimony, which is the testimony of Life. 

Ezekiel's vision showed the waters issuing from under the altar, from the sanctuary; coming down out from the court, away to empty themselves into the distant ocean, a river deepening and widening all the way. 

And on this side and on that side were very many trees, and all those trees were bearing their fruit continually and their leaves never faded. 

All this was the expression of this Life; for we are the testimony to this Life, which comes out of the sanctuary. 

The Lord Jesus says: "That is you, in My thought! Out from you (your bodies a temple of the Holy Spirit) shall flow rivers of living water; a testimony of Life shall come through."

That which issues from you, being the Spirit of the Lord, shall have all the way along that which speaks of the power of that Life, the freshness of that Life, the glory of that Life. 

That is, wherever the river comes there shall be an expression of Life. 

That is to be the effect of our being here as indwelt, permeated, and filled with the Spirit.

Not only may we be conscious of it (and this is where we have to walk carefully and watchfully)...

But so many people want that baptism of the Holy Spirit which will deliver them altogether from a life of faith - for that is the effect of it in their lives. 

If only they can get that, it will all be senses, and no longer faith; they will know, they will feel! 

But there is NO word in the Scriptures which indicates that being filled with the Holy Spirit will deliver us from a life of faith. 

Very often it has proved that the most effective work done by the Holy Spirit through a life has been altogether hidden from the one who was used. 

They never had any consciousness of it being done, but it was done. 

Years afterwards they have received a letter, or they have met somebody who said: "Do you know, on such-and-such an occasion the Lord spoke to me through you, and from that day to this I have been changed!"

And you remember: "Oh, that was the time I had that bad patch, when I thought nothing at all was accomplished."

Yes, He often hides His work. 

And the activity of the Holy Spirit does not mean that we shall not have to go on in faith. 

It is not always when we feel we are having a great time that the Holy Spirit is having a great time. 

The flowing out of the rivers is not always a thing that means that we can just splash about in it and have a good time. 

Sometimes it may be through agony and travail that Life comes to others, death working in us.

Blessed be God, what does it matter (if the thing is done) if we struggle, and other souls are being born, quickened, renewed through our travail. 

The Lord says: "Out of his inner being shall flow..." That is our privilege, our blessed calling. 

That is a part of sonship. Birth, indwelling, ministry are all of the one Spirit, and all depend upon Him.

May the result of our meditation be that we come to a place where we do recognize that as for ourselves, everything is impossible and hopeless.

~T. Austin Sparks~