Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us. Hebrews 12:1.
O
run with patience is a very difficult thing. Running is apt to suggest
the absence of patience, the eagerness to reach the goal.
We commonly
associate patience with lying down.
We think of it as the angel that
guards the couch of the invalid. Yet, I do not think the invalid's
patience the hardest to achieve.
To lie down in
the time of grief, to be quiet under the stroke of adverse fortune,
implies a great strength; but I know of something that implies a
strength greater still:
It is the power to work under a stroke; to have a
great weight at your heart and still to run; to have a deep anguish in
your spirit and still perform the daily task. It is a Christlike thing!
Many
of us would nurse our grief without crying if we were allowed to nurse
it.
The hard thing is that most of us are called to exercise our
patience, not in bed, but in the street.
We are called to bury our
sorrows, not in lethargic quiescence, but in active service--in the
exchange, in the workshop, in the hour of social intercourse, in the
contribution to another's joy.
There is no burial of sorrow so difficult
as that; it is the "running with patience."
This was
Thy patience, O Son of man! It was at once a waiting and a running--a
waiting for the goal, and a doing of the lesser work meantime.
I see
Thee at Cana turning the water into wine lest the marriage feast should
be clouded.
I see Thee in the desert feeding a multitude with bread just
to relieve a temporary want.
All, all the time, Thou wert bearing a
mighty grief, unshared, unspoken.
Men ask for a rainbow in the cloud;
but I would ask more from Thee. I would be, in my cloud, myself a
rainbow--a minister to others' joy.
My patience will be perfect when it
can work in the vineyard.
~George Matheson~
When all our hopes are gone, Tis well our hands must keep toiling on For others' sake:
For strength to bear is found in duty done; And he is best indeed who learns to make The joy of others cure his own heartache.
Eph 2:4 But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us,
Eph 2:5 Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;)
Eph 2:6 And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus:
This is our rightful
place, to be "seated in heavenly places in Christ Jesus," and to "sit
still" there.
But how few there are who make it their actual experience!
How few, indeed think even that it is possible for them to "sit still"
in these "heavenly places" in the everyday life of a world so full of
turmoil as this.
We may believe perhaps that to pay a
little visit to these heavenly places on Sundays, or now and then in
times of spiritual exaltation, may be within the range of possibility;
but to be actually "seated" there every day and all day long is
altogether another matter; and yet it is very plain that it is for
Sundays and week-days as well.
A quiet spirit is of
inestimable value in carrying on outward activities; and nothing so
hinders the working of the hidden spiritual forces, upon which, after
all, our success in everything really depends, as a spirit of unrest and
anxiety.
There is immense power in stillness. A
great saint once said, "All things come to him who knows how to trust
and be silent."
The words are pregnant with meaning. A knowledge of this
fact would immensely change our ways of working.
Instead of restless
struggles, we would "sit down" inwardly before the Lord, and would let
the Divine forces of His Spirit work out in silence the ends to which we
aspire.
You may not see or feel the operations of this silent force,
but be assured it is always working mightily, and will work for you, if
you only get your spirit still enough to be carried along by the
currents of its power.
~Hannah Whitall Smith~
There is a point of rest At the great center of the cyclone's force, A silence at its secret source;
A little child might slumber undisturbed, Without the ruffle of one fair curl, In that strange, central calm, amid the mighty whirl.
It is your business to learn to be peaceful and safe in God in every situation.
3. Another hindrance to faith is the low state of faith in those
around us, and especially the unbelief of those occupying high places in
the visible Church.
In the days of Jesus it was asked, " Have any of
the rulers believed on Him?"
The great mass of nominal Christians are in
such an infantile state of grace, as to lack the independence to launch
out boldly and alone, and trust God radically and bravely, in spite of
the coldness and half-heartedness of those in religious authority over
them.
How often it occurs in every age, that those who are set to guide
the affairs of the Church, and its education and economy, have no warm,
living faith in God, beyond a gross rationalistic faith in their
ecclesiastical system, who, like Bonaparte, put their faith on the side
of the heaviest battalions.
It is a historical fact that faith kindles
faith, fervent holiness inspires others to pursue it.
Saints multiply in
great revivals of religion. In the world of letters, great authors rise
in clusters, the same thing is true of inventors, and there have been
epochs in Church history where saints rose in constellations.
We need to
be incited by those of faith, but let us beware of toning down our
trust to the level of the half believers and doubters that swarm around
us.
~G. D. Watson~
Mal 3:10 Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the LORD of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.
Many read and plead this promise without noticing the condition upon
which the blessing is promised.
We cannot expect heaven to be opened or
blessing poured out unless we pay our dues unto the LORD our God and to
His cause.
There would be no lack of funds for holy purposes if all
professing Christians paid their fair share.
Many churches, also, miss the
visitation of the Spirit because they starve their ministries.
If there
is no temporal meat for God's servants, we need not wonder if their
ministry has been little food in it for our souls.
When missions pine
for means and the work of the LORD is hindered by an empty treasury, how
can we look for a large amount of soul-prosperity?
Come, come! What have I given of late? Have I been mean to my God?
Have I stinted my Savior?
This will never do.
Let me give my LORD Jesus
His tithe by helping the poor and aiding His work, and then l shall
prove His power to bless me on a large scale.
~Charles Spurgeon~
Am I bowed down? Then let me urge this word of
grace before the LORD.
It is His way, His custom, His promise, His
delight, to raise up them that are bowed down.
Is it a sense of sin and a
consequent depression of spirit which distresses me?
Then the work of
Jesus is, in this case, made and provided to raise me up into rest. O
LORD, raise me, for Thy mercy's sake!
Is it a sad bereavement or a great fall in circumstances? Here again
the Comforter has undertaken to console.
What a mercy for us that one
Person of the sacred Trinity should become the Comforter! This work will
be well done since such a glorious One has made it His peculiar care.
Some are so bowed down that only Jesus can loose them from their
infirmity, but He can, and He will, do it.
He can raise us up to health,
to hope, to happiness.
He has often done so under former trials, and He
is the same Savior and will repeat His deeds of lovingkindness.
We who
are today bowed down and sorrowful shalt yet be set on high, and those
who now mock at us shall be greatly ashamed.
What an honor to be raised
up by the LORD!
It is worthwhile to be bowed down that we may experience
His upraising power.
~Charles Spurgeon~
Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ." 2 Timothy 2:3
We
often get into states and frames of mind, where we need something else
besides consolation.
A child would not grow, if it were always fed upon
sweetmeats.
It must have exercise, and be exposed to the weather, and
have the cold winds blow upon its face, and be hardened, so as to enable
it to bear the chill winter and the nipping frosts.
So the child of God
is not always petted, and fed upon love-tokens.
He is not always
carried in the warm bosom, or sucking the breasts of consolation, but he
has to learn lessons to fit him to be a soldier.
The soldier, we know,
has to endure hardships. He has to lie all night upon the wet grass; to
be pinched with hunger, parched with thirst, and nipped with cold; to
make harassing marches; to hear the roar of the cannon and the whistling
of the bullets, "the thunder of the captains and the shouting;" to see
the flash of the sabre uplifted to cut him down, and the glitter of the
bayonet at his breast, aye, and to feel painful and dangerous wounds.
So
with the spiritual soldier in God's camp.
He has to hunger and thirst,
to suffer cold, nakedness, and hard privations, to be shot at by the
arrows of calumny and the fiery darts of Satan, to make harassing
marches through an enemy's country, to suffer painful wounds, and by
these very exercises learn to be a soldier.
Only so far as he is thus
exercised spiritually can he learn the art of war, can he know how to
fight and make effectual battle under the banners of the Lord against
the enemies of his salvation.
~J. C. Philpot~
Psa 119:42 So shall I have wherewith to answer him that reproacheth me: for I trust in thy word.
The strength of our faith is in direct proportion to our level of belief that God will do exactly what He has promised.
Faith has nothing to do with feelings, impressions, outward appearances, nor the probability or improbability of an event.
If we try to couple these things with faith, we are no longer resting on the Word of God, because faith is not dependent on them.
Faith rests on the pure Word of God alone. And when we take Him at His Word, our hearts are at peace.
God delights in causing us to exercise our faith. He does so to bless us individually, to bless the church at large, and as a witness to unbelievers.
Yet we tend to retreat from the exercising of our faith instead of welcoming it.
When trials come, our response should be,“My heavenly Father has placed this cup of trials into my hands so I may later have something pleasant.”
Trials are the food of faith. Oh, may we leave ourselves in the hands of our heavenly Father!
It is the joy of His heart to do good to all His children.Yet trials and difficulties are not the only way faith is exercised and thereby increased.
Reading the Scriptures also acquaints us with God as He has revealed Himself in them.
Are you able to genuinely say, from your knowledge of God and your relationship with Him, that He is indeed a beautiful Being?
If not, let me graciously encourage you to ask God to take you to that point, so you will fully appreciate His gentleness and kindness, so you will be able to say just how good He is, and so you will know what a delight it is to God’s heart to do good for His children.
The closer we come to this point in our inner being,the more willing we are to leave ourselves in His hands and the more satisfied we are with all of His dealings with us.
Then when trials come, we will say, “I will patiently wait to see the good God will do in my life, with the calm assurance He will do it.”
In this way,we will bear a worthy testimony to the world and thereby strengthen the lives of others.
~George Mueller~
Isa 4:4 When the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion,
Here is the case of foul blood, and when the blood is foul the entire body is infected with defilement.
When the stream is poisoned the deadliness touches the entire countryside.
When the postman has smallpox he leaves it at every house.
The blood is the courier of the body. It is the vital current, and if the blood is polluted every fiber of the flesh will share its corruption.
And the blood of Jerusalem was impure.
Her life was not affected by a temporary fever, or by some transient spasm of irritability or fear.
She was not troubled by a slight chill which had made her lukewarm, and which had robbed her of speed and nimbleness in the paths of obedience.
She was the victim of bad blood. She had become bad at heart.
Her soul was poisoned.There was something rotten at the very core of her being.
It was not a passing indisposition, it was a deadly possession.
How is it to be dealt with? "By the blast of burning."
The figure of speech may seem confusing, but the meaning is clear.
Defilement has to be met by fire.
Fire is the last and greatest resource in the ministry of cleansing. When water is powerless, fire is efficient.
The plague in England in 1665 was burned away by the great fire in 1666. And so it is in the ministries of God.
There are plagues and defilements in society which seem as though they can only be reached and removed by the fires of calamity and tragedy, and by the blasts of unutterable woe.
There are fields which cannot be cleansed by means of ordinary culture, by the plough, or the spade, or the hoe, but only by the ministry of fire.
And God's fire comes! The blast of burning visits cities, and countries, and races, and through much suffering they reach a cleaner, sweeter life.
The severity may appear destructive, but the destruction is the instrument of a gracious culture, as it is also the gloomy pioneer of a more bountiful life.
The frost, which kills the harvest of a year, saves the harvest of a century by destroying the weevil or the locust.
God's frosts are the ministries of coming harvests. God's fiery blasts are the fiery dawns of a better and larger day.
Jerusalem is purged by the blast of burning. Our God is a consuming fire.
~John Henry Jowett~
In
the first place, sin that is respectable has an unequaled power of
deadening the conscience.
In the mirror of the society he moves in, a
man sees nothing to alarm or terrify.
When you glance at the mirror in
the morning, and see the usual signs of health upon your face, you take
it for granted, in a general way, that you are in your customary
well-being.
And so when in the mirror of society a man detects no sign
of disapproval, he too is apt to think that all is well.
No one around
suggests that there is danger; and so the feeling of danger disappears.
Others are not shocked by what we do, and so we come not to be shocked
ourselves.
So is born that deadliest of states, in which we are
complacent and self-satisfied; no longer ill at ease with our own
selves, because others are not ill at ease with us.
Think of the
Pharisee and publican in our Lord's parable. The publican could never
forget he was despised.
He saw it in the face of every child, in the
contemptuous looks of every woman.
Wherever he went his sin was mirrored
to him in the attitude of every honourable Jew.
He tried to disguise
what he was from his own heart, but his society stripped his disguise
away.
His was a disreputable sin, but it was not the most dangerous of
sins.
There was a warning in every man he met, in every child who drew
away from him.
Until at last, utterly sick at heart, and with a
conscience stabbed into activity, he flung himself upon the Temple
floor, crying, "God be merciful to me a sinner.''
Now compare with that,
the Pharisee. He had no mirror to show him to himself.
There was
nothing in the society he moved in to warn him of what he was in God's
sight.
He read himself in the respect of others; came quietly to accept
the general estimate, until his heart was hard, his conscience deadened,
and himself on the verge of being damned.
Had his sin cast him out of
human fellowship, he never would have been tempted so.
Had honourable
doors been barred on him he would have soon lost his self-complacency.
And so you see his peril lay in this--not in the bare fact that he was
sinful; but in the deadening of conscience that had come, because his
sin was perfectly respectable.
~George H. Morrison~
Isa 50:10 Who is among you that feareth the LORD, that obeyeth the voice of his servant, that walketh in darkness, and hath no light? let him trust in the name of the LORD, and stay upon his God.
What shall
the believer do in times of darkness--the darkness of perplexity and
confusion, not of heart but of mind?
Times of darkness come to the
faithful and believing disciple who is walking obediently in the will of
God; seasons when he does not know what to do, nor which way to turn.
The sky is overcast with clouds. The clear light of Heaven does not
shine upon his pathway. One feels as if he were groping his way in
darkness.
Beloved, is this you?
What shall the
believer do in times of darkness?
Listen! "Let him trust in the name of
the Lord, and rely upon his God."
The first thing to
do is do nothing.
This is hard for poor human nature to do. In the West
there is a saying that runs thus, "When you're rattled, don't rush"; in
other words, "When you don't know what to do, don't do it."
When
you run into a spiritual fog bank, don't tear ahead; slow down the
machinery of your life.
If necessary, anchor your bark or let it swing
at its moorings.
We are to simply trust God. While we trust, God can
work.
Worry prevents Him from doing anything for us.
If our minds are
distracted and our hearts distressed; if the darkness that overshadows
us strikes terror to us; if we run hither and yon in a vain effort to
find some way of escape out of a dark place of trial, where Divine
providence has put us, the Lord can do nothing for us.
The
peace of God must quiet our minds and rest our hearts.
We must put our
hand in the hand of God like a little child, and let Him lead us out
into the bright sunshine of His love.
He knows the way out of
the woods. Let us climb up into His arms, and trust Him to take us out
by the shortest and surest road.
~Dr. Pardington~
Remember we are never without a pilot when we know not how to steer.
Hold on, my heart, in thy believing--The steadfast only wins the crown;
He who, when stormy winds are heaving, Parts with its anchor, shall go down;
But he who Jesus holds through all, Shall stand, though Heaven and earth should fall.
Hold out! There comes an end to sorrow; Hope from the dust shall conquering rise;
The storm foretells a summer's morrow; The Cross points on to Paradise;
The Father reigneth! cease all doubt; Hold on, my heart, hold on, hold out."
Isa 44:21 Remember these, O Jacob and Israel; for thou art my servant: I have formed thee; thou art my servant: O Israel, thou shalt not be forgotten of me.
Our Jehovah cannot so forget His servants as to cease to love them.
He chose them not for a time but forever.
He knew what they would be
when He called them into the divine family.
He blots out their sins like
a cloud; and we may be sure that He will not turn them out of doors for
iniquities which He has blotted out. It would be blasphemy to imagine
such a thing.
He will not forget them so as to cease to think of
them.
One forgetful moment on the part of our God would be our ruin.
Therefore He says, "Thou shalt not be forgotten of me," Men forget us;
those whom we have benefited turn against us.
We have no abiding place
in the fickle hearts of men; but God will never forget one of His true
servants.
He binds Himself to us not by what we do for Him but by what
He has done for us.
We have been loved too long and bought at too great a
price to be now forgotten.
Jesus sees in us His soul's travail, and
that He never can forget.
The Father sees in us the spouse of His Son,
and the Spirit sees in us His own effectual work.
The LORD thinketh upon
us.
This day we shall be succored and sustained.
Oh, that the LORD may
never be forgotten of us!
~Charles Spurgeon~
2Ki
22:19 Because thine heart was tender, and thou hast humbled thyself
before the LORD, when thou heardest what I spake against this place, and
against the inhabitants thereof, that they should become a desolation
and a curse, and hast rent thy clothes, and wept before me; I also have
heard thee, saith the LORD.
Many despise warning and perish. Happy is he who trembles at the Word
of God.
Josiah did so, and he was spared the sight of the evil which
the LORD determined to send upon Judah because of her great sins.
Have
you this tenderness? Do you practice this self-humiliation?
Then you
also shall be spared in the evil day.
God sets a mark upon the men that
sigh and cry because of the sin of the times.
The destroying angel is
commanded to keep his sword in its sheath till the elect of God are
sheltered: these are best known by their godly fear and their trembling
at the Word of the LORD.
Are the times threatening? Does infidelity
advance with great strides, and do you dread national chastisement upon
this polluted nation?
Well you may. Yet rest in this promise: "Thou
shalt be gathered into thy grave in peace: and thine eyes shall not see
all the evil which l will bring upon this place."
Better still, the LORD
Himself may come, and then the days of our mourning shall be ended.
~Charles Spurgeon~
