"Lift up your head, then -- but remember, you cannot set times for God Almighty. The sun rises at its own hour, no matter what time you decide it should come up. Sometimes God comes to you in an ordinance and His heavenly light radiates into your innermost being while He quickens His Word to you. But have you not spent other nights on your face wrestling with God, wondering why He did not satisfy your soul? When someone brings a candle into the dark room we stir around and look for the thing we have lost and soon find what we had groped for in the darkness for hours. we can gauge more of our spiritual condition in a moment of His revelation than in days or weeks of His withdrawal. Carefully watch for the seasons when God comes to you, take advantage of them. But even if God chooses to hide the treasure from your sight, comfort yourself. He knows your sincerity is real whether you can see it or not. Say what David said: 'When my spirit was overwhelmed within me, then thou knewest my path' (Ps. 142:3). God will sovereignly act for your good -- not according to false self-accusations; but according to the testimony which His all-seeing eye gives to your grace."
William Gurnall - The Christian in Complete Armour - Photo by W.B. Skinner
4 comments:
Amen! Is it possible to sing in writing? The innermost core of who I am rejoices when I read these words. God is sooo.... God. Where do you find these amazing treasures of insight? Your blog is such a gift!
Thank you Mel, your responses are why I continue to blog, hoping that other Christians will find the encouragement and joy that I do in the nuggets of insight from the great divines from the past. As to where I get them, I get them from my personal library. Remember, I have been a Christian, and collecting Christian books for nearly 40 years and the Christian Classics have been my fellowship all through those years. An ever present source of help in understanding the Bible. Minds, far greater than this little pea picking mass that rolls around in my skull, have kept me under the shadow of His wings when my sins, follys, failings, rebellions, tantrums, weaknesses had long since run off most Christians, God's breath would speak to me through mature Christian writings. Then as my faith would begin to flicker once again, the Bible would take on its beauty and life and raise me out of some hole I had dug and put my feet on solid ground once more. I am sharing with people on my blog, my friends, tutors, encouragers, instigators to new thought and considerations, men and women whom the world was not worthy, people who changed the world for Christ, either through spending their lives on horseback spreading the gospel, laying down their lives rearing Christian families or adopting families in foriegn lands by taking the gospel of love and healing to them, building homes for the orphans, schools and colleges to elevate the uneducated; well as you know the list goes on forever what God has done through servants that listend to his call. Much of their thought has been preserved and as they faced the same struggles that are common to all Christians, they penned their experiences and the light and ways that God brought them out. Thank God for the pen and paper! Thank God for the unlimited personalities, each with different insights and paths in following Him, and thank God they have journaled as they found their personal way with Christ.
I can sit at the feet of the world's greatest preachers on any night I choose, listen to Spirit filled preachers that have stood the test of time, whether if be C.H.Spurgeon, Billy Suday, John Bunyan, Thomas A Kempis, Mother Teresa, Hanna Whithall Smith, well there is a lifetime of encouragement in bookstores in every town.
Amen Again! :) Thank you for keeping these valuable posts coming. It means so much to me, especially since I don't have very much time to read all of these gifted authors myself.
I used to feel overwhelmed with reading the Bible. I love it, and have read through it a couple of times, but I was overwhelmed with the vastness of it. Then God reminded me that it's all about knowing Him. When we making knowing Him more intimately our most passionate daily pursuit, everything else falls into place. And it's okay, it's awesome, actually, when we seek to know Him more by doing what He created us to love to do. It doesn't have to be Bible reading. It can be reading other books, listening to music, watching movies, prayer, meditation, fellowship with Christian friends...
I believe with my whole heart that God would rather have a hand full of "want-to's" than a whole room full of "have-to's". If I want to seek His voice through your blog, He is delighted in that, far more so than He would be if I were falling asleep through the middle of Leviticus because I felt I had to.
I thank God, too, for the weatlh, the abundance of truth He has made known to us through His Word, and through the godly men and women that have lived through the ages. It's so funny, because when we eat physical food, the more we eat, the less hungry we are, at least for a time. But with spiritual food, the kind that God really captures us through, the more we eat, the hungrier we become. It's another example of God's providential paradoxes. I love Him so much!
Bless you! :)
I just wanted to clarify one other thing, and that is how faithful God is to point us to that portion of scripture which speaks specifically to us where we are at any given time in our lives. Usually, He uses the works of other Christian authors, teachers, speakers and musicians to show me exactly which parts of His word He wants to speak to me through. And many times He enhances my understanding of those scriptures by speaking to me through those very same Christians. Some of my favorite Christian authors are John Piper, C.S. Lewis, Jonathan Edwards, and John Bevere. It would be hard to describe the impact God has had on my life through these faithful witnesses to His truth.
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