It is doubtful

“It is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until he has hurt him deeply."

[A. W. Tozer]

When God brings the blank space

There are times when you cannot understand why you cannot do what you want to do. When God brings the blank space, see that you do not fill it in, but wait.

[Oswald Chambers]

He put Himself in the bow

The god of love had shot all his arrows, but could never pierce his heart, till at length He put Himself into the bow.

[Henry Scougal, The Life of God in the Soul of Man]

To testify His affection

When all His other gifts could not prevail, He at last made a gift of Himself, to testify His affection and engage theirs.

[Henry Scougal, The Life of God in the Soul of Man]

God Wanted a Broken Vessel

“David was caught in a very uncomfortable position; however, he seemed to grasp a deep understanding of the unfolding drama in which he had been caught. He seemed to understand something that few of even the wisest men of his day understood. Something that in our day, when men are wiser still, even fewer understand.

And what was that?

God did not have - but wanted very much to have - men and women who would live in pain.

God wanted a broken vessel.”

[Gene Edwards, A Tale of three Kings: A Study in Brokenness]

God Has a University

“God has a university. It’s a small school. Few enroll; even fewer graduate. Very, very few indeed. God has this school because he does not have broken men and women. Instead, he has several other types of people. He has people who claim to have God’s authority ... and don’t—people who claim to be broken . ... and aren’t. And people who do have God’s authority, but who are mad and unbroken. And he has, regretfully, a great mixture of everything in between.”

[Gene Edwards, A Tale of three Kings: A Study in Brokenness]

Pursuading the Soul that Repentance is Easy

Satan's Device: persuading the soul that repentance is easy and that therefore the soul need not scruple about sinning. For remedies, consider that ... Satan now suggests that repentance is easy, but shortly he will drive his dupes to despair by presenting it as the hardest work in the world.

[Thomas Brooks, Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices]

The Root of the Righteous

It is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until he has hurt him deeply.

[A. W. Tozer, The Root of the Righteous]

Healing Grace

Christians are often good at confessing sins and notoriously bad at receiving forgiveness.

We are not permitted to nurse a sense of guilt: we must fully and completely accept and embrace God's forgiveness and love.

Guilt feeling and inferiority before God are expressions of selfishness, or self-centeredness: we give greater importance to our little sinful self than to His immense and never-ending love.

We must surrender our guilt and inferiority to Him; His goodness is greater than our badness.

We must accept His joy in loving and forgiving us.

It is a healing grace to surrender our sinfulness to His mercy.

[James Borst]

Pray as you can, not as you can't

Pray as you can, and do not try to pray as you can't

[Spiritual Letters 109, Dom John Chapman O.S.B. 1865-1933]

You Were Never Meant To Hold All Things Together

You were never meant to hold all things together.

You were never meant to depend on your plans, your health, your freedom, your future, your finances.

You were always meant to hold on to those things loosely, and cling tightly to the One who holds it all together. Jesus holds all things together (Col 1:17).

Maybe all the things that are falling apart right now can be a reminder of what we actually have the ability to hold and what we do not.

Maybe through this we can learn to place our trust in something far greater than ourselves and the things we so often depend on.

Maybe through current heartache, disappointment, and fear, we can find that we don't need to hold things together. He can.

And maybe, just maybe, through all this, we might find just how held we are.

[Torchbearers International]

Tasting the Fruit of Suffering

 If we humble ourselves beneath the hand of God, we shall emerge from every chastening richly blessed and soon taste the fruit of suffering.

He allows suffering to enter our lives, so that we might reap great joy, fruit, and glory now and for all eternity - a blessed "afterwards".

God will be honored and His name as Father will be glorified when we consider how He has chastened us and think of the fruit, joy, and blessing His chastenings have brought us.

[Basilea Schlink, In Whom The Father Delights]

Near to his heart to be beloved

That the woman was made of a rib out of the side of Adam; not made out of his head to rule over him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be beloved.

Adam lost a rib, and without any diminution to his strength or comeliness (for, doubtless, the flesh was closed without a scar); but in lieu thereof he had a help meet for him, which abundantly made up his loss: what God takes away from his people he will, one way or other, restore with advantage.

In this (as in many other things) Adam was a figure of him that was to come; for out of the side of Christ, the second Adam, his spouse the church was formed, when he slept the sleep, the deep sleep, of death upon the cross, in order to which his side was opened, and there came out blood and water, blood to purchase his church and water to purify it to himself.

[Matthew Henry Commentary on Genesis]

Christ - The Lover of Our Souls

“Ecstasy and delight are essential to the believer's soul and they promote sanctification. We were not meant to live without spiritual exhilaration and the Christian who goes for a long time without the experience of heart-warming will soon find himself tempted to have his emotions satisfied from earthly things and not, as he ought, from the Spirit of God. The soul is so constituted that it craves fulfillment from things outside itself and will embrace earthly joys for satisfaction when it cannot reach spiritual ones” 

“The believer is in spiritual danger if he allows himself to go for any length of time without tasting the love of Christ and savoring the felt comforts of a Savior's presence. When Christ ceases to fill the heart with satisfaction, our souls will go in silent search of other lovers.”

[Maurice Roberts, The Thought of God. Reprinted in The Banner of Truth issue 323-324 August 1990]

Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cure

Have you not realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? Take those thoughts that come to you the moment you wake up in the morning. You have not originated them, but they start talking to you, they bring back the problems of yesterday, etc. Somebody is talking. Who is talking to you? Your self is talking to you. Now this man’s treatment was this; instead of allowing this self to talk to him, he starts talking to himself....

The main art in the matter of spiritual living is to know how to handle yourself. You have to take yourself in hand, you have to address yourself, preach to yourself, question yourself. You must say to your soul: ‘Why art thou cast down’--what business have you to be disquieted? You must turn on yourself, upbraid yourself, condemn yourself, exhort yourself, and say to yourself: ‘Hope thou in God’--instead of muttering in this depressed, unhappy way. And then you must go on to remind yourself of God, Who God is, and what God is and what God has done, and what God has pledged Himself to do. Then having done that, end on this great note: defy yourself, and defy other people, and defy the devil and the whole world, and say with this man: “I shall yet praise Him for the help of His countenance, who is also the health of my countenance and my God”

[Martyn Lloyd-Jones, in his solid book, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cure ([Eerdmans], pp. 20-21)]

Every fresh revelation calls for a new dedication

"Every fresh revelation calls for a new dedication."

[Smith Wigglesworth]

Others May, You CANNOT

If God has called you to be really like Jesus He will draw you into a life of crucifixion and humility, and put upon you such demands of obedience, that you will not be able to follow other people, or measure yourself by other Christians, and in many ways He will seem to let other people do things which He will not let you do.

Other Christians and ministers who seem very religious and useful, may push themselves, pull wires, and work schemes to carry out their plans, but you cannot do it, and if you attempt it, you will meet with such failure and rebuke from the Lord as to make you sorely penitent.

Others may boast of themselves, of their work, of their successes, of their writings, but the Holy Spirit will not allow you to do any such thing, and if you begin it, He will lead you into some deep mortification that will make you despise yourself and all your good works.

Others may be allowed to succeed in making money, or may have a legacy left to them, but it is likely God will keep you poor, because He wants you to have something far better than gold, namely, a helpless dependence upon Him, that He may have the privilege of supplying your needs day by day out of an unseen treasury.

The Lord may let others be honored and put forward, and keep you hidden in obscurity, because He wants to produce some choice fragrant fruit for His coming glory, which can only be produced in the shade. He may let others be great, but keep you small. He may let others do a work for Him and get the credit for it, but He will make you work and toil on without knowing how much you are doing; and then to make your work still more precious He may let others get credit for the work which you have done, and thus make YOUR REWARD TEN TIMES GREATER when JESUS COMES.

The Holy Spirit will put a strict watch over you, with a jealous love, and will rebuke you for little words and feelings or for wasting your time, which other Christians never feel distressed over. So make up your mind that God is an Infinitely Sovereign Being, and has a right to do as He pleases with His own. He may not explain to you a thousand things which puzzle your reason in His dealings with you, but if you absolutely sell yourself to be His love slave, He will wrap you up in Jealous Love, and bestow upon you many blessings which come only to those who are in the inner circle.

Settle it forever, then that you are to DEAL DIRECTLY WITH the HOLY SPIRIT, and that He is to have the privilege of tying your tongue, or chaining your hand, or closing your eyes, in ways that He does not seem to use with others. Now, when you are so possessed with the living God that you are, in your secret heart, pleased and delighted over this PECULIAR, PERSONAL, PRIVATE, JEALOUS GUARDIANSHIP and MANAGEMENT OF the HOLY SPIRIT OVER YOUR LIFE, then you will have found the vestibule of Heaven.

-G.D.Watson (1845-1924).
SOURCE: Faith, Prayer, & Tract League,
Tract #76; Grand Rapids, MI 49504.

The Heaven of Heaven

“And they shall see His face.” Revelation 22:4.

“They shall see His face.” It is the chief blessing of Heaven, the cream of Heaven, the Heaven of Heaven, that the saints shall there see Jesus! There will be other things to see. Who dares despise those foundations of chrysolite, and chrysoprasus, and jacinth? Who shall speak lightly of streets of glassy gold, and gates of pearl? We would not forget that we shall see angels, and seraphim, and cherubim; nor would we fail to remember that we shall see Apostles, martyrs, and confessors together with those whom we have walked with, and communed with in our Lord while here below. We shall assuredly behold those of our departed kindred who sleep in Jesus, dear to us here, and dear to us still—“not lost, but gone before.” But still, for all this, the main thought which we now have of Heaven, and certainly the main fullness of it when we shall be there, is just this—we shall see Jesus!

C. H. SPURGEON
AUGUST 9, 1868
METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON

Two Things Needed

God has to accomplish two things in us before he can deliver us from our besetting sins: First, God has to cause the sin-bound person to want to be free... He has to come to his wit’s end, where he sees he is being ruined by sin — helpless, wretched, empty, ensnared, laden down with guilt and totally deceived by sin. Second, God has to cause the sin-bound person to see the utter futility of his efforts to set himself free.

David Wilkerson, The New Covenant Unveiled, page 21

I Will Veil Myself In You

Lord, only You can speak to the depths of the soul
I don`t know who this is for but Lord, I`m going to speak
to those who have backslidden
To those, Oh Lord, who have been growing cold & indifferent
to the call of God & the things of Christ.
Oh God, come & speak.

God says, `The word that I`ve sent to you,
I didn`t send it out to be void.
But the word that I have given to you
is going to accomplish the very thing I said it would.`

Lord, I flee to You to hide me (Psalm 143:9).
Folks, the original in that says,
`I will veil myself in You.`

Now you think about it.
You see, our faith now cannot be based on emotion.
Our faith cannot be based on just the testimonies
of others who have been delivered.
They can`t be cliches.
They can`t be just a shout.

We have to have a foundation
for the faith that we`re going to need.
And this has to be laying hold of
God`s own claims of who He is.

This whole things starts out right here.

Oh, hear my prayer, Lord.
Hear my supplication.
In Your faithfulness, answer me
And in Your righteousness.

And here`s a challenge.
God, here`s the basis upon which I come to You.
Not what I`ve heard in the past about people,
but here`s what You told me You are.

You said that You are faithful.
That You are just.
That You are holy.
You cannot lie.
You can`t be God if You aren`t faithful.
You said You are long-suffering.
You said You`re the God of peace.
You said You`re the God of my strength

Now I`m coming to You.
I`m going to lift my hands to You.
I`m going to believe what You said about Yourself.
And I am coming on the merits of nothing I have done,
no righteousness of my own, but on the promise of God.
What You told me.

Remember the word unto Your servant
which You have caused me to hope in.
This is my comfort in affliction.
For You have now quickedned me.

How was he quickened
Lord, God, I have lifted my hands to You.
I have trusted You.
I have claimed Your promises.
You are who You said You are.

From now on, I`m going to veil myself in You.
I`m going to cut myself off from all confidence in the flesh,
or in people, or in anyone else.

I`m going to throw myself at Your mercy.
Your grace! Your power! Your glory!
And I`m veiling myself in Christ.

[David Wilkerson]
Transcribed from audio at the Times Square Church Memorial Service - May 14, 2011

Prone to Wander

Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing

3. Jesus sought me when a stranger,
Wandering from the fold of God;
He, to rescue me from danger,
Interposed His precious blood;
How His kindness yet pursues me
Mortal tongue can never tell,
Clothed in flesh, till death shall loose me
I cannot proclaim it well.

4. O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.

5. O that day when freed from sinning,
I shall see Thy lovely face;
Clothed then in blood washed linen
How I’ll sing Thy sovereign grace;
Come, my Lord, no longer tarry,
Take my ransomed soul away;
Send thine angels now to carry
Me to realms of endless day.


Robert Robinson 1757

A modern day psalm of deliverance

Dear Jesus,

You told me to resist the devil and he would flee from me,
          But I have no resistance.
You have all the power and resistance I’ll ever need,
          So give me the power to resist.
You told me I could move my mountains
          If I had faith even as a mustard seed;
Yet my mountain won’t move
          Even though my faith in you is as great
As I can conceive it.
          You made the heavens and earth;
Please move my mountain.
          You said, “Flee the very appearance of evil!”
So I ran hard,
          But sin overtook me
In my finest hour of effort.
          You have power
Over all the power of the enemy
          With miracles, signs and wonders.
Deliver me from the trap of Satan.
          I don’t even have the strength to put on the whole armor,
So dress me as my armor-bearer.
          Do for me what I know I cannot do for myself.

David Wilkerson

Having known this man, I'm deeply moved that he once penned this modern day variation of Psalm 34:6

This poor man cried, and the LORD heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles.

The Use And Advantage Of Faith In A Time Of Public Calamity

You know that, for many years, upon all these occasions, without failing, I have been warning of you continually of an approaching calamitous time, and considering the sins that have been the causes of it. The day is with the Lord, -- the year and month I know not: but I have told you that "judgment will begin at the house of God;" that in the latter days of the church, "perilous times will come;" that God seems to have" hardened our hearts from his fear, and caused us to err from his ways;" and that none knows what "the power of his wrath" will be. In all these things I have foretold you of perilous, distressing, calamitous times; and in all men's apprehensions they now lie at the door, and are entering in upon us. Now I must change my design; and my present work will be, both upon this and, if I live, upon some other occasions, to show how we ought to deport ourselves in and under the approaches of distressing calamities that are coming upon us, and may reach, it may be, up to the very neck.

      What this text teaches us is, that in the approaches of overwhelming calamities, and in the view of them, we ought, in a peculiar manner, to live by faith. That is the meaning of the place.

John Owen, April 9, 1680

Deep Sleep

We lack discernment partly because we are asleep. Jesus prophesied that in the last generation the church would be asleep (Matt.25:5). As you know, three things characterize sleep: (1) we don’t know we were asleep until we wake up; (2) we do things in our dreams we would not do when awake; (3) we hate the sound of an alarm.

Jesus also forecast a midnight cry (Matt.25:6) meaning ‘middle of the night’, which is: (1) the darkest time; (2) when we are the deepest in sleep; and (3) when we are least expectant. Could not this wake-up call come in stages, 9/11 being the first stage? Yes. If the recent economic melt-down is not a further wake-up call I don’t know what is. But the ultimate and final wake-up call will categorically cause the church to discern their true condition, except that for some it will be too late (Matt.25:8-13).

We are in the middle of the night. Right now. It is dark. The church is in a deep, deep sleep. We do things we would not do when awake. Lord, grant us discernment before it is too late!

R.T. Kendall

Lama Sabachthani

"And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?"— Mat 27:46

Our Lord was then in the darkest part of his way. He had trodden the winepress now for hours, and the work was almost finished. He had reached the culminating point of his anguish. This is his dolorous lament from the lowest pit of misery—"My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" I do not think that the records of time or even of eternity, contain a sentence more full of anguish. Here the wormwood and the gall, and all the other bitternesses, are outdone. Here you may look as into a vast abyss; and though you strain your eyes, and gaze till sight fails you, yet you perceive no bottom; it is measureless, unfathomable, inconceivable. This anguish of the Saviour on your behalf and mine is no more to be measured and weighed than the sin which needed it, or the love which endured it. We will adore where we cannot comprehend.

Our Lord's heart, and all his nature were, morally and spiritually, so delicately formed, so sensitive, so tender, that to be without God, was to him a grief which could not be weighed. I see him in the text bearing desertion, and yet I perceive that he cannot bear it. I know not how to express my meaning except by such a paradox. He cannot endure to be without God. He had surrendered himself to be left of God, as the representative of sinners must be, but his pure and holy nature, after three hours of silence, finds the position unendurable to love and purity; and breaking forth from it, now that the hour was over, he exclaims, "Why hast thou forsaken me?" He quarrels not with the suffering, but he cannot abide in the position which caused it. He seems as if he must end the ordeal, not because of the pain, but because of the moral shock. We have here the repetition after his passion of that loathing which he felt before it, when he cried, "If it be possible let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt." "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" is the holiness of Christ amazed at the position of substitute for guilty men.

C. H. SPURGEON
March 2nd, 1890