Troubled On Every Side: Being Gods People During Difficult Times (Wordmaster Bible Study Library)

The one chief temptation that meets the soul at this juncture is the same that assaults it all along the pathway, at every step of its progress; namely, the ques- tion as to feelings. We cannot believe we are consecrated until we feel that we are: As usual, we put feeling first, and faith second, and the. Give yourself to the Lord definitely and fully, ac- cording to your present light, asking the Holy Spirit to show you all that is contrary to Him, either in your heart or life. Then recognize that it must be the fact, that, when you give yourself to God He accepts you; and at once let your faith take hold of this fact.

Begin to be- lieve, and hold on to it steadfastly, that He has taken that which you have surrendered to Him. You positively must not wait to feel either that you have given yourself, or that God has taken you. You must simply believe it, and reckon it to be the case. If you were to give an estate to a friend, you would have to give it, and he would have to receive it, by faith. An estate is not a thing that can be picked up and handed over to another; the gift of it and its reception are altogether a transaction by word and on paper, and therefore one of faith. Now, if you should give an estate one day to a friend, and then should go away and wonder whether you really had given it, and whether he actually.

Your friend would certainly begin to doubt whether you ever had intended to give it to him at all, and you yourself would be in such hopeless perplexity about it, that you would not know whether the estate was yours or his, or whose it was. Now, is not this very much the way in which you have been acting toward God in this matter of consecra- tion? You have given yourself to Him over and over daily, perhaps for months, but you have invariably come away from your seasons of consecration wondering whether you really have given yourself after all, and whether He has taken you; and because you have not felt any change, you have concluded at last, after many pain- ful tossings, that the thing has not been done.

Do you know, dear believer, that this sort of perplexity will last forever, unless you cut it short by faith? You must come to the point of reckoning the matter to be an accom- plished and settled thing, and must leave it there before you can possibly expect any change of feeling whatever. The Levitical law of offerings to the Lord settles this as a primary fact, that everything which is given to Him becomes, by that very act, something holy, set apart from all other things, something that cannot without sac- rilege be put to any other uses.

I can imagine an offerer, after he had deposited a gift, beginning to search his heart as to his sincerity and honesty in doing it, and coming back to the priest to say that he was afraid, after all, he had not given it rightly, or had not been perfectly sincere in giving it. It is too late to recall the transaction now. Yet, day after day, earnest-hearted Christians, with no thought of the sacrilege they are committing, are guilty in their own experience of a similar act by giving them- selves to the Lord in solemn consecration, and then, through unbelief, taking back that which they have given.

I sup- pose that if, when we made our acts of consecration, we could actually see Him present with us, we should feel it to be a very real thing, and would realize that we had given our word to Him, and could not dare to take it back, no matter how much we might wish to do so. Such a transaction would have to us the binding power that a spoken promise to an earthly friend always has to a man of honor.

Then we shall cease to have such vague conceptions of our relations with Him, and shall feel the binding force of every word we say in His presence. Sight is not faith, and hearing is not faith, neither is feeling faith; but be- lieving when we can neither see, hear, nor feel, is faith; and everywhere the Bible tells us our salvation is to be by faith. Therefore we must believe before we feel, and often against our feelings, if we would honor God by our faith.

It is always he that believeth who has the witness, not he that doubteth. But how can we doubt, since, by His very command to us to present ourselves to Him a living sacrifice, He has pledged Himself to receive us? I cannot conceive of an honorable man asking another to give him a thing which, after all, he was doubtful about taking; still less can I conceive of a loving parent acting.

We may, nay, we must, feel the utmost confi- dence, then, that when we surrender ourselves to the Lord, according to His own command, He does then and there receive us, and from that moment we are His. A real transaction has taken place, which cannot be vio- lated without dishonor on our part, and which we know will not be violated by Him.

When we avouch the Lord to be our God, and that we will walk in His ways and keep His commandments, He avouches us to be His, and that we shall keep all His commandments. And from that moment He takes pos- session of us. This has always been His principle of work- ing, and it continues to be so. But if the soul still feels in doubt or difficulty, let me refer you to a New Testament declaration which ap- proaches the subject from a different side, but which set- tles it, I think, quite as definitely. It is in I John 5: There can be, of course, but one answer to this, for He has commanded it.

Is it not also according to His will that He should work in you to will and to do of His good pleasure? This question also can have but one answer, for He has de- clared it to be His purpose. And knowing this much, you are compelled to go farther, and know that you have the petitions that you have desired of Him. That you have, I say,—not will have, or may have, but have now in actual possession. I desire to make this subject so plain and practical that no one need have any further difficulty about it, and therefore I will repeat again just what must be the acts of your soul, in order to bring you out of this difficulty about consecration.

I suppose that you have trusted the Lord Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins, and know something of what it is to belong to the family of God, and to be made an heir of God through faith in Christ. And now you feel springing up in your heart the longing to be conformed to the image of your Lord. In order for this, you know.

At this point it is that I desire to help you. What you must do now is to come once more to Him, in a surrender of your whole self to His will, as complete as you know how to make it. You must ask Him to reveal to you, by His Spirit, any hidden rebellion; and if He reveals nothing, then you must believe that there is nothing, and that the sur- render is complete. This must, then, be considered a set- tled matter; you have wholly yielded yourself to the Lord, and from henceforth you do not in any sense be- long to yourself; you must never even so much as listen to a suggestion to the contrary.

If the temptation comes to wonder whether you really have completely surren- dered yourself, meet it with an assertion that you have. Do not even argue the matter. Repel any such idea in- stantly, and with decision. You meant it then, you mean it now, you have really done it. Your emotions may clamor against the surrender, but your will must hold firm. It is your purpose God looks at, not your feelings about that purpose; and your purpose, or will, is there- fore the only thing you need attend to.

The surrender, then, having been made, never to be questioned or recalled, the next point is to believe that God takes that which you have surrendered, and to reckon that it is His. Not that it will be His at some fu- ture time, but that it is now; and that He has begun to work in you to will and to do of His good pleasure. And here you must rest. But while you trust, He works; and the result of His working always is to change you into the image of Christ, from glory to glory, by His mighty Spirit.

Do you, then, now at this moment surrender your- self wholly to Him? Then, my dear friend, begin at once to reckon that you are His, that He has taken you, and that He is working in you to will and to do of His good pleasure. And keep on reckoning this. I leave my- self with thee. Work in me all the good pleasure of thy will, and I will only lie still in thy hands and trust thee. Make this a daily, definite act of your will, and many times a day recur to it, as being your continual attitude before the Lord. Confess it to yourself.

Confess it to your God. Confess it to your friends. And here, as in the first step, the soul en- counters at once certain forms of difficulty and hin- drance. The child of God, whose eyes have been opened to see the fulness there is in Jesus for him, and whose heart has been made hungry to appropriate that fulness, is met with the assertion, on the part of every teacher to whom he applies, that this fulness is only to be received by faith.

But the subject of faith is involved in such a hopeless mystery to his mind that this assertion, instead of throwing light upon the way of entrance, seems only to make it more difficult and involved than ever. But that is just what makes it so hard, for I have no faith, and I do not even know what it is, nor how to get it. Your idea of faith, I suppose, has been something like this. And you have been praying for faith, expecting all the while to get something like this; and never having received any such thing, you are insisting upon it that you have no faith. Now, faith, in fact, is not in the least like this.

It is noth- ing at all tangible. It is simply believing God; and, like sight, it is nothing apart from its object. You might as well shut your eyes and look inside, and see whether you have sight, as to look inside to discover whether you have faith. You see something, and thus know that you have sight; you believe something, and thus know that you have faith.

For as sight is only seeing, so faith is only be- lieving. And as the only necessary thing about sight is that you see the thing as it is, so the only necessary thing about belief is that you believe the thing as it is. The virtue does not lie in your believing, but in the thing you believe.

If you believe the truth, you are saved; if you believe a lie, you are lost. The act of believing in both cases is the same; the things believed are exactly op- posite, and this it is which makes the mighty difference. Your salvation comes, not because your faith saves you, but because it links you to the Saviour who saves; and your believing is really nothing but the link. It is so simple that it is hard to explain.

If anyone asks me what it means to trust an- other to do a piece of work for me, I can answer only that it means committing the work to that other, and leaving it without anxiety in his hands. All of us have many times trusted very important affairs to others in this way, and have felt perfect rest in thus trusting be- cause of the confidence we have had in those who have undertaken them. How constantly do mothers trust their most precious infants to the care of nurses, and feel no shadow of anxiety! How continually we are all of us trusting our health and our lives, without a thought of fear, to cooks and coachmen, engine-drivers, railway-conductors, and all sorts of paid servants, who have us completely at their mercy, and who could, if they chose to do so, or even if they failed in the necessary careful- ness, plunge us into misery or death in a moment.

All this we do, and make no demur about it. Upon the slightest acquaintance, often, we thus put our trust in people, requiring only the general knowledge of human nature and the common rules of human intercourse as the foundation of our trust, and we never feel as if we were doing anything in the least remarkable. You have done this yourself, dear reader, and are doing it continually. You could not live among your fellow men and go through the customary routine of life a single day if you were unable to trust your fel- low men, and it never enters into your head to say you cannot. But yet you do not hesitate to say, continually, that you cannot trust your God!

And you excuse yourself. I wish you would try to imagine yourself acting in your human relations as you do in your spiritual rela- tions. Suppose you should begin to-morrow with the no- tion in your head that you could not trust anybody be- cause you had no faith. I have no faith, so of course I cannot believe anything that I have not actually felt and touched myself. It is a great trial, but I cannot help it, for I have no faith.

Just picture such a day as this, and see how dis- astrous it would be to yourself, and what utter folly it. Realize how your friends would feel in- sulted, and how your servants would refuse to serve you another day. Surely, surely, dear believer, you, whose very name of believer implies that you can believe, you will never again dare to excuse yourself on the plea of having no faith.

For when you say this, you mean of course that you have no faith in God, since you are not asked to have faith in yourself, and would be in a very wrong condi- tion of soul if you had. But, you say, I cannot believe without the Holy Spirit. Very well; will you conclude, then, that your want of faith is because of the failure of the Holy Spirit. For if it is, then surely you are not to blame, and need feel no condemnation; and all exhorta- tions to you to believe are useless.

For He is always ready to help our infirmities. We never have to wait for Him, He is always waiting for us. Put your will, then, over on the believing side. Insist upon believing, in the face of every suggestion of doubt that intrudes itself. Out of your very unbelief, throw your- self unreservedly on the word and promises of God, and dare to abandon yourself to the keeping and saving power of the Lord Jesus.

If you have ever trusted a precious interest in the hands of an earthly friend, I entreat you, trust yourself and all your spiritual interests now, in the hands of your Heavenly Friend, and never, never, never , allow yourself to doubt again. Remember always that there are two things which are more utterly incompatible even than oil and water, and these two are trust and worry.

Ruth 1 Commentary - Matthew Henry Commentary on the Whole Bible (Complete)

Would you call it trust if you should give something into the hands of a friend to attend to for you, and then should spend your nights and days in anxious thought and worry as to whether it would be rightly and successfully done? And can you call it trust, when you have given the saving and. When a believer really trusts anything, he ceases to worry about the thing he has trusted. And when he worries, it is a plain proof that he does not trust. Tested by this rule, how little real trust there is in the Church of Christ! Every child of God, in his own case, will know how to answer this question.

Should the answer, for any of you, be a sorrowful No, let me entreat you to let this be the last time for such an answer; and if you have ever known anything of the trustworthiness of our Lord, may you henceforth set to your seal that He is true, by the generous recklessness of your trust in Him! I remember, very early in my Christian life, having every tender and loyal impulse within me stirred to the depths of an appeal I met with in a volume of old sermons to all who loved the Lord Jesus, that they should show to others how worthy He was of being trusted by the steadfastness of their own faith in Him.

As I read the inspiring words, there came to me a sudden glimpse of the privilege and the glory of being called to walk in paths so dark that only an utter recklessness of trust would be possible! You have trusted Him in a few things, and He has not failed you. Trust Him now for everything, and see if He does not do for you exceeding abundantly, above all that you could ever have asked or even thought, not according to your power or capacity, but according to His own mighty power, working in you all the good pleasure of His most blessed will. It is not hard, you find, to trust the management of the universe, and of all the outward creation, to the Lord.

Can your case then be so much more complex and difficult than these, that you need to be anxious or troubled about His management of you?

Away with such unworthy doubtings! Take your stand on the power and trustworthiness of your God, and see how quickly all difficulties will vanish before a steadfast de- termination to believe. Trust in the dark, trust in the light, trust at night and trust in the morning, and you will find that the faith that many begin perhaps by a mighty effort will end, sooner or later, by becoming the easy and natural habit of the soul. It is a law of the spiritual life that every act of trust makes the next act less difficult, until at length, if these acts are persisted in, trusting becomes, like breathing, the natural unconscious action of the redeemed soul.

You must therefore put your will into your believ- ing. Your faith must not be a passive imbecility, but an active energy. You may have to believe against every seeming; but no matter. We are told that all things are possible to God, and that all things are possible also to him that believeth. She could hold Thy grand self, Lord!

The sun has not ceased shining be- cause the traveler through the tunnel has ceased to see it; and the Sun of righteousness is still shining, although you in your dark tunnel do not see Him. Be patient and trustful, and wait. When the child of god has, by entire abandonment and absolute trust, stepped out of himself into Christ, and has begun to know something of the blessedness of the life hid with Christ in God, there is one form of difficulty which is especially likely to start up in his path.

After the first emotions of peace and rest have somewhat subsided, or if, as is sometimes the case, they have never seemed to come at all, he begins to feel such an utter un- reality in the things he has been passing through that he seems to himself like a hypocrite when he says or even thinks they are real. It seems to him that his belief does not go below the surface; that it is a mere lip-belief, and therefore of no account, and that his surrender is not a surrender of the heart, and therefore cannot be ac- ceptable to God.

The difficulty is real and very dis- heartening. But there is nothing here which will not be very easily overcome when the Christian once thoroughly understands the principles of the new life, and has. The common thought is that this life hid with Christ in God is to be lived in the emotions, and consequently all the attention of the soul is directed toward them, and as they are satisfactory or otherwise, the soul rests or is troubled.

To make this plain, I must enlarge a little. By the will, I do not mean the wish of the man, or even his pur- pose, but the deliberate choice, the deciding power, the king, to which all that is in the man must yield obedi- ence. It is sometimes thought that the emotions are the governing power in our nature. But I think we all of us know, as a matter of practical experience, that there is something within us, behind our emotions and behind our wishes, an independent self, that, after all, decides everything and controls everything.

Our emotions be- long to us, and are suffered and enjoyed by us, but they are not ourselves; and if God is to take possession of us, it must be into this central will or personality that He enters. If, then, He is reigning there by the power of His Spirit, all the rest of our nature must come under His sway; and as the will is, so is the man.

For the decisions of our will are often so directly opposed to the decisions of our emotions, that, if we are in the habit of considering our emotions as the test, we shall be very apt to feel like hypocrites in declaring those things to be real which our will alone has decided.

But the moment we see that the will is king, we shall utterly disregard anything that clamors against it, and shall claim as real its decisions, let the emotions rebel as they may. I am aware that this is a difficult subject to deal with; but it is so exceedingly practical in its bearing upon the life of faith, that I beg of you, dear reader, not to turn from it until you have mastered it.

Perhaps an illustration will help you. A young man of great intelligence, seeking to enter into this new life, was utterly discouraged at finding himself the slave to an inveterate habit of doubting. To his emotions noth- ing seemed real; and the more he struggled, the more unreal did it all become. And will that kind of believing be real? God will not fail to respond, sooner or later, with His revelation to such a faith. I cannot control my emotions, but I can control my will; and the new life begins to look possible to me if it is only my will that needs to be set straight in the matter.

I can give my will to God, and I do. From that moment, disregarding all the pitiful clamoring of his emotions, which continually accused him of being a wretched hypocrite, this young man held on steadily to the decision of his will, answering every accusation with the continued assertion that he chose to believe, he meant to believe, he did believe; until at the end of a few days he found himself triumphant, with every emotion and every thought brought into captivity to the power of the Spirit of God, who had taken pos- session of the will thus put into His hands. He had held fast the profession of his faith without wavering, al- though it had seemed to him that, as to real faith itself, he had none to hold fast.

At times it had drained all the will power he possessed to his lips to say that he be- lieved, so contrary was it to all the evidence of his senses or of his emotions. The result has been one of the grandest Christian lives I know of, in its marvelous simplicity, directness, and power over sin. The secret lies just here,—that our will, which is the spring of all our actions, has been in the past under the control of sin and self, and these have worked in us all their own good pleasure.

But now God calls upon us to yield our wills up unto Him, that He may take the control of them, and may work in us to will and to do of His good pleasure. Let us take another illustration.

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A lady who had entered into this life hid with Christ was confronted by a great prospective trial. Every emotion she had within her rose up in rebellion against it; and had she con- sidered her emotions to be her king, she would have been in utter despair. Thy will be done! The result was that in an incredibly short space of time every thought was brought into cap- tivity, and she began to find even her very emotions rejoicing in the will of God.

Again, there was a lady who had a besetting sin, which in her emotions she dearly loved, but which in. Believing herself to be necessarily under the control of her emotions, she had fully sup- posed she was unable to conquer it, unless her emotions should first be changed.

Until now my emotions have had the mastery; but now I put my will into thy hands, and give it up to thy working. I will never again consent in my will to yield to this sin. Take possession of my will, and work in me to will and to do of thy good pleasure. Immediately she began to find deliverance. And now, dear Christian, let me show you how to apply this principle to your difficulties. Cease to con- sider your emotions, for they are only the servants; and regard simply your will, which is the real king in your being. Is that given up to God? Is that put into His hands? Does your will decide to believe?

Does your will choose to obey? And the thing is done.

Bible Living

The transaction with God is as real, when only your will acts, as where every emotion coincides. And when you have got hold of this secret, and have discovered. When, then, this feeling of unreality or hypocrisy comes, do not be troubled by it. The will is like a wise mother in a nursery; the feelings are like a set of clamoring, crying children. The mother makes up her mind to a certain course of action which she believes to be right and best. The children clamor against it and declare it shall not be. But if that mother should for a moment let in.

And in how many souls at this very moment is there nothing but confusion, simply because the feelings are allowed to govern, instead of the will. Remember, then, that the real thing in your experi- ence is what your will decides, and not the verdict of your emotions; and that you are far more in danger of hypocrisy and untruth in yielding to the assertions of your feelings than in holding fast to the decision of your will.

It is not the feelings of the man God wants, but the man himself. But do not let us make a mistake here. We are not so to give up our wills as to be left like limp nerveless creatures, without any will at all. We are simply to substitute for our foolish, misdirected wills of ignorance and immaturity the higher, divine, mature will of God.

The will we are to give up is our will, as it is misdirected, and so parted off. For God can only carry out His own will with us as we consent to it, and will in harmony with Him. Have you thus consented, dear reader, and is your face set as a flint to will what God wills? He wills that you should be entirely surrendered to Him, and that you should trust Him perfectly. Do you will the same? Again I repeat, it is all in the will. After this chapter was first written some years ago, the following remarkable practical illustration of its teaching was handed to me by Pastor Theodore Monod, of Paris.

It is the experience of a Presbyterian minister, which this pastor had carefully kept for many years: Dear Brother, —I take a few moments of that time which I have devoted to the Lord, in writing a short epistle to you, His servant. I do not feel myself qualified to instruct you: I can only tell you the way in which I was led.

The Lord deals differ- ently with different souls, and we ought not to attempt to copy the experience of others; yet there are certain things which must be attended to by every one who is seeking after a clean heart. There must be a personal consecration of all to God; a covenant made with God that we will be wholly and for- ever His.

This I made intellectually, without any change in my feelings, with a heart full of hardness and darkness, un- belief and sin and insensibility. And after I rose from my knees I was conscious of no change in my feelings. I was painfully conscious that there was no change. But yet I was sure that I did, with all the sincerity and honesty of purpose of which I was capable, make an entire and eternal consecration of myself to God. I did not then consider the work as done by any means, but I engaged to abide in a state of entire devotion to God, a living perpetual sacrifice. And now came the effort to do this.

I knew also that I must believe that God did accept me, and did come to dwell in my heart. I was conscious I did not believe this and yet I desired to do so. I was sensible that my heart was full of evil. I seemed to have no power to overcome pride, or to repel evil thoughts which I ab- horred. But Christ was manifested to destroy the works of the devil, and it was clear that the sin in my heart was the work of the devil. I was enabled, therefore, to believe that God was working in me to will and to do, while I was work- ing out my own salvation with fear and trembling. I was convinced of unbelief, that it made the faithful God a liar.

The Lord brought before me my besetting sins which had dominion over me, especially preaching myself instead of Christ, and indulging in self-complacent thoughts after preaching. I was enabled to make myself of no reputation, and to seek the honor which cometh from God only. Satan struggled hard to beat me back from the Rock of Ages; but thanks to God, I finally hit upon the method of living by the moment, and then I found rest.

I felt shut up to a momentary dependence upon the grace of Christ. I would not permit the adversary to trouble me about the past or future, for I each moment looked for the supply for that moment. I agreed that I would be a child of Abraham, and walk by naked faith in the word of God, and not by inward feelings and emotions; I would seek to be a Bible Christian. Since that time the Lord has given me a steady victory over sins which before enslaved me.

I delight in the Lord and in His word. I am a babe in Christ; I know my progress has been small, compared with that made by many. My feelings vary; but when I have feelings I praise God and trust in His word; and when I am empty and my feel- ings are gone, I do the same. I have covenanted to walk by faith, and not by feelings.

The Lord, I think, is beginning to revive His work among my people. Walk before God and be perfect. Be instant in season and out of season. The Lord loves you. He works with you. You have now begun, dear reader, the life of faith. You have given yourself to the Lord to be His wholly and altogether, and you are now entirely in His hands to be molded and fashioned according to His own divine purpose into a vessel unto His honor.

You have not learned yet to know the voice of the Good Shepherd, and are therefore in great doubt and perplexity as to what really is His will concerning you. Perhaps there are certain paths into which God seems to be calling you, of which your friends disap- prove. And these friends, it may be, are older than your- self in the Christian life, and seem to you also to be much farther advanced.

You can scarcely bear to differ from them or to distress them; and you feel also very diffident of yielding to any seeming impressions of duty of which they do not approve. And yet you cannot get rid of these impressions, and you find yourself therefore plunged into great doubt and uneasiness. I would repeat fully surrendered, because, if there is any reserve of will upon any point, it becomes almost impossible to find out the mind of God in reference to that point; and therefore the first thing is to be sure that you really do purpose to obey the Lord in every respect.

If however this is your purpose, and your soul only needs to know the will of God in order to consent to it, then you surely cannot doubt His willing- ness to make His will known, and to guide you in the right paths. There are many very clear promises in ref- erence to this. Take, for instance, John And when he putteth forth his own sheep he goeth before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice.

With such declarations as these, and many more like them, we must believe that Divine guidance is promised to us, and our faith must therefore confidently look for and expect it. This is essential, for in James 1: For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea, driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord. Settle this point then, first of all, and let no sugges- tion of doubt turn you from a steadfast faith in regard to it, that Divine guidance has been promised, and that, if you seek it, you are sure to receive it.

Next, you must remember that our God has all knowledge and all wisdom, and that therefore it is very possible He may guide you into paths wherein He knows great blessings are awaiting you, but which, to the short-sighted human eyes around you, seem sure to re- sult in confusion and loss. You must there- fore realize that His very love for you may perhaps lead you to run counter to the loving wishes of even your dearest friends.

You must learn, from Luke Unless the possibility of this is clearly recognized, you will be very likely to get into difficulty, because it often happens that the child of God who enters upon this life of obedience is sooner or later led into paths which meet with the disapproval of those he best loves; and unless he is prepared for this, and can trust the Lord through it all, he will scarcely know what to do. There are four ways in which He reveals His will to us, —through the Scriptures, through providential circum- stances, through the convictions of our own higher judg- ment, and through the inward impressions of the Holy Spirit on our minds.

Where these four harmonize, it is. For I lay it down as a founda- tion principle, which no one can gainsay, that of course His voice will always be in harmony with itself, no matter in how many different ways He may speak. The voices may be many, the message can be but one. If God tells me in one voice to do or to leave undone anything, He cannot possibly tell me the opposite in another voice. If there is a contradiction in the voices, the speakers cannot be the same. Therefore my rule for distinguish- ing the voice of God would be to bring it to the test of this harmony.

The Scriptures come first. If you are in doubt upon any subject, you must, first of all, consult the Bible about it, and see whether there is any law there to direct you. A great many fatal mistakes are made in the matter of guidance by the overlooking of this simple rule. Where our Father has written out for us a plain direction about anything, He will not of course make an especial revelation to us about that thing. And if we fail to search out and obey the Scrip- ture rule, where there is one, and look instead for an in- ward voice, we shall open ourselves to delusions, and shall almost inevitably get into error.

No man, for in- stance, needs or could expect any direct personal revela- tion to tell him not to steal, because God has already in the Scriptures plainly declared His will about stealing. This seems such an obvious thing that I would not speak of it, but that I have frequently met with Christians who have altogether overlooked it, and who have, as the re- sult, gone off into fanaticism.

The Bible, it is true, does not always give a rule for every particular course of action, and in these cases we need and must expect guidance in other ways. Take the matter of dress and we have I Peter 3: Take the matter of conversation, and we have Ephesians 4: Take the matter of avenging injuries and standing up of our rights, and we have Romans Take the mat- ter of forgiving one another, and we have Ephesians 4: Take the matter of conformity to the world, and we have Romans Take the matter of anxieties of every kind, and we have Matthew 6: I only give these as examples to show how very full and practical the Bible guidance is.

If, therefore, you find yourself in perplexity, first of all search and see whether the Bible speaks on the point in question, ask- ing God to make plain to you, by the power of His Spirit, through the Scriptures, what is His mind. And whatever shall seem to you to be plainly taught there, that you must obey. No especial guidance will ever be given about.

It is essential, however, in this connection to remem- ber that the Bible is a book of principles, and not a book of disjointed aphorisms. Isolated texts may often be made to sanction things to which the principles of Scrip- ture are totally opposed. I believe all fanaticism comes in this way. An isolated text is so impressed upon the mind that it seems a necessity to obey it, no matter into what wrong thing it may lead; and thus the principles of Scrip- ture are violated, under the very plea of obedience to the Scriptures.

In Luke 4 the enemy is represented as using isolated texts to endorse his temptations, while Christ repelled him by announcing principles. If, however, upon searching the Bible you do not find any principles that will settle your especial point of difficulty, you must then seek guidance in the other ways mentioned; and God will surely voice Himself to you, either by a conviction of your judgment, or by providen- tial circumstances, or by a clear inward impression.

In all true guidance these four voices will, as I have said, nec- essarily harmonize, for God cannot say in one voice that which He contradicts in another. If any one of these tests fails, it is not safe to proceed, but you must wait in quiet trust until the Lord shows you the point of harmony, which He surely will, sooner or later, if it is His voice that is speaking. Anything which is out of this divine harmony must be rejected, therefore, as not coming from God. For we must never forget that. The strong personalities of those around us are the source of a great many of our impres- sions.

Impressions also arise often from our wrong physi- cal conditions, which color things far more than we dream. And finally, impressions come from those spirit- ual enemies which seem to lie in wait for every traveler who seeks to enter the higher regions of the spiritual life. These spiritual enemies, whoever or what- ever they may be, must necessarily communicate with us by means of our spiritual faculties; and their voices therefore will be, as the voice of God is, an inward im- pression made upon our spirits.

Many earnest and honest-hearted children of God have been thus deluded into paths of extreme fanati- cism, while all the while thinking they were closely fol- lowing the Lord. God, who sees the sincerity of their hearts, can and does, I am sure, pity and forgive; but the consequences as to this life are often very sad.

In all ages of the world evil and deceiving agencies have been able to work. But this alone is not enough. So far as I can see, the Scriptures everywhere make it an essential thing for the children of God, in their journey through this world, to use all the faculties that have been given them. The third test to which our impressions must be brought is that of providential circumstances.

It is never a sign of a Divine leading when the Christian insists on opening his own way, and riding roughshod over all opposing things. A Christian who had advanced with unusual rapidity in the Divine life gave me, as her secret, this simple receipt: Every peculiarly precious spiritual gift is always nec- essarily linked with some peculiar danger. When the spiritual world is opened to a soul, both the good and the evil there will meet it. But we must not be discouraged by this. Who would not rather take manhood with all its risks and dangers than remain forever in the ignorance and innocence of childhood; and who would not rather grow up into the stature of Christ, even if it shall involve new and more subtle forms of temptation?

Therefore we must not be deterred from embracing the blessed privilege of Divine guidance by a dread of the dangers that environ it. With the four tests I have. That God cares enough about us to desire to regulate the details of our lives is the strongest proof of love He could give; and that He should condescend to tell us all about it, and to let us know just how to live and walk so as perfectly to please Him seems almost too good to be true. It is a matter of indifference to us with the ma- jority of people we meet do, or how they spend their time. But as soon as we begin to love any one we begin at once to care.

We can never know the full joy and privileges of the life hid with Christ in God until we have learned the lesson of a daily and hourly guidance. This means, of course, that He will take possession of our will, and work it for us; and that His suggestions will come to us, not so much commands from the outside as desires springing up within. They will originate in our will; we shall feel as though we desired to do so and so, not as though we must.

And this makes it a service of perfect liberty; for it is always easy to do what we desire to do, let the ac- companying circumstances be as difficult as they may. Every mother knows that she could secure perfect and easy obedience in her child if she could only get into. The way in which the Holy Spirit, therefore, usually works, in a fully obedient soul, in regard to this direct guidance, is to impress upon the mind a wish or desire to do or leave undone certain things.

The child of God when engaged in prayer feels, per- haps, a sudden suggestion made to his inmost conscious- ness in reference to a certain point of duty. And then the tests I have mentioned should be intelligently applied, namely, as to whether the suggestion is in accordance with the teaching of Scripture, with a sanctified judg- ment, and with providential circumstances. Often no distinct consciousness of this process is necessary, as our spiritual intelligence can see at a glance the right or wrong of the matter. The first moment that we clearly see a thing to be right is always the moment when it is easy to do it.

The old self-will wak-. In addition to this our friends differ from us, and would, we know, oppose our course. In such a case there is nothing to do but to wait until the light comes. If the suggestion is from Him, it will continue and strengthen; if it is not from Him, it will disappear, and we shall al- most forget we ever had it.

If it continues, if every time we are brought into near communion with the Lord it seems to return, if it troubles us in our moments of prayer, and disturbs all our peace, and if finally it con- forms to the test of the divine harmony of which I have spoken, we may then feel sure it is from God, and we must yield to it, or suffer an unspeakable loss. The Apostle gives us a rule in reference to doubtful things which seems to me very explicit.

Happy is he that condemneth not himself in that thing which he allow- eth. And he that doubteth is damned [condemned] if he eat, because he eateth not of faith: Take all your present perplexities, then, to the Lord. Tell Him you only want to know and obey His voice, and ask Him to make it plain to you. Promise Him that you will obey, whatever it may be. Believe im- plicitly that He is guiding you, according to His word. In all doubtful things, wait for clear light. Look and listen for His voice continually; and the moment you are sure of it, then, but not until then, yield an immediate obedience.

Trust Him to make you forget the impres- sion if it is not His will; and if it continues, and is in harmony with all His other voices, do not be afraid to obey. Above everything else, trust Him. Nowhere is faith more needed than here. He has promised to guide. You have asked him to do it. And now you must believe that He does, and must take what comes as being His guid- ance. No earthly parent or master could guide his chil- dren or servants if they should refuse to take his com- mands as being really the expression of his will; and God cannot guide those souls who never trust Him enough to believe that He is doing it.

Above all, do not be afraid of this blessed life, lived hour by hour and day by day under the guidance of thy. If He seeks to bring thee out of the world and into very close conformity to Himself, do not shrink from it. It is thy most blessed privilege. Let everything go that it may be thine. How little hast thou gone! Take heart, and let the thought of God Allure thee further on.

A great many Christians are slaves to an invet- erate habit of doubting. I do not mean doubts as to the existence of God or the truths of the Bible, but doubts as to their own personal relations with the God in whom they profess to believe, doubts as to the forgiveness of their sins, doubts as to their hopes of heaven, and doubts about their own inward experience. No drunkard was ever more in bondage to his habit of drink than they are to their habit of doubting. Every step of their spiritual progress is taken against the fearful odds of an army of doubts that are forever lying in wait to assail them at each favorable moment.

Their lives are made wretched, their usefulness is effectually hindered, and their com- munion with God is continually broken, by their doubts.

And although the entrance of the soul upon the life of faith does, in many cases, take it altogether out of the region where these doubts live and flourish, yet even here it sometimes happens that the old tyrant will rise up and reassert his sway, and will cause the feet to stum- ble and the heart to fail, even when he cannot succeed in utterly turning the believer back into the dreary wil- derness again.

Little did we suspect then that we should ever find our- selves taken prisoner by the same giant, and imprisoned in the same castle. But I fear that each one of us, if we were perfectly honest, would have to confess to at least one such experience, and some of us perhaps to a great many. It seems strange that people whose very name of Be- lievers implies that their one chiefest characteristic is that they believe, should have to confess that they have doubts. This is too often true even of believers who are ear- nestly longing to enter upon the life and walk of faith, and who have made, perhaps, many steps towards it.

They have got rid, it may be, of the old doubts that once tormented them, as to whether their sins are really for- given, and whether they shall, after all, get safe to. They have simply shifted the habit to a higher platform. I dare not doubt this any more. One after another they fight with these promises, and refuse to believe them until they can have some more reliable proof of their being true than the simple word of their God; and then they wonder why they are permitted to walk in such darkness, and look upon themselves almost in the light of martyrs, and groan under the peculiar spiritual conflicts they are com- pelled to endure.

Far better would they be named did we call them spiritual rebellions! Our fight is to be a fight of faith; and the moment we let in doubts, our fight ceases, and our rebellion begins. Just as well might I join in with the laments of a drunkard, and unite with him in prayer for grace to en- dure the discipline of his fatal appetite, as to give way for one instant to the weak complaints of these enslaved souls, and try to console them under their slavery.

To one and to the other I would dare to do nothing else but proclaim the perfect deliverance which the Lord Jesus Christ has in store for them, and beseech, entreat, and importune them, with all the power at my command, to avail themselves of it and be free. Not for one moment would I listen to their despairing excuses.

You ought to be free, you can be free, you must be free! Will you undertake to tell me that it is an inevitable necessity for God to be doubted by His children? Is it an inevitable necessity for your children to doubt you? Would you tolerate their doubts a single hour? In the sight of God, I verily believe doubting is in some cases as displeasing as lying. It certainly is more dishonoring to Him, for it im- pugns His truthfulness and defames His character. Have you ever thought of this as the result of your doubting? She had brought two lit- tle girls to my house, to leave them while she did some errands.

The other one, with the wretched cau- tion and mistrust of maturity, sat down alone in a cor- ner, to wonder, first, whether her mother would remem-. Grief, wounded love, indignation, and pity all strove together for mastery; and the mother hardly knew who was most at fault, herself or the child, that such doubts should be possible. Doubting is, I am convinced, to many people a real luxury, and to deny themselves this luxury would be the hardest piece of self-denial they have ever known.

Try giving it up, and you will soon find out whether it is a luxury or not. Do not your doubts come trooping to your door like a company of sympathizing friends who appreciate your hard case and have come to condole with you? And is it no luxury to sit down with them, and entertain them, and listen to. Would it be no self-denial to turn resolutely from them, and refuse to hear a word they have to say? If you do not know, try it and see. Have you never tasted the luxury of indulging in hard thoughts against those who have, as you think, in- jured you?

Have you never known what a positive fasci- nation it is to brood over their unkindnesses, and to pry into their malice, and to imagine all sorts of wrong and uncomfortable things about them? It has made you wretched, of course; but it has been a fascinating sort of wretchedness, that you could not easily give up. Just like this is the luxury of doubting. Things have gone wrong with you in your experience. What more natural than to conclude that for some reason God has forsaken you, and does not love you, and is indiffer- ent to your welfare?

How irresistible is the conviction that you are too wicked for Him to care for, or too dif- ficult for Him to manage! You do not mean to blame Him, or accuse Him of injustice, for you feel that His indifference and rejection of you are, because of your unworthiness, fully deserved; and this very subterfuge leaves you at liberty, under the guise of a just and true appreciation of your own short- comings, to indulge in your dishonoring doubts.

Al- though you think it is yourself you are doubting, you are really doubting the Lord, and are indulging in as hard and wrong thoughts of Him as ever you did of a human enemy. For He declares that He came to save, not the righteous, but sinners; and your very sinfulness and un- worthiness, instead of being a reason why He should not. From beginning to end of your Christian life it is al- ways sinful to indulge in doubts. Doubts and discourage- ments are all from an evil source, and are always untrue.

A direct and emphatic denial is the only way to meet them. This brings me to the practical part of the whole subject, as to how to get deliverance from this fatal habit. My answer would be that the deliverance from this must be by the same means as the deliverance from any other sin. It is to be found in Christ, and in Him only. You must hand your doubting over to Him as you have learned to hand your other temptations.

You must do with it just what you do with your temper or your pride; that is, you must give it up to the Lord. I believe myself the only effectual remedy is to take a pledge. Like any other sin, the stronghold is in the will, and the will or purpose to doubt must be surrendered exactly as you surrender the will or purpose to yield to any other temptation.

The trouble is, that in this matter of doubting the Christian does not always make a full surrender, but is apt to reserve a little secret liberty to doubt, looking upon it as being sometimes a necessity. It is often necessary, I think, to make a definite transaction of this surrender of doubting, and come to a point about it. I believe it is quite as necessary in the case of a doubter as in the case of a drunkard. It will not do to give it up by degrees. The total-abstinence principle is the only effectual one here.

Walking in the Confidence of God in Troubled Times

Then, the surrender once made, we must rest abso- lutely upon the Lord for deliverance in each time of temptation. The moment the assault comes, we must lift up the shield of faith against it. We must hand the very first suggestion of doubt over to the Lord, and must let.

We must refuse to entertain the doubt a single moment. God is my Father, and He does love me. Life is always challenging. In fact, there are times when discouragement, disappointment, doubt, failure, and pain make it particularly difficult. This complete and insightful guide to the Bible's most famous and infamous, named and unnamed, women of faith covers the matriarchs, the prophetesses and queens, the women around Jesus, and even th It may surprise you to hear that the Bible promises trouble.

As long as we live in a sinful world, tough times will be part of our human experience. Along with the promise that troubles will come, t Have you had difficult times? I know I have. Sometimes, as Christians, we get the message that we are not supposed to have problems. Or, if we do have problems, that it is evidence that we are not d How can words written thousands of years ago in different times and cultures apply to us today? Why do Christians obey certain commands in the Bible and ignore others?

Some say commands to greet one A Bible verse card game new cards sealed. There is a small tear on box see photos.