A FEW years ago, while staying in a little Norfolk village not far from the sea coast, it was my privilege to meet with a dear child of God, whose quiet testimony to the abounding grace, and unceasing care of her Father in heaven spoke in most powerful language to my soul. Being young in the Lord, and not much instructed in His ways of dealing with His children, I was glad to sit at this dear disciple’s feet, and learn from her own lips the secret of her peace and tranquility, while her frail body was prostrate with pain and weakness.
When I first became acquainted with her she had been for twenty-nine years confined to her bed with a distressing spinal complaint, a helpless and confirmed invalid; her dwelling a humble cottage, her comforts few, her surroundings bearing witness to the fact that she had few to care for, or sympathize with her. Expressing my sympathy with her in her affliction, no word of complaint escaped her lips, but, pointing to a text which hung at the foot of her bed, she soon gave me to understand that her peace was based on no fragile foundation. Subsequent visits and conversations proved that it was no mere surface work with her, but that as she had drunk deep at the wellsprings of divine grace, so she was morally fitted not only to rise above her own afflictions, but to be a dispenser of the living water which filled her own soul to overflowing (John 7:3838He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. (John 7:38)).
“It is very seldom I sleep at nights,” she said, in reply to a question put to her; “the little sleep I do get is generally in snatches through the day, but the nights are often very precious seasons to me. As I lie awake in the stillness of the evening hours, I can see my text, for, as you see, it is illuminated, and can be seen quite clearly in the dark; and it brings Himself before me, and I think of all He has done and suffered for me, and how He comforts and sustains me; although my poor body is often weary, yet it is His presence with me that fills my heart with gladness; and then it will soon be all over, and I shall be with Him, where pain and sorrow and affliction can never enter.”
Could I pity her, and lament that one of the Lord’s dear ones should thus be made to pass through the furnace? Surely not. Was she not unconsciously ministering to my soul’s needs? I had been thinking, as many do, that trials and afflictions are so many marks of the Father’s displeasure on account of our inconstant ways, and that, on the other hand, exemption from them was as positive a proof of His favor. But here was a living witness to the contrary,―a witness to the matchless grace that could take up a poor, vile, undeserving sinner, and lift her, not only clean out of her sins, but above her circumstances; and, while still in the midst of pain and suffering, enable her to taste and feed upon, as a present thing, the heavenly joys of the Father’s house, the blessed portion for every true believer through the ages of eternity!
And what was the text that gave her so much comfort through the weary hours of midnight gloom? “The Lord is my rock” (2 Sam. 22:22And he said, The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; (2 Samuel 22:2)).
Dear reader, can you truthfully take up this language, and like David, the man of God’s choice, when celebrating his victory over all his enemies, and singing his song of deliverance, say, “The Lord is my rock, my fortress, my deliverer.... He is my shield, the horn of my salvation, my high refuge, and my Saviour”? If so, happy are you. May you know increasingly, as you journey along through the dreary wilderness of this world, what it is to draw more largely upon Him, as He is variously presented to us in His precious imperishable Word, and to live in the practical realization of those heavenly truths which are given to be appropriated now. (Compare Ephesians 1:3, 4, 2:4-10, 4:14-17; Philippians 1:9, 10, 4:8, 9; Colossians 2:2, 3, 3:1-4; 1 Thessalonians 1:10,10And to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come. (1 Thessalonians 1:10) verses 5-8.)
But perhaps you confess yourself a stranger to all these things. You have never known the quietness and peace of souls which is the birthright of every one who responds to the Saviour’s invitation in Matthew 11:28,28Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. (Matthew 11:28) “Come unto me”; and yet that weary, burdened heart of yours often longs for that soul-rest to which all your life long you have been a total stranger. It maybe you have sought it earnestly; agonizingly you have prayed; diligently you have striven, eagerly you have inquired, how you might find relief from the intolerable burden of your sins. You have tried morality, philanthropy, law-keeping, and theology in all its various forms and phases, but your heart is unsatisfied still. In vain, amid the confusion of tongues around you, can you find a pilot to direct you to the “haven of rest.” Does this describe you, dear unsaved one? Do you know yourself as a “lost sinner,” seeking a “Saviour”? Then, cheer up, dear friend, it is for you this little paper is sent forth, that you may be led, through grace, to plant your feet firmly down on the Rock that can never be moved.
Our desire, in recording the above little incident, is to encourage you to venture boldly on the measureless grace of God that could produce such fruits in a weak and helpless sufferer in such unlikely circumstances. Refreshing to the heart as it may be, and surely is, yet, dear anxious one, we do not ask you to build your hopes upon any experience either of yourself or others; but we ask you to listen to the words of Him who cannot lie, “who spake as never map spake”; and while you listen to those words, may you be enabled in simple childlike, confiding faith, to roll your heavy burden upon Him, who at such infinite cost to Himself completed redemption’s work on the cross of Calvary. “Whosoever cometh to ME, and heareth my sayings, and doeth them, I will show you to whom he is like: He is like a man which built an house, and digged deep, and laid the foundation on a rock: and when the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently upon that ‘house, and COULD NOT SHAKE it; for it was founded upon a ROCK” (Luke 6:47, 4847Whosoever cometh to me, and heareth my sayings, and doeth them, I will show you to whom he is like: 48He is like a man which built an house, and digged deep, and laid the foundation on a rock: and when the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently upon that house, and could not shake it: for it was founded upon a rock. (Luke 6:47‑48)).
And what are His sayings, do you ask? I quote you two of them, and may you rest your soul this moment on His sure word, and find the rest and peace you have so vainly sought elsewhere: “Him that cometh to ME, I will in no wise cast out;” “And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall NEVER PERISH, neither shall any pluck them out of MY HAND” (John 6:37, 10:28).
Hitherto you have been building your hopes for eternity upon the sinking sand of human hopes and expediency. Even now you feel its foundations giving way beneath you; already you hear the sullen roar of God’s holy judgment-flood, as it threatens to sweep you and your frail refuge into the dark caverns of endless woe; but Jesus asks you to trust Him. When? Now! yes, now I although you have never thought it worth your while to come to Him until you had exhausted all your fancied resources. Come to Him, in your need, your misery, in your sins of crimson dye, with your accumulated load of guilt, with your doubts and fears, ―just as you are! come and learn that the resistless torrent of God’s undying grace is still flowing as freely today as when the blood of expiation streamed from the Saviour’s side nearly two thousand years ago!
And now, dear friend, if you have thus taken Him at His word, and cast yourself upon Him as your own personal Saviour, let me point you to a picture that will show you the other side of the Gospel. In the 15th of Luke I find that the Father’s eye never lost sight of his erring Wanderer. At the first movement towards Himself, He runs to meet him; while the kiss, the ring, the robe, the feast, all betoken the love that has been waiting to lavish itself upon the object of its delight. And this is the God that poor sinners have to do with. “Let us eat and be merry,” says the Father. Why? Because the lost one is found. There is joy in the heart of God when an undeserving and unworthy sinner sues for mercy at His hands.
The poor prodigal little dreamed of the reception he would receive. Little did he know the heart that was already yearning to imprint the kiss of reconciliation upon the lost one’s brow. “There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth” (vs. 10).
“Could I think that in the glory,
Ere of Him I had a thought,
Christ was yearning o’er the lost one
Whom His precious blood had bought?
That it was his need that brought Him
Down to the accursed tree,
Deeper than His deep compassion,
Wondrous thought! ―His need of me.
G.F.E.