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Nothing to Fear, February 23
Confirming the souls of the disciples, and exhorting them to continue in
the faith, and that we must through much tribulation enter into the
kingdom of God.
Acts 14:22
.
God means we shall trust in Him and enjoy His goodness. He lays out
day by day before us and we must have eyes and perceptive powers to take
these things in. However great and glorious the full and perfect deliverance
from evil we shall realize in heaven, it is not all to be kept for the time of final
deliverance. God brings it into our present life. We need daily to cultivate
faith in a present Saviour. Trusting in a power out of and above ourselves,
exercising faith in unseen support and power which is waiting the demand
of the needy and dependent, we can trust amid clouds as well as sunshine,
singing of present deliverance and present enjoyment of His love. The life
we now live must be by faith in the Son of God.
The Christian’s life is a strangely mingled scene of sorrows and joys,
disappointments and hopes, fears and confidence. There will be much dissat-
isfaction with self, as he views his own heart so deeply stirred, surged with
passion that seems to bear all before it, and then follows remorse and sorrow
and repentance, followed by peace and deep hidden joys, because he knows,
as his faith grasps the promises that are revealed in God’s Word, that he has
the forgiving love of a longsuffering Saviour. And that Saviour, he seeks to
bring into his life, weave into his character.
It is these revealings, these discoveries of God’s goodness, that make the
soul humble and lead it to cry out in gratitude, “I live; yet not I, but Christ
liveth in me” (
Galatians 2:20
). We have reason to be comforted. Severe
outward trials may press around the soul where Jesus lives. Let us turn to Him
for the consolations He has provided for us in His Word. The nether springs
of hope and comfort may appear to fail us, but the upper springs which feed
the river of God are full of supply and can never be dried up. God would have
you look away from the cause of your afflictions to Him who is the Owner of
soul, body, and spirit. He is the lover of the soul. He knows the value of the
soul. He is the true Vine and we are the branches. We shall have no spiritual
nourishment only as we draw it from Jesus who is the life of the soul.—
Letter
10, February 23, 1887
, to Dr. J. H. Kellogg.
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