The Works of God

I do not know what you need, but I do know Christ has it. I do not know the full of your disease, but I do know Christ is the physician who can meet it. I do not know how hard and stubborn and stolid and ignorant and blind and dead your nature may be, but I do know that “Christ is able to save unto the uttermost them that come unto God by Him.” What you are has nothing to do with the question, except that it is the mischief to be undone. The true answer to the question of how you are to be saved lies yonder in the bleeding body of the immaculate Lamb of God! Christ has all salvation in Himself. He is Alpha, He is Omega. He does not begin to save and leave you to perish, nor does He offer to complete what you must first begin. . .

If I might only have it to utter one sentence, it would be this one, “Your help is found in Christ.” As for you, there never can be found anything hopeful in your human nature. It is death itself! It is rottenness and corruption. Turn, turn your eyes away from this despairing mass of black depravity and look to Christ! He is the sacrifice for human guilt. His is the righteousness that covers men and makes them acceptable before the Lord!

Charles H. Spurgeon, Memory: The Handmaid of Hope, delivered October 15, 1865.

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To know that our Father in heaven has ordained our pain is not a comfortable truth, but it is comforting. That our pain has a loving and wise and all-powerful purpose behind it is better than any other view—weak God, cruel God, bumbling God, no God. To know that in his hands “this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison” (2 Corinthians 4:17) is profoundly reassuring. And yes, “light” and “momentary” meant, in Paul’s case, a lifetime of suffering. The excruciating “lightness” of his suffering was light compared to the weight of glory. And the interminable “momentariness” of his suffering was momentary compared to the eternality of the glory.

John Piper, A Sweet and Bitter Providence, pp. 138-139.

You can download the book for free at the link above.

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His providence enfolds all who bear his image in everlasting arms. He will advance you higher, and secure you better than any noble birth or estate could ever do.The delight and pleasure resulting from the observation of divine providence is very great. It will doubtless be a part of our entertainment in heaven to view with transporting delight how the designs and methods were laid to bring us there. Providence not only brings you to heaven, it brings heaven to your soul now.

God is providentially steering all to the port of his own praise and his people’s happiness, while the whole world is busily employed in managing the sails and tugging at the oars with a quiteopposite design and purpose. They promote God’s design by opposing it, fulfil his will by resisting it, and enlarge his church by scattering it. They make the saint’s rest sweeter by making their condition so restless in the world. What a history we might compile, as we trace the footsteps of providence along the way. . .

O reader, what a life of pleasure you might live by noticing the ways of providence towards you! What a heaven upon earth you may have! Taste and see the glory of the study of providence.

John Flavel, Works, IV: 336-342

Thank you to the chain of people who passed this on, and to Carol Steinbach who shared it with me.

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Matt Chandler explains why the ‘swoon theory‘ (that Jesus didn’t really die but simply fell unconscious, then awoke and exited the tomb) is ridiculous.  Anyone who has experienced even a temporary disabling condition involving the feet will understand!

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From Pastor John, in a 1999 Taste and See Article, Luther, Bunyan, Bible and Pain:

(O)ne of God’s gifts to us in suffering is that we are granted to see and experience depths of his Word that a life of ease would never yield.

Martin Luther had discovered the same “method” of seeing God in his Word. He said there are three rules for understanding Scripture: praying, meditating and suffering trials. The “trials,” he said, are supremely valuable: they “teach you not only to know and understand but also to experience how right, how true, how sweet, how lovely, how mighty, how comforting God’s word is: it is wisdom supreme.” Therefore the devil himself becomes the unwitting teacher of God’s word: “the devil will afflict you [and] will make a real doctor of you, and will teach you by his temptations to seek and to love God’s Word. For I myself . . . owe my papists many thanks for so beating, pressing, and frightening me through the devil’s raging that they have turned me into a fairly good theologian, driving me to a goal I should never have reached” (What Luther Says, Vol. 3, Concordia Publishing House, 1959, p. 1360).

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A helpful word from Nancy Guthrie in Holding on to Hope, p. 10:

Ours is not a culture that is comfortable with sadness. Sadness is awkward. It is unsettling. It ebbs and flows and takes its own shape. It beckons to be shared. It comes out in tears, and we don’t quite know what to do with those.

So many people are afraid to bring up my loss. They don’t want to upset me. But my tears are the only way I have to release the deep sorrow I feel. I tell people, “don’t worry about crying in front of me, and don’t be afraid that you will make me cry! Your tears tell me you care, and my tears tell you that you’ve touched me in a place that is meaningful to me-and I will never forget your willingness to share my grief.”

In fact, those who shed their tears with me show me we are not alone. It often feels like we are carrying this enormous load of sorrow, and when others shed their tears with me, it is as if they are taking a bucket-ful of sadness and carrying it for me. It is, perhaps, the most meaningful thing anyone can do for me.

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A helpful reminder from A.W. Pink in The Attributes of God, p. 39:

Here then is a sure resting-place for the heart. Our lives are neither the product of blind fate nor the result of capricious chance, but every detail of them was ordained from all eternity, and is now ordered by the living and reigning God. Not a hair of our heads can be touched without his permission. “A man’s heart deviseth his way: but the Lord directeth his steps” (Prov. 16:9).

What assurance, what strength, what comfort this should give the real Christian! “My times are in Thy hand” (Ps. 31:15). Then let me “Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for him” (Ps. 37:7).

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On Tuesday Dianne closed her talk to about 40 mothers on the topic of God’s goodness in disability with this gem from Martin Lloyd-Jones:

You may not understand what is happening to you; it may seem to you all wrong. Trust yourself to (God). Believe when you cannot prove. Hold on to his constancy, his justice, his eternal purposes for you in Christ. Regard these as absolutes, which can never be shaken, confident that ultimately all will be made plain and all will be well.

The man knew how to pray as well!

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