WANDERING FROM THE DIVINE PATH
WANDERING FROM THE DIVINE PATH
As to our travelling out of the path divinely marked for us, it is, alas! too true that we do oftentimes; but in the Lord’s gracious care it seems to me that when we travel out of it we are disciplined in our wanderings, so as to make us more fit and faithful in our true path when through grace we return to it, having acquired a knowledge of ourselves and of God’s grace that, perhaps, could not be learned otherwise. If we had been simple and true to God we should not have wandered, and we could have gone on doing His will and learning more of Him in unbroken nearness to Him; but often obliquities in our nature do not come out until we reach a certain part in the divine path. Now if we do not judge the nature of which those obliquities are the root, it follows that we are led by them, and thus, alas! we wander; but even in the wandering God in His grace corrects and restores us. If Abram had walked in simple faith he would not have gone down to Egypt, but he is corrected there and returns to the land. Jacob delays to go to Bethel, and he is corrected at Shalem. Jonah refuses to go to Nineveh, and he is corrected in the depths of the sea whither he had wandered. Peter wanders into the high priest’s house, and Paul [p. 236] wanders when he persists in going to Jerusalem; but our God is faithful and He uses the very events in the wandering to correct and to break down that self in us which led to the wandering. No one can be truly happy or certain of his course when he is outside God’s path for him. In the path you may and will meet with tribulation but never with trouble of heart, unless when there is an effort to lead you out of it. There cannot be the joy of the Holy Ghost when I am not in the line of His leading, for there alone He can be, answering as He ever does unto the mind of Christ. I am certain that if we were walking in the path which the Lord appoints for us we should have such light and joy in our hearts that the difficulties would be as nothing, and when walking according to His mind, in the strength and favour of His presence, you see everything in such a different way that you can turn from, and cast aside much that you otherwise would not have seen necessary to turn from. The very high place which you have with God requires you to be suited to it in all your ways.
May the Lord give us grace to keep in the path which He Himself has made for us, not turned aside by difficulties in it, but knowing His joy therein may we walk steadily on trusting in Him and reckoning that He will surely make an opening for us through the most (apparently) terrible difficulty.
The loss of His presence alone need trouble us, and if His presence be with us we may easily meet any difficulty, for He is above all difficulties. Your unbelief may be corrected, and assuredly it is of His grace to correct us, but while you are being corrected for unbelief you are losing all the precious benefits of walking in faith. You may be made stronger for the path of faith while undergoing correction for your unbelief, but certainly you are for that time shut out from the progress and disclosures which faith leads to. You may return to the path with your lesson better learned, but in the time of correction there is no advance beyond the step in which you failed.