A GREAT CALM

A GREAT CALM

I feel we all have to be weaned from the thoughts and expectations connected with earth. The only thing that can place the soul in the sense of deliverance from pressure is the knowledge of the Lord’s love. If His love is satisfied in your deliverance from this evil world, that settles and sustains the soul more than any prospect of rest or joy. It is not His power that we lose sight of so much as of His love. To know that the Lord, who revealed the Father, is always nearest to you when you are most needing Him (though probably His nearness is unknown, as with the disciples on the sea) is a truth which, when rested in, develops its own light and heat, and generates true health and vigour to the soul and reliance on the Lord. He was beside the ship where the disciples were, unknown and unlooked for; no prayer brought ^[p. 266] Him there, but His own affection for them; prayer arises when He is known to be there, but He is there by His own love. My necessity was the appeal to His love, my trouble leads Him to be beside me in the direst moment; and when I recognise Him in His anxious, tender interest for me, then I receive Him into “the ship” — into my circumstances; He enters into them Himself; and when His love is recognised, or rather when He Himself in His love is recognised, He enters into my circumstances with me, and the effect is wondrous — there is a great calm! May my beloved brother delight himself in this love, and then be assured you will find the strength and deliverance of His presence.

... How the Lord permits things to happen to us, and then gets us out of them when no one else could help us! He exercises our faith. It is the “trying” of our faith.... All believers must eventually be overcomers, but it is said, “Work out your own salvation”, which in its fulness is future, and is assuredly ours, so we should be now practically overcoming.