BE PREPARED FOR THE WINTER

BE PREPARED FOR THE WINTER

To fill any post really for God you must not expect it to be all happiness, though you will have the light and cheer of His countenance, even though the sun by day, and the frost by night, may try you on the human side. To find things pleasant is not the right expectation. To please the Lord is our summum bonum, and as we do, we are happier in pleasing Him than in pleasing ourselves.

A path when first entered on may be more liked if and better accepted than when the novelty of it has worn off. It is not the man who puts on the armour, but the one who puts it off, who is to boast. It has been said, ‘The things that we try are made the trial of us’. I have found that often it is easy to enter on any service; but that the continued application to it, under every circumstance however adverse, tests severely the purpose as well as the grace in my heart. Consequently, as a rule, it is better to begin in sorrow and exercise of heart. “They that sow in tears shall reap in joy” (Psalm 126: 5), is the divine principle for all service and success here; the evening before the morning, for then there must be faith to begin with. I begin with God and reach Jehovah-jireh, “In the mount of the Lord it shall be seen” (Genesis 22: 14). You have begun in the summer. Be like the ant now and gather up strength for the winter, for it must come; though to a wise ant it will be really no winter, but rather a time when, well sheltered from the cold, it can enjoy the acquisitions of a more favoured season. I believe in perpetual favour with God, but I do not believe in unbroken sunshine here. On the contrary, “we which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake” (2 Corinthians 4: 11). I say this that you may not think it strange when the collar which you have rightly accepted, becomes trying or difficult to you; for surely if it be service it must be so; the servant must be more or less a sufferer.

I only exhort you to endure hardness and to be stedfast as much in the trying day as in the pleasing day; for we are ever subject to the attacks of the flesh, and we can only be conquerors as we walk in the Spirit.