FELLOWSHIP IN GOD'S PURPOSE UNDER DISCIPLINE

FELLOWSHIP IN GOD’S PURPOSE UNDER DISCIPLINE

If our hearts were in happy fellowship with God, and in co-operation with His wondrous ways and arrangements, which are all for the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ, we could not refuse or dissent from His calling on us for our quota to that great circle of His purpose, in which we should feel ourselves included.

If we were really and heartily interested in His purpose and ways, and carefully entering into them, and devoted to them, when we found that He considered it necessary that Lazarus, or even one much dearer to us, should sleep, we should, though unable ^[p. 282] to see why we are so heavily taxed, bow our heads, and submit to any call on us, because reckoning on the wisdom of His will and counsel, and knowing that He is making all things to work together, not only for good to me, but for His own glory.

I must get to this high level, or I never can comprehend or become resigned to the varied discipline by which our God is carrying out His own purpose, while severing us from self, practically setting flesh aside, that the life of Jesus may be made manifest in our body.

It is an exercise to our faith, until we get able to rest in the assurance that His way is perfect, and the only true and effectual way for subduing the particular kind of nature which each has. Faith in His ways is required before we have intelligence as to His ways. I must believe in the skill of a physician before I can confidently submit to perhaps very painful remedies. But when I come to understand his object, and the necessity for those remedies, it is not only faith in his skill, but approbation of his mode of treatment.

It is long with some of us before the approbation comes; and it is plain that we should be miserable under the treatment, if we had not faith, or in other words, confidence in the skill. If you have this confidence, you can cheerfully submit, even though, like Job, you may not approve; but when you have real fellowship with His purpose, you will approve; it will be grateful to your heart to bow, and you will find that what your God considers the right thing can be nothing else than the best thing for you.