GOOD INTENTIONS NOT POWER

GOOD INTENTIONS NOT POWER

“My soul followeth hard after thee: thy right hand upholdeth me” (Psalm 63: 8). The virtue of this word is that it marks out the manner and order in which help comes. You are occupied with the Lord and not with the thing which may require His help; and as you are occupied with Him solely, He requites you markedly, by His right hand upholding you. The great thing is to be upheld in a world of antagonism; your intentions, however true and of God, are defeated in such a scene, if there be not a present help. You must have good intentions if the Spirit is working in your heart, but good intentions are not power, and will not secure you, if you do not carry them out. “The soul of the sluggard desireth, and hath nothing” (Proverbs 13: 4). But even with full determination to carry them out, they are only the railway line; the engine is still required; otherwise the very sincerity of your intentions will exasperate you with the obstruction. Do not give up the right purposes because you have failed, but remember that it is not the intentions, however good, you are to trust in, or to keep before you, but the Lord Himself. If you are following hard after the Lord, your heart is set on Him only, and not on the carrying out of your intentions. And as He is thus your object, He makes you sensible of His help, not so much to carry out your intentions, as to make Himself known as upholding you. When intentions are your object, the more your conscience justifies you,

^[p. 392] the more are you aggrieved when they are thwarted. The reason you are allowed to fail is that you are making your intentions your object. The better anything is, the less will the Lord support it when it usurps His own place. He is to be the sole object, and when He is, wherever you are, and whatever you are called to, you consider for Him, and He rewards you by supporting you.

You will find that it makes a great difference, whether you come into any sphere here, with your heart set on Him, or set on doing something, even the best. When you come, having Him simply before you, you regard everything you come in contact with in relation to Him. It is not as things affect yourself, but as they affect Him. You have before you a perfect Man; and you thus come in conflict with the man here who is always imperfect.

I desire for you that you may enter on everything here so prepossessed by the Lord, so impressed and attracted by His perfections, that you do not build on the worth of your intentions, but that you are quite under His control, to act for Him as occasion offers. In a sense you have no intentions; and instead of feeling aggrieved when hindered in carrying out anything, the sense before your heart, whenever you fail, is that you had not sufficiently considered for Him to whom your heart is absolutely engaged; and you will always find, that when He is first with you, your best intentions are promoted by Him, and He is more and more endeared to your heart. May you prove this very abundantly!