LETTER ON THE OCCASION OF THREATENED BLINDNESS
LETTER ON THE OCCASION OF THREATENED BLINDNESS
I have no doubt the soul in active faith gets much blessing by enduring privation. But then the sense of the privation returns with all its oppression when faith relaxes - the privation remains. Faith puts me above it, giving me more than I have lost, so that, for the moment, I am glad of the privation, as it has been the occasion to me of finding such an equivalent (one above all my calculation) in the Lord.
Starving in the far country was the most painful of privations, but who would not have known it for the sake of finding fellowship with God around the fatted calf! And practically we know that the more keenly we have felt the privation of the far country, the more we fear the soil of it now, and the more eagerly we retreat when we find our vacillating souls touching on its borders. Thus it is really good for us to feel our privations. Is not the fatted calf better any day than all the [p. 475] things of the far country? Yet faith alone keeps us in the sense of this and in the enjoyment of it. I think you will find that if our desires be true, trials occur to give a fuller scope of practice as to our desires. Whatever hinders the maintenance of the desires of the Spirit will be removed. We know not how or by what means God does this in His wisdom, for He knows what will best effect or promote the desire which His Spirit has created.
The full truth revealed in and by the Son of the Father was, for the moment, forgotten by the brethren. They sought more for associates than for a true heart in declaring the counsel of God, and seeking to rescue the truth as He had revealed it from the mire and leaven with which it was enveloped. God must always be first thought of - He must be vindicated - and this is the more necessary when the spurious additions of men are regarded as genuine.
In vindicating the truth of God you minister that which feeds and establishes His people, and when your eye is on Him and your whole energy engaged to declare Him faithfully, you are, through His Spirit, confirming His name in the souls of His saints. Thus you will find true associates in their true place who will be drawn to you, and if you lose them you need never lose your mission. The best way to keep them is to keep steady to your mission even to the declaration of the truth. I see it here - many being coaxed and warned have made no movement, but when the truth of Christ was maintained - only to honour Him - they are taken with it and are getting confirmed in their souls.