WHO BY HIM DO BELIEVE IN GOD

WHO BY HIM DO BELIEVE IN GOD

I was at a reading on Saturday with J.N.D.; the chapter was Ephesians 2. The most interesting part was the difference between the house and the body - the olive tree, as that which continued, or rather outlived both. The tree always remained, but the branches were changed. Afterwards we had Luke 12 expounded. I also heard him on Sunday evening on 1 Peter, and enjoyed it very much. The sufferings being over, the Spirit was sent down to report there is nothing else between the sufferings and the glory. Christ when here removed all the effects of sin, but this only disclosed the root of it. Man prayed Him to depart out of their coasts. He dwelt much on the verse, “Who by him do believe in God” (1 Peter 1: 21). He has revealed God; by the law there was no revelation of Him; there was of what man ought to do.

. It is so gracious of the Lord to allow us to be happy in serving in any way His people. The service has its own reward when souls own to Him that it is a service.

I think you have been lower than you are now, and the Lord kept you and helped you on; but then it was with you the energy of the emigrant devotedly ^[p. 493] purposing to endure and in every way seeking to maintain yourselves. All was new ground, and you looked to the Lord, and the battle was His, and you weathered the storm; nay more, as is always in His wars, you were stronger and more capable at the end than at the beginning. Then came a harvest and there was a goodly acquisition of strength, and possibly you became a little Laodicean, and now you are reduced again to very much your former strength in rank and file. I mean, as to soldiers, numbers and duties have increased, while efficient hands to do the work have decreased. I do not say all this to in any way discourage, but rather that you and the brethren may, because of the straitness, encourage yourselves in the Lord; but then I must add that they will find it a far more difficult thing now to live and work on small commons than they did at the first. It is far easier for a poor man to endure privation while he is assured that every effort he makes is effecting his deliverance from it, than it is for one used to higher things to which he has risen. There is in the latter case such a clinging to habits and forms after the power to sustain them is gone, the reluctance to own one’s real state. This is the first thing, to own your poverty; the next is, for the Lord’s sake, valuing all He gives, and hence strengthening that which remains.