OUR FATHER'S PURPOSE
OUR FATHER’S PURPOSE
How beautiful and wondrous are the ways of our God with us when we once begin to see the purpose of His heart regarding us! We see a natural parent toiling and planning to get his children in the order and condition of life here which he thinks the best suited to his means and ability. Now, when we see that there is this purpose in the heart of God respecting us, His children, what may we not expect as to the order and condition of life which He thinks best? Who can describe or measure that? It is not what I think best. If I were to think most extravagantly, could I in any measure reach up to what He thinks the best? And when I see that He is leading me to the enjoyment of this His purpose, I have the key to every dealing and every movement of His hand. He has no doubt of being able to effect His purpose as a natural parent often has; but He wants to make us conscious of His purpose, and to lead us into the enjoyment of it. Our Father,
[p. 100] as it were, longs to see us in His house, enjoying His purpose now accomplished in His Son our Saviour; and when He finds any unwillingness in our hearts to go there, He weans us from the things that stop the way. A child is not weaned in a minute, and it may go through a great deal of suffering before it is weaned, but it is all the healthier and stronger when the weaning is fully over. The desire of the Father’s heart is that we should have such a sense of being with His Son in glory, that we should feel as if everything here for the moment had lost its claim and hold on us; and then, after this temporary death, this weaning, we should return again to the place of death, assured in heart and mind of the purpose of our God for us.
He is only conducting us through this world to the zenith of His own delight, and the purpose of His love for us; He passes us through all the seasons here; and the winter, the most trying one, is the most helpful, if we are really cast on Him in it. Then the real measure of our dependence on Him is ascertained, and also the extent of our resources in Him; and we make acquisitions in Him which we never make at any other time. All our growth and fruits depend on our winters, or rather on how we pass through them. The more we can rest in Him, the more we are independent of everything outside of Him at such a time, the more vigour we really possess; and the better we get over the winter, be it ever so severe. If I am independent of the winter, it is evident that I have mastered it, and not it me; and if I have done so, through the power of Christ, I am relieved though in no human way. Peter is delivered from prison in a superhuman way; but first he, though enduring a very trying winter, could lay him down and sleep - take his rest, because the Lord sustained him.