AS I ABHOR MYSELF BEFORE GOD, I CONFIDE IN HIM
AS I ABHOR MYSELF BEFORE GOD, I CONFIDE IN HIM
It is a great thing to be able to rest in unquestioning assurance on the love of God, when all the surroundings are against us. This was Job’s trial. When prosperity and health are bestowed, it is easy to recognise the hand of God, and to mark His favour, taking the present mercies as so many proofs of His love and care. That was Job’s state at the first. But a sad reverse came. His prosperity was gone, and his health was very grievously impaired. Was God changed because there were no proofs - no indications of His love? Could God change? If He had loved Job in prosperity; surely He did not change in adversity. Why then this great reverse? Simply because of the love that God bore him, and His desire that he might learn two things which are learnt at one and the same time. One is,
[p. 109] that when we get near God we find out, like Job, that instead of deserving favours, we abhor ourselves. If I abhor myself, I could not expect favour for what I abhor; but at the same moment that I abhor myself, I have a deeper and fuller sense that I may depend on God. What a blessed state my soul gets into from this two-fold lesson! I abhor myself, but I depend on God; for I cannot depend on myself. Self is turned from, as abhorrent, and God fills my heart as the only One to rest in. Hence when Job prayed (prayer is active dependence), God turned his captivity. It is a moment par excellence when I denounce myself as no longer tolerable. The bondwoman and her son must be cast out; but at the same time I find, like Peter, one whom I can rest in, and I shelter myself in the folds of His eternal perfection. The troubler (self) is gone, and the Son of the Father is the ark of my soul and the home of my heart. Every trial is only to lead our souls to this happy consummation - even to be done with self in one’s own judgment before God, but at the same time to be deepened in confidence in God. In fact, the one cannot be without the other. I have to learn that I am not suited in the best of my nature for God. Job was the model of amiability, and amiable people often get the most breaking down, to teach them that before God they are abhorrent, but when I see myself thus, in the same light in which I see it, I see the One who is perfect, who causes the contrast; and in Him I rest, and confide, and glory. May this indeed be richly your experience.