STORM WITHOUT AND REST WITHIN

STORM WITHOUT AND REST WITHIN

It is as we are really cast on God that we are at rest; we enjoy the peace, but still the storms occur to keep up the dependence; and not the dependence only, but that lightening of the ship, the fasting, that ignoring the flesh - that silencing of nature which must be when we truly have to do with God. The storm without and the calm within is our daily exercise and lesson. The storm is so great that flesh and nature are powerless to deal or cope with it; and the calm known only before God, is so apart from the ways and course of nature, that plainly it is in a region of its own; and hence as I am in that region I am consciously separated and distanced from the one in which the storm rages. Like the dove from the ark, I may venture out, but I soon return again to the shelter of the ark. There is a watery waste without, but there is rest and shelter within. If I value and cling to the rest within, I must bow to and accept the desolation of everything outside; and this is just where all the exercise is. There may be like the dove a longing to go out if all human hopes are not at an end; but the heart soon finds that there is no rest there, and it returns convinced that there is nothing but that one vast waste outside, but that there is a known rest within.

In turning to God we are not sufficiently prepared for the fact of the utter desolation of the flood, the end of all flesh; and that there is no rest and help to be found but in God. I believe there is a hindrance to our prayers because we cannot in heart consent to the drowning of every confidence and desire of the flesh, for this is real fasting; and our dependence on God ^[p. 151] cannot be absolute while we retain any part of that which is at enmity with Him. Let us not be discouraged, but pray, pray, pray. The thing in which He exercises the heart most, is that in which He most shews His favour.