MARCH 1ST, 1940

MARCH 1ST, 1940

BELOVED BROTHER, — I duly received your letter, and I enter very sympathetically into your present suffering; and pray that in the mercy of our God you may soon get relief. Nervous depression is one of the most trying maladies, and while one is suffering from it the soul often seems to be deprived of its normal comfort in Christ. This is a peculiar trial, of which Satan does not fail to take advantage, but it is an opportunity for faith to get the victory, and to maintain its confidence in God notwithstanding the low state to which one may be brought as to one’s own consciousness. At such times we have to encourage ourselves in what the blessed God is as having made Himself known in His beloved Son; we have to feed on His faithfulness, assured that the trial will pass, and we shall yet ^[p. 279] praise Him who is the health of our countenance and our God. Weeping may endure for a night, but joy will come when He gives us a morning without clouds.

I believe that experiences such as you are going through have their part in God’s way with us. They are humbling and very distressing, and sometimes even the fiery darts of the wicked one may be thrown at us, but the shield of faith enables us to quench them. If I learn my own weakness, and all the evil that works in my flesh, as I never knew it before, it is that I may appreciate as never before the love of God that comes out to me by the death of Christ. This is a precious and abiding reality, and the more I discover what I am in myself the more I value the precious Saviour who in love bore all that was due to me that I might be invested with all His worth, and have Him as my righteousness eternally. The lower we go down in the humbling sense of what we are, the better are we prepared to appreciate how low that blessed One has gone in His love. We can never really go to the bottom of what we are, and of what is due to us, but our Lord Jesus Christ has gone to the full depth of it, and glorified God about it all, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. I may feel how unreal I am, and how unreal the things of God are to me, but what was accomplished at the cross is real, and Christ at the right hand of God is real, and the call of God by which I have been brought to faith in Christ is real. All the divine verities subsist in their value and abiding reality, even when, for a season, the enjoyment of them is clouded in the believer’s experience.

Satan will bring up everything that he can to harass the heart, but we are with God on the righteous ground that the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth from every sin. And any particular failure that comes on the conscience as a burden can be got free from by confession, after which it will never be held against us by the faithful and righteous God.

I trust you may prove special mercy, and be helped in every needed way. I have prayed for you, and hope to continue to do so.

With love in the Lord,

Yours affectionately in Him,

March 1st, 1940.