Weekend Words

 

From Beside the Still Waters...

Fully Surrendered - Read Matthew 6:19-34

Yea, they spake against God; they said, Can God furnish a table in the wilderness? - Psalm 78:19

Long ago I was part of a church in eastern Ontario.  One year the church decided to send a minister and several families to start a work at Mine Centre in northern Ontario.  There was no Gospel witness in that area.  It was an isolated community with a little store, a school, and a few Indian reservations close by.  I was thirty-five years old then and was operating a diary farm.  My wife and I had six children, the oldest being twelve years old.  We had some good helpers for the farm, but God had other plans.

I was ordained to the ministry for that work.  With my wife I remember singing, "Fully surrendered, Lord divine."  It was not easy to call the auctioneer and sell out, but that was God's call for us.  When we reached the new community, we thought of the question in today's key verse: "Can God furnish a table in the wilderness?"  We found the answer to be 'yes'.  We learned by experience that Jesus' words about God's care, as mentioned in today's Bible reading, are really true.

Now we have been in this area for about forty-seven years.  I am eighty-one years old, and God has never let us down.  He will always make a way as we fully surrender ourselves to Him.  We had a motto in our kitchen that said, "The will of God will never lead you where the grace of God cannot keep you."  Not all of us are called to relocate to a new community, but we all need to be fully surrendered to God and be where He wants us to be.  As we endeavor to keep Him first in our life, we can claim His promise: "I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee" (Hebrews 13:5)

Cleason Martin - Mine Centre, ON

From A Year's Journey with God...

Beauty from Darkness

Let him who walks in the dark, who has no light, trust in the name of the Lord and rely on his God - Isaiah 50:10

William Cowper suffered recurring bouts of depression, but it was during one of the worst, when he was in an asylum for the insane, that he first met the risen Lord Jesus and gave his life to Him.  No wonder he later wrote, 'God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform!'  He lived in the Buckinghamshire village of Olney, where he became a close friend of John Newton, a clergyman who had been the captain of a slave-trade ship until his conversion.  They both shared a passion for God and together they wrote some of our best-loved hymns.

William's father prevented him from marrying the love of his life, and his illness must have made life desperately hard, but amazingly he wrote: 'help me to resign life, health, and comfort to Thy will and make Thy pleasure mine.'  Perhaps it was Cowper's different attitude to God that made it possible for such beautiful hymns to spring out of his suffering?  Here are some extracts from my favorite:

O for a closer walk with God...

Where is the blessedness I knew,  When first I saw the Lord?

What peaceful hours I once enjoyed!  How sweet their memory still!

But they have left an aching void  The world can never fill.

I hate the sins that made Thee mourn  And drove Thee from my breast.

The dearest idol I have known,  Whate'er that idol be,

Help me to tear it from Thy throne,  and worship only Thee.

William Cowper (1731-1800)

From Behold the Lilies...

That I may know him, and the power of  his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death; if by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead. - Philippians 3:10-11

How can I expect to know Him if I do not have an interest in Him?  And how can I have an interest in Him if I spend little time thinking about Him and even less time reading about Him?  I cannot expect to know the power of His resurrection if I have not died to myself, and I cannot know the fellowship of His sufferings if I do not suffer.  If I cry out in indignation over the least hurt, I will likely not recognize the suffering that will bring me into fellowship with Him. 

If I refuse to learn to know Jesus, to die to self, or to suffer, I cannot expect a spiritual resurrection.  I can only expect to remain spiritually dead.

I must recognize that when deprivations, persecutions, and hindrances come my way, I can use them as opportunities.  It is impossible to conform to His death if the flesh never has to die.  Knowing Him and the power of His resurrection makes it worth dying to my flesh.  Knowing the fellowship of His sufferings is knowing true fellowship with Him.  Suffering and dying for Him, whether physically or to the flesh, will prepare us for eternal fellowship with Him.

All photos from the book: Aurora - an American experience in quilt, community and craft by Jane Kirkpatrick, which I am now reading :)