"Be Of Good Cheer"

John 16:33  These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.

My LORD's words are true as to the tribulation. I have my share of it beyond all doubt. 

The flail is not hung up out of the way, nor can I hope that it will be laid aside so long as I lie upon the threshing floor...

How can I look to be at home in the enemy's country, joyful while in exile, or comfortable in a wilderness?

This is not my rest.

This is the place of the furnace, and the forge, and the hammer.

My experience tallies with my LORD's words.

I note how He bids me "be of good cheer."

Alas! I am far too apt to be downcast.

My spirit soon sinks when I am sorely tried.

But I must not give way to this feeling. 

When my LORD bids me cheer up I must not dare to be cast down.

What is the argument which He uses to encourage me?

Why, it is His own victory. He says, "I have overcome the world."

His battle was much more severe than mine. I have not yet resisted unto blood. 

Why do I despair of overcoming?

See, my soul, the enemy has been once overcome. I fight with a beaten foe.

O world, Jesus has already vanquished thee; and in me, by His grace, He will overcome thee again. 

Therefore am I of good cheer and sing unto my conquering LORD. 

~Charles Spurgeon~

The Need And Value Of Suffering

Let it be settled with us once for all that the sufferings of Christ are an absolute necessity.

I am going to say a very strong thing, and it is this...that if you know nothing about the sufferings of Christ, there is something wrong with you as a Christian.

I am not, of course, speaking of such as have only just entered upon the Christian life, though suffering is sometimes encountered right from the first.

But obedience and faithfulness soon lead to the experience of some form of Christ’s sufferings.

If you are avoiding those sufferings, if you are rebelling against them, you are taking an entirely wrong line.

They are the true lot of children of God.

I do not say that you will each have them in the same measure or of the same kind, but you will have them. 

Ask the Lord if your bad times may not, after all, fit into this. 

You have been thinking of them merely as circumstances, as disappointments, working out to your misfortune, your disadvantage.

But wait; see whether these are not, after all, bound up with your spiritual life, whether they do not bear a relationship to your spiritual growth.

Interrogate yourself, examine this question.

Sufferings are necessary for several things; first of all, to keep things real, practical and up-to-date. 

The Lord is not going to allow any one of us to live upon a past, upon a theory, upon a tradition, upon a doctrine as a doctrine.

He will allow us to live only on what is real and practical and up-to-date, and, being made as we are, we do not so live unless we are made to.

If I know even a little about the Lord and the Lord’s things, I can tell you perfectly frankly it is because of suffering.

I could not and would not have learned unless the Lord had made me learn, and taught me in a very deep and practical school where things were kept right up-to-date, and where every bit of ministry sprang out of some new experience.

It is a law which applies to us all. 

The fact is that these sufferings are absolutely essential to keep things real; 

People have a right to ask, How did you get to know that? 

Have you proved that?

How much has that been to you in the deepest hours of life, when things were beyond your power? 

Did that prove to be true then?

If we are not able to say with all our heart in utter sincerity, ‘I found the Lord to be like that; I have put that truth to a thorough test and proved it’, then we are frauds. 

The Lord has no place for frauds; therefore He keeps us up-to-date. 

Reality is by suffering.

~T. Austin Sparks~

The Ground Of Satan's Power-The World

You see it is a matter, in the first place, of the ground which is taken and occupied by the one concerned.

When Peter took heavenly ground - "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God" - he was in a very strong position.

The keys of the kingdom of heaven, binding on earth and binding in heaven, were his.

He was weak, and in a very weak position, when he took earthly ground, the ground of men, the ground of his own judgment and of his own selfhood.

The ground taken decided whether he was spiritually strong or weak, and whether Satan had power over him or not.

It would seem that, when the Lord was speaking to them about what was going to take place in Jerusalem as to His death, Simon just took Him apart quietly, and in a very kindly and consolatory way, and yet with a certain amount of patronage, one would feel, told the Lord that He must not be so depressed and gloomy, that He must take a brighter view of things, and that this sort of thing would certainly not happen to Him.

But in Peter's attitude, on Peter's ground, the Lord saw quite distinctly a recurrence of what He had met so terribly in the wilderness in His temptation, when Satan had offered Him the kingdoms of this world without the Cross - had sought, that is to say, to divert Him from the way to which He had committed Himself.

Peter became but the voice and instrument of that same arch-enemy to turn the Lord away from the Cross.

Hence the word following about saving the life. 

But taking this ground of having the Kingdom and the Throne on any other line but God's ordained line, which is the way of the Cross, is alliance with Satan, and will put anyone in that alliance into the power of Satan and destroy them spiritually.

Firstly, then, it is very evident that any ground of the world, which in its nature is a kingdom without suffering, without the Cross, without the setting aside of natural life, is the realm of Satan's power and authority.

It is perfectly clear that, in the case of the Church, speaking fairly generally, and in the case of countless individual Christians, the weakness, defeat and dishonour which characterize them, and which became so manifest in Peter's case, are due to occupying the ground of Satan's strength.

That ground may be said to be compromise with the world in its principle.

~T. Austin Sparks~

Surgery For Healing

Hos 6:1  Come, and let us return unto the LORD: for he hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will bind us up.

It is the LORD's way to tear before He heals. 

This is the honest love of His heart and the sure surgery of His hand. 

He also bruises before He binds up, or else it would be uncertain work.

The law comes before the gospel, the sense of need before the supply of it.

Is the reader now under the convincing, crushing hand of the Spirit?

Has he received the spirit of bondage again to fear?

This is a salutary preliminary to real gospel healing and binding up.

Do not despair, dear heart, but come to the LORD with all thy jagged wounds, black bruises, and running sores.

He alone can heal, and He delights to do it. 

It is our LORD's office to bind up the brokenhearted, and He is gloriously at home at it.

Let us not linger but at once return unto the LORD from whom we have gone astray.

Let us show Him our gaping wounds and beseech him to know His own work and complete it. 

Will a surgeon make an incision and then leave his patient to bleed to death?

Will the LORD pull down our old house and then refuse to build us a better one?

Dost Thou ever wantonly increase the misery of poor anxious souls?

That be far from Thee, O LORD.

~Charles Spurgeon~ 

Trust Means Joy

Psa 33:21  For our heart shall rejoice in him, because we have trusted in his holy name.

The root of faith produces the flower of heart-joy. 

We may not at the first rejoice, but it comes in due time. 

We trust the LORD when we are sad, and in due season He so answers our confidence that our faith turns to fruition, and we rejoice in the LORD.

Doubt breeds distress, but trust means joy in the long run.

The assurance expressed by the psalmist in this verse is really a promise held out in the hands of holy confidence. 

Oh, for grace to appropriate it. 

If we do not rejoice at this moment, yet we shall do so, as surely as David's God is our God.

Let us meditate upon the LORD's holy name that we may trust Him the better and rejoice the more readily. 

He is in character holy, just, true, gracious, faithful, and unchanging.

Is not such a God to be trusted?

He is all wise, almighty, and everywhere present; can we not cheerfully rely upon Him?

Yes, we will do so at once and do so without reserve. 

Jehovah-Jireh will provide;

Jehovah-Shalom will send peace; 

Jehovah-Tsidkenu will justify; 

Jehovah-Shammah will be forever near;

And in Jehovah-Nissi we will conquer every foe.

They that know Thy name will trust Thee; 

And they that trust Thee will rejoice in Thee, O LORD. 

~Charles Spurgeon~

God's Thoughts Are Not Your Thoughts

 

God's thoughts about things are very different from ours. We would often allow what God would never allow.

He has an altogether different point of view about things.

We judge in one way about things, and God judges in another. 

It is necessary for us to come to God's standpoint. 

Oh, we would say, "There is no harm in such-and-such a thing. 

Oh, there is no wrong in that; look at So-and-so and So-and-so," and we take our standard, perhaps, from other people.

We have known people to do that; point to some outstanding figure in the work of God, in whose life was a certain thing - that one has been taken as the model, to be copied, and so the thing has been taken on.

Oh, there is no harm in it; look at So-and-so.

And I have known lives and ministries to be ruined on that very excuse.

The question is: What does the Lord say about it?

God says, "Walk before Me!" Not before any human model; not before any human standard;

There is no harm in it; So-and-so does it; it is quite a common practice.

No, no! "Walk before Me," says the Lord.

We have got to get this in the spirit, in the inward man.

It is deeper than our best moral standards. 

Otherwise there is no point in it being in the Bible at all, if our moral standards can rise to God's satisfaction - why must we be so handled and reconstituted?

It is deeper than our intellect, than our reason.

You cannot, by reason or intellect, arrive at God's standard at all.

Not at all! 

Oh, do not think that by any method of reasoning, you are ever going to reach God's standard. 

You never will. 

Here, it is only by revelation of the Holy Spirit. 

Christ has got to be revealed in our hearts by the Spirit.

There is no point in Jesus saying: "When He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He shall guide you into all the truth," if we could get there by our own intelligence.

Not at all. 

It must come by the revelation of Christ in our hearts, in the inward parts.

This is something spiritual.

God is Spirit; they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth - spirit and truth go together. 

Only what is spiritual, what is of God, is truth - only that!

~T. Austin Sparks~

Guidance In The Dark

How precious also are Your thoughts unto me, O God!

Isa 42:16  And I will bring the blind by a way that they knew not; I will lead them in paths that they have not known: I will make darkness light before them, and crooked things straight. These things will I do unto them, and not forsake them.

There are times when God's dealings with His people are perplexing - His thoughts very deep-His ways past finding out - when the present is full of anxiety, the future full of difficulty.

Their condition is that of blind men groping at noontime - the whole of life a mazy labyrinth, of which they have lost the guiding thread.

Their path seems shut up. 

Pharaoh is behind, and the raging Red Sea in front - their feeling is - "We are entangled; the wilderness has shut us in."

Or they may be confounded in solving some question of duty. 

The employment and destiny of a lifetime may depend on a moment's choice. 

They may feel the responsibility of deciding between rival and competing claims; trembling and fearful lest some selfish, carnal, unworthy motive may mingle in the decision, and yet experiencing a painful inability to decide what is best.

Perplexed or desponding one! amid these your anxious, wavering, undecided thoughts, be this your comfort...God's thoughts are upon you. 

He is the leader of the blind. "Speak," says He, "to the children of Israel, that they go forward." 

At the crisis-hour of difficulty or trial He will appear to all His seeking, trusting people, and vouch safe guidance or deliverance - not, perhaps, what they expect, but what He knows to be best for them. 

At the fourth watch of the night Jesus came to his disciple walking upon the sea. 

They wandered in the wilderness in a solitary way; they found no city to dwell in. 

Hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted in them.

Then they cried unto the Lord in their trouble, and He delivered them out of their distresses.

And He led them forth by the right way, that they might go to a city of habitation.

Rely on the God of the pillar-cloud. 

He will bring you, as He did His Israel, "through the flood on foot." 

Be still, is His tender rebuke to the distrustful soul, "and know that I am God." 

How it would disarm life of many of its anxieties, and take the sting from many perplexities, if we were careful to listen to His voice (the expression and utterance of His 'precious thoughts') - "This is the way; walk in it." 

A wondrous way - a tender way - but, with all its humiliations, "THE right way."

~Evans~

Yes, believe it..."All the paths of the Lord [and this present dark and perplexing path of yours, whatever it be, is one of them] are mercy and truth to such as keep His covenant and His testimonies."

Confide in no fallible guidance. 

Be this your lofty resolve - "In the Lord I put my trust; how can you say to my soul, Flee as a bird to your mountain?"

Regard every new turn in existence as a wise, provident "thought" of your heavenly Father.

Make it your earnest prayer in the words of Nehemiah - "Think upon me, my God, for good."

Thus, putting your case in His hands, and leaving it there, "He shall bring forth your righteousness as the light, and your judgment as the noonday."

Yours may be a mingled, chequered past - yet too how bright with blessings - how full of remembrances of God's loving thoughts - His gracious interventions - His signal deliverances!

Make these an argument and reason for implicit trust in the future - "You have been my help; leave me not, neither forsake me, O God of my salvation."

Psa 107:43  Whoso is wise, and will observe these things, even they shall understand the lovingkindness of the LORD.

~John Macduff~