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Thursday, November 27, 2014

"...here is the word which tells us that God will make our feet "like hinds' feet."

For who is God, except the LORD?  And who is a rock, except our God?  It is God who arms me with strength, and makes my way blameless.  He makes my feet like hinds' feet, and sets me upon my high places.                                                                                                          Psalm 18:31-33

Though the fig tree may not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines; though the labor of the olive may fail, and the fields yield no food… Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation.  The LORD God is my strength, and He will make my feet like hinds' feet, and He will make me to walk upon my high places.                                                                                    Habakkuk 3:17-19


        I think of Wordsworth's lines, in which he describes a natural lady, made by Nature herself:
"She shall be sportive as the fawn
That wild with glee across the lawn
Or up the mountain springs."
And it is this buoyancy, this elasticity, this springiness that the Lord is waiting to impart to the souls of His children, so that they may move along the ways of life with the light steps of the fawn.
Some of us move with very heavy feet.  There is little of the fawn about us as we go along the road.  There is reluctance in our obedience.  There is a frown in our homage.  Our benevolence is graceless, and there is no charm in our piety, and no rapture in our praise.  We are the victims of "the spirit of heaviness."  And yet here is the word which tells us that God will make our feet "like hinds' feet."  He will give us exhilaration and spring, enabling us to leap over difficulties, and to have strength and buoyancy for the steepest hills.  Let us seek the inspiration of the Lord.  "It is God that girdeth me with strength, and maketh my way blameless."
J.H. JOWETT
My Daily Meditation ~1914


        Let thy faith lead thy heart into the presence of God, as near as thou possibly canst, and say to it, "Behold the Ancient of Days, the Lord Jehovah, whose name is, I AM.  This is He, who made all the worlds with His word, who upholds the earth, who rules the nations, who disposes of all events, who subdues His foes, who controls the swelling waves of the sea, who governs the winds, and causes the sun to run its race, and the stars to know their courses.  This is He who loved thee from everlasting, formed thee in the womb, gave thee this soul, brought thee forth, showed thee the light, and ranked thee with the chief of His earthly creatures; who endued thee with thy understanding, and beautified thee with His gifts, who maintains thy life and all it comforts….
O here is an object worthy love!  Here shouldst thou even pour out thy soul in love!  Here it is impossible for thee to love too much!  This is the Lord who hath blessed thee with His benefits, spread thy table in the sight of thine enemies, and made thy cup overflow!  This is He whom angels and saints praise, and the heavenly host forever magnify!  Thus do thou expatiate on the praises of God, and open His excellencies to thine heart, till the holy fire of love begins to kindle in thy breast.
RICHARD BAXTER ~1615-1601

The Saints Everlasting Rest

Friday, November 14, 2014

"He keeps a whole, tender, responsive heart through all the tumult, and trial, and agony...."


But the LORD was with Joseph and extended kindness to him and gave him favor in the sight of the chief jailer.
Genesis 39:21
And God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant in the earth, and to keep you alive by a great deliverance.  Now, therefore, it was not you who sent me here, but God; and He has made me a father to Pharaoh and lord of all his household…”    
Genesis 45:7-8


I leave thee never; thou art not alone,
And with thine own and thee, Mine angels dwell:
Possess thy soul in patience; freely give
Me love for love, and all shall yet be well.

The time is short, they that now weep, ere long
Shall be as though they wept not: they that mourn
Be comforted, for I will comfort them;
And sweet shall be their glad thanksgiving song.
Elia from Lyra Mystica

        Harsh experience need not destroy the finest sensibility, the tenderest feelings of the heart.  Here is a man who has had twenty years’ very painful, almost unendurable, treatment; and yet, at the end of that period, he is susceptible of the tenderest influences, responds emotionally, with tears, with unutterable yearning and tenderness of soul, in the presence of his brethren… There is something for us to learn here.  Our harsh experiences often deaden our sensibility, work in us a sourness of heart and feeling which becomes misanthropic, selfish, resentful.  We learn from the history before us that it is possible to be exiled from home, ill-treated by relatives and friends, thrown into the way of pain, sorrow, loss and desolation; yet to come out of the whole process tender, sensitive, responsive to appeals which are made to our nature.  Why, there are some men who cannot overget the very slightest offence.  If they have not their own way in everything, they show their resentfulness in a thousand little ways, ~they become peevish, censorious, distrustful, ungenial.  You never meet them but they give you to understand that they have been insulted, offended, dishonored.  They have had to endure slight, or contempt, or neglect.  How little, how unutterably paltry, such men appear in the presence of the man who, after twenty years of exile, solitude, evil treatment of all kinds, weeps when he sees his brethren, ~keeps his heart through it all, ~has not allowed himself to become soured or misanthropic!  He keeps a whole, tender, responsive heart through all the tumult, and trial, and agony, and bitter sorrow of thirteen years ’vile captivity, and seven years of exaltation…  

JOSEPH PARKER
The Peoples Bible-Genesis   


        Do you know by sad experience what Joseph felt beneath those Syrian skies?  Do the archers shoot at you?  Are you lonesome and depressed, and ready to give up?  Take heart!  see the trampled grass and the snapped twigs; others have gone this way before you. Christ your Lord suffered the same treatment from His own.  Go on doing right, in nothing terrified by your adversaries.  Be pitiful and gentle, forgiving and forbearing…Put down your feet into the footprints of your Savior, who left an example that we should follow Him.  He did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth: and yet, when He was unjustly reviled, He reviled not again; when He suffered beneath underserved contumely and reproach, He did not even remind the perpetrators of the righteous judgment of God, but was silent as a lamb, and threatened not, and committed Himself to Him that judges righteously.
And your time, sufferer, shall come at length, when God shall vindicate your character, and avenge your sorrows.  “Trust in the LORD and do good; He shall bring forth thy righteousness as the light, and thy judgment as the noonday”(Psalm 37).

F.B. MEYER
Joseph

~This Devotional is dedicated to Pastor Saeed Abedini, imprisoned for his faith in Jesus Christ