"God is a perplexing being to man
because He is never in the wrong, and through the process of allowing every bit
of man's wrongdoing to appear right at the time, He proves Himself right
ultimately. God never has to use His
wits to keep Himself from being outwitted by man and the Devil. Individually we may thwart God's purpose in
our lives for a time, but ultimately God's purpose will be fulfilled, wherever
we end.
"Human free will is God's sovereign
work. We have power not to do God's
will, and we have that power by the sovereign will of God; but we can never
thwart God's will. God allows ample room
for man and the Devil to do their worst.
He allows the combination of other wills to work out to the last lap of
exhaustion so that that way need never be tried again, and men will have to
confess, reluctantly or willingly, that God's purpose was right after all. And this holds true in the individual lives
of God's children. We are at liberty to
try every independent plan of our own, but we shall find in the end--whether
too late or not is another matter--that what God said we had better do at the
beginning was the right thing, if only we had listened to Him.
"In the life of Abraham, we see
clearly the consequences of doing wrong, for every blunder Abraham made was
repeated by his descendants. But the
abiding truth remains, whether for Abraham or for us: this is not the result of cause and effect,
but because God is God.
". . . When God gives a vision and
darkness follows, wait; God will bring you into accordance with the vision He
has given if you will await His timing.
Otherwise, you try to do away with the supernatural in God's
undertakings. Never try to help God
fulfill His word. There are some things
we cannot do, and that is one of them.
"We must never try to anticipate the
actual fulfillment of a vision. Often we
transact some business spiritually with God on our mount of transfiguration and
by faith see clearly a vision of His purpose; then immediately afterward there
is nothing but blank darkness. We trust
in the Lord, but we walk in darkness. At
that point we are tempted to work up enthusiasm; instead, we are to wait on
God. If darkness turns to spiritual
doldrums, we are to blame. When God puts
the dark of 'nothing' into our experience, it is the most positive something He
can give us. If we do anything at that
point it is sure to be wrong. We have to
remain in the center of nothing and say 'Thank You' for it. When God gives us nothing it is because we
put ourselves outside Him. This is a
great lesson that few of us seem to learn.
". . . As soon as we realize that the
thing is impossible, then God will do it.
To be brought to the verge of the impossible is to be brought to the
margin of the reservations of God. The
Everlasting Yea is reached when we perceive that God is El Shaddai, the
All-Sufficient God. So far as God is
concerned, there is no need for the years of silence and discipline if we will
only hear the everlasting No and not try to make it Yea. God does not discard the old and create
something entirely new; He creates something in the old until the old and the
new are made one.
"Because a man who has lived in sin
stops sinning, it is no sign that he is born from above. Jesus did not talk about new birth to a
sinner, but to a religious man, a godly man full of rectitude. Nicodemus worshipped God as a reminiscence;
he had not the creation of El Shaddai in him.
The creation of El Shaddai is what is made possible by the Lord Jesus
(see Galatians 4:19).
". . . We won't walk before God
because we are not confident in Him, and the proof that we are not confident in
God is that occasionally we get into the sulks.
If we are walking with God, it is impossible to be in the sulks, for we
are walking in the permanent light of faith.
"Suppose Job had said, 'If I were
trusting in God I should not be treated like this.' He was trusting in God, and he was treated
like that. Faith is not that we see God,
but that we know God sees us. That is
good enough for us, and we will run out and play--a life of absolute freedom.
"The spiritual sulks arise because we
want something other than God; we want God to give us something, to make us
feel better, to give us a wonderful insight into the Bible. That is not the attitude of a saint, but of a
sinner who is trying to be a saint and who is coming to God to get things from
Him. Unless we give to God the things we
get from Him, they will prove our perdition.
". . . In our own lives we try to
scrape off our defects and say, 'There, I think I am all right now.' That is not walking blamelessly before God,
but walking in determined opposition to faith in God. If we walk in faith in God there will be no
specks to rub off; but if we don't walk in faith in God, everything is a defect
and a stain, however good we are.
Imagine anyone who has seen himself in the light of Jesus Christ
thinking in terms of his defects! Why,
we are too filthy for words! Defects
don't begin to describe it. We have the
sentence of death in ourselves that we should not trust in ourselves but in
God, and there are no specks on God.
"I have determined to take no one
seriously but God, and the first person I have to leave severely alone as being
the greatest fraud I have ever known is myself.
'Oh, I am sick of myself,' you say.
If you really were sick of yourself you would go to your own funeral and
for ever after let God be all in all.
Until you get to that point you will never have faith in God.
"'I don't know what to do,' you
say? Then don't do anything. 'I don't see anything.' Well, don't look for anything. Be foolish enough to trust in God. According to common sense it is the height of
madness to have faith in God. Faith is
not a bargain: 'I will trust You if You
give me something, but not if You don't.'
Faith is trusting God whether He sends us money or not, whether He gives
us health or not. Faith is trusting in
God, not in His gifts.
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