A system of divine and unfailing consolation! (Octavius Winslow)

As a system of divine and unfailing consolation, 

there is a charm in the gospel of Jesus of 
indescribable sweetness. Originating with that 
God, not only whose name and whose perfection, 
but whose very essence is love, and who Himself 
is the "God of all comfort," it must be a gospel of 
"strong consolation," commensurate with every 
conceivable sorrow of his people. 

Let a Christian be placed in circumstances 
of the deepest grief and sorest trial... 
the bread and the water of affliction his food; 
the iron entering his soul; 
the heart bereaved; 
the mind perplexed; 
the spirit dark; 
all human hopes blighted, 
and 'creature cisterns' failing him like 
a spring in the summer's drought; then let the 
Spirit of God, the Divine Comforter, open this 
gospel box of perfume, breathing into his soul.... 
the rich consolations, 
the precious promises, 
the strong assurances, 
the divine counsels, and 
the glowing hopes which it contains, 
and in a moment the light of love appears in his 
dark cloud, his fainting spirit revives, and all is peace! 

Oh! that must be a charming gospel which can 
meet the necessities of man at every point; 
whose wisdom no human perplexity can baffle, 
and whose resources of sympathy and comfort, 
no case of suffering or of sorrow can exhaust. 

Tried soul! repair to this unfailing spring of comfort! 

God speaks to you in it. 

It is the unsealing of the heart of Jesus. 

It is the still small voice of the Spirit. 

It speaks to you. It bids you.... "cast your burden 
on the Lord, and he will sustain you;" "Call upon 
him in the day of trouble, and he will answer you." 
It assures you that amid all your perplexing cares, 
"He cares for you." It promises you that for your 
flint paved path, your "shoes shall be iron and brass;" 
and that "as your days are, so shall your strength be." 
It tells you that a "woman may forget her nursing child, 
yet God will not forget you;" that in all your assaults, 
you shall dwell on high, your place of defense shall 
be the munitions of rocks;" and that though hemmed 
in on every side by a besieging foe, and all other 
supplies cut off, yet "your bread shall be given you, 
and your water shall be sure." 

It invites you to lay your griefs and weep out your 
sorrows upon the bosom of Jesus, and so "leaning 
upon your Beloved, ascend from the wilderness." 

O to be led into the heart felt experience of these truths!

Octavius Winslow, "The Voice of the Charmer"

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When we find the path thorny, and the journey toilsome ("Every Day!" Author unknown, 1872)

Hebrews 11:16

“But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city.” 

Hebrews 13:14

“For here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to come.” 

Revelation 22:14

“Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.” 

God has prepared a city for His redeemed people. Towards that city we are ever journeying. And as we are but sojourners, as our citizenship is in Heaven — let us manifest the pilgrim spirit. While we thankfully use and enjoy the accommodations along the way, let it plainly appear that we do not regard this transient world as our home — but that our affections are set supremely on things which are above. Let it be manifest that we act from higher principles than those which govern the men of this poor world. May our companions, our pleasures, and our spirit plainly show that we are not of the earth — but that we are citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem. 

As sojourners, let us patiently endure the trials of the way. If we are faithful witnesses for the Lord — we must expect the world's scorn. But like Moses, may we esteem reproach for Christ as greater riches than the treasures of Egypt. And when we find the path thorny, and the journey toilsome — let us remember that it is short, and that,

"Nightly we pitch our moving tent
 A day's march nearer home!"

1 Peter 2:11

“Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul;” 

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The secret of true happiness! (Harvey Newcomb, 1843)

The secret of true happiness lies in a cordial acquiescence in the will of God. It is sweet to lie passive in His hand — and know no will but His!

The doctrine of a 'particular providence' is precious to the Christian's heart. It enables him to see the hand of God in every event. Hence the sinfulness of a repining, discontented, unsubmissive temper. It is difficult to reconcile the habitual indulgence of such a sinful disposition — with the existence of grace in the heart. The first emotion of the new-born soul is submission to the will of God.

We are prone to lose sight of the 'hand of God' in the little difficulties and perplexities which are of every-day occurrence, and to look only at 'second causes'. We often do the same, in more important matters. When we are injured or insulted by others, we are disposed to murmur and complain, and give vent to our indignation against the immediate causes of our distress; forgetting that these are only the 'instruments which God employs' for the trial of our faith, or the correcting of our sins.

In this doctrine of the secret agency of divine Providence, we have the strongest motive for a hearty and cheerful resignation to all the troubles and difficulties, trials and afflictions, which come upon us in this life — whatever may be their immediate cause. We know that they are directed by our heavenly Father, whose "tender mercies are over all His works," and who "does not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men."

Whatever may be our afflictions, so long as we are out of Hell, we are monuments of His mercy.

We are assured "that all things work together for good, to those who love God." The afflictions of this life, are the faithful corrections of a kind and tender Father. "For whom the Lord loves He chastens, and He scourges every son whom He receives." How consoling the reflection — that all our sufferings are designed to mortify and subdue our corruptions, to wean us from the world, and lead us to a more humble and constant sense of dependence upon God! How ungrateful for a child of God to repine at the dealings of such a tender and faithful Father!

God will give us all that He sees is best for us. And surely we ought to be satisfied with this; for He who sees the end from the beginning, must know much better than we — what is for our good. It is our duty to maintain a contented and cheerful spirit in every situation of life.

If God directs all our ways, and has promised to give us just what He sees we need, we surely ought to rest satisfied with what we have; for we know it is just what the Lord, in His infinite wisdom and unbounded goodness — sees fit to give us.

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The Death of Intimate Friends (George Mylne, 1871)

Proverbs 17:17

“A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.” 

Reader, have you lost a friend--the chief companion of your mental powers, an intimate of your heart? When near, how oft you sought his company! When absent, companionship, if possible, more intimate was kept with ink and pen. But now your fellowship has ceased, and you are left, a mourner of no trifling order--you feel a blank unutterably void. To find another such were hard; to seek another such by rule--perforce to make a friend of someone or another to supply his place--say, could you do it? Your heart rejects the thought. The link that bound your hearts together, refuses to be forged on such an anvil. The train of subtle circumstances that made you friends, cannot be reproduced at will. Such friendship is a solitary thing. If a brother dies, you may have a brother still, and at the family-home you find your consolation. But a friend, a bosom friend--leaves none behind to take his place, for friendship goes not in groups of family connection; and when it dies, it leaves neither kith nor kin to represent it, with the friend who is left to mourn.

May I ask you, reader, if you are comforted, and where you seek your consolation? You feel the truth of what Solomon has said--"A friend loves at all times" (Proverbs 17:17). You say, "That pictures forth my friend, yes, to the very life. His love was constant and sincere--in times of woe, he ever wept with me; and in times of prosperity, he made my joy his own."

Again, I quote from Solomon--"A man who has friends must show himself friendly; and there is a friend that sticks closer than a brother" (Proverbs 18:24). Does this make you think still more of your departed one--in how many ways he proved his friendship? Brothers may have stood aloof in your adversity, nor offered help which was at their command; but your friend proved better than a brother. He never forsook you; he stuck to you throughout. Did I say better than a brother? Yet not than every brother. Blessed be God, there are brothers who minister as friends and brothers, in concentration of all that is generous and kind, whether in brotherhood or friendship--all honor to their bounty and faithful love!

My friend, I question not your loss, either in kind or in degree. But have you ever sought the friend, the Heavenly friend, who loves as no one else can do? Think what a friend he is! From Heaven He came to save you, to bear your sins "in His own body on the tree" (1 Peter 2:24). What other friend has done, what other friend could do, as much as this--to suffer for you on the Cross? Say, can brother stick to brother, or friend to friend, after a sort so friendly? Your friend, you say, loved you at all times. Does not Jesus do the same, and in an infinite degree? What moment do you not sin? What moment have you loved Him, thought of Him, as you ought? And yet what moment has He not thought of You? In your prosperity, he thought of you. He thinks of you in your present grief. He knows your sorrow, and even now would be your Comforter. One only thing He waits for--that you should seek Him as your friend.

Would you know His friendship's worth? Consider what Jesus has done to prove Himself your friend. This you require to know for a double reason--the pardon of your sins, and for present consolation. The day is coming when earth shall pass away--when earthly friendships shall have no further place--when all must stand before the judgment-seat of Christ, to receive the things done in the body, whether they are good or bad (2 Corinthians 5:10). Then make the Judge your friend. "Kiss The Son, lest He be angry" in that great day, "and you perish from the way when His wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all those who put their trust in Him" (Psalm 2:12). Then seek a friend In Jesus. Faithful and true you will find Him--faithful in life--faithful in death--faithful to all eternity!

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Comfort Restored

Sorrow is faced differently by the strong and by the weak. But the strength of the strong must come from proper knowledge of and proper relationship with God. Godly wisdom is needed to face or accept or deal with sorrow.
Bereavement from the departure of beloved blood relations or genuine friends as well as sorrow from the abandonment of treacherous and  deceitful friends have to be dealt with the right perspective. As time goes on, one will see that life continues after the storm; the loving and faithful Hand of God has sustained His people. Lessons have been learned, forgiveness has been given, one can even laugh off the injuries suffered from false friends. We realize that God has never left us, but underneath is His everlasting Arms.
For God’s will is best in all circumstances both in wounding us and comforting us.
Time may contribute in forgetting but it is the Lord who heals us in our afflictions. Only the Lord comforts us and delivers us in every kind of bereavement. After the dark clouds have cleared, we find freedom and joy and victory in Him.

"Drop the last year into the limbo of the past. Let it go for it was imperfect, and thank God that it can go." Brooks Atkinson

Psalms 139:17,18

“How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God! how great is the sum of them! If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand: when I awake, I am still with thee."

We have here the utterance of God's thoughts to the bereft mourner. He who looked down of old on bondaged Israel, and thus unlocked the thoughts of His heart, "I know their sorrows"—He who, in a later age, watched from the mountain-side the frail bark tossed in the midst of Tiberias, and hastened to the rescue of faithless disciples—says to each poor afflicted one, 'My thoughts are upon you. I have appointed your trial. I have decreed that early, or that unlooked-for grave. Let faith trust Me in this dark hour, when fainting human nature may fail to comprehend the mystery of My dealings.'

The successive clauses of this verse form a beautiful gradation. God "sees," He "heals," He "leads," He "comforts!"

God SEES. He knows all my case, my character, my circumstances. He alone can judge as to the "needs-be" of trial. He has some wise reason for His discipline.

God HEALS. He comes with the balm of His own heavenly consolation. When the wave of sorrow has answered the end for which it was sent, He says, "Thus far shall you go, and no farther!"

God LEADS. He does not inflict the heavy blow, and then forsake. He does not leave the shorn lamb to the untempered winds of trial. "The Lord shall guide you continually, and satisfy your soul in drought"—guidance and provision, the two pilgrim necessities—and that, too, "in drought,"—when the world's provisions fail!

God COMFORTS. The mother's love for her child is manifested, not at the moment only when it receives some severe injury, but in the subsequent nights of patient, tender care, and unwearying watchfulness. "As one whom his mother comforts, so," says God, "will I comfort you!"

In the hour of sorrowing bereavement many a precious revelation is made of a before unknown or hidden God. In wrestling like Jacob with the covenant Angel, the soul is often brought to feel for the first time, in that struggle-hour, His touch—the consciousness of a Presence, before dimly recognized, is now felt. Like 'Israel,' we may go 'halting' to our graves. But the place of affliction is called by us to the last "Peniel;" for there "we saw God face to face;" and from that hour we have journeyed on, sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.

Let us cleave to this thought of sustaining comfort. Other thoughts of other hearts may have perished. Others that used to think of us, and to interchange thoughts with us, may now only greet us with mute smiles from their portraits on the wall. The parent's arms that comforted us may be mouldering in the dust. The brook that once sang along its joyous music may be silent and still—we gaze upon a dry and waterless channel. But 'Jehovah lives!' Towards the mourner there is ONE heart ever throbbing with thoughts of unalterable love. Weeping one! you can say, in the midst even of intensest loneliness, and through anguished tears, "As for me, I am poor and needy, but the Lord is thinking about me right now. You are my helper and my Savior. Do not delay, O my God." Psalm 40:17

Isaiah 57:18

“I have seen his ways, and will heal him: I will lead him also, and restore comforts unto him and to his mourners.” 

John MacDuff, 1864, "The Thoughts of God" 

(Comfort for the Bereaved)

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Beloved (Octavius Winslow)

Jude 1:24

“Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, To the only wise God our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen."

Beloved, soon, O how soon! all that now 
loads the heart with care, and wrings it with sorrow; 
all that dims the eye with tears, and renders the 
day anxious and the night sleepless, will be as 
though it had never been! 

Emerging from.... 
the entanglement, 
the dreariness, 
the solitude, 
the loneliness, and 
the temptations of the wilderness, 
you shall enter upon your everlasting rest, 
your unfading inheritance, where there is.... 
no sorrow, 
no declension, 
no sin, 
no sunset, 
no twilight, 
no evening shadows, 
no midnight darkness, 
but all is one perfect, cloudless, eternal day, for 
JESUS is the joy, the light, and the glory thereof! 

"And now, all glory to God, who is able to keep 
you from stumbling, and who will bring you into 
His glorious presence innocent of sin and with 
great joy! All glory to Him, who alone is God our 
Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Yes, glory, 
majesty, power, and authority belong to Him, in 
the beginning, now, and forevermore! Amen." 
Jude 1:24-25 

Octavius Winslow, "The Lord, the Keeper of His People"

http://www.gracegems.org/

The Loneliness of the Christian (A.W. Tozer)

The loneliness of the Christian results from his walk with God in an ungodly world, a walk that must often take him away from the fellowship of good Christians as well as from that of the unregenerate world. His God-given instincts cry out for companionship with others of his kind, others who can understand his longings, his aspirations, his absorption in the love of Christ; and because within his circle of friends there are so few who share his inner experiences he is forced to walk alone. The unsatisfied longings of the prophets for human understanding caused them to cry out in their complaint, and even our Lord Himself suffered in the same way.

The man [or woman] who has passed on into the divine Presence in actual inner experience will not find many who understand him. He finds few who care to talk about that which is the supreme object of his interest, so he is often silent and preoccupied in the midst of noisy religious shoptalk. For this he earns the reputation of being dull and over-serious, so he is avoided and the gulf between him and society widens. He searches for friends upon whose garments he can detect the smell of myrrh and aloes and cassia out of the ivory palaces, and finding few or none he, like Mary of old, keeps these things in his heart.

It is this very loneliness that throws him back upon God. His inability to find human companionship drives him to seek in God what he can find nowhere else.

"And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death." -Revelation 12:11

The Saint Must Walk Alone 

Most of the worlds GREAT SOULS have been lonely. Loneliness seems to be one price the saint must pay for his saintliness.

Enoch, Noah, Abraham and Moses all walked a path quite apart from their contemporaries even though many people surrounded them.

The prophets of pre-Christian times differed widely from each other, but one mark they bore in common was their enforced loneliness.

Jesus died alone in the darkness hidden from the sight of mortal man and no one saw Him when He arose triumphant and walked out of the tomb, even though many saw Him afterward and bore witness to what they saw.

The cheerful denial of loneliness proves only that the speaker has never walked with God without the support and encouragement afforded him by society. The sense of companionship that mistakenly attributes to the presence of Christ may and probably does arise from the presence of friendly people. Always remember: you cannot carry a cross in company. Though a vast crowd surrounds a man, his cross is his alone and his carrying of it marks him as a man apart. Society has turned against him; otherwise he would have no cross. No one is a friend to the man with a cross. “They all forsook Him and fled.”

The loneliness of the Christian results from his walk with God in an ungodly world, a walk that must often take him away from the fellowship of good Christians as well as from the unregenerate world. His God-given instincts cry out for companionship with others who can understand his longings, his aspirations, and his absorption in his love for Christ; and because within his circle of friends there are so few who share his inner experiences he is forced to walk alone.

The man who has passed on into the divine Presence in actual inner experience will not find many who understand him. A certain amount of social fellowship will of course be his as he mingles with religious persons in regular activities of the church, but true spiritual fellowship will be hard to find.

The truly spiritual man is indeed something of an oddity. He lives not for himself but to promote the interests of Another. He seeks to persuade people to give all to his Lord and asks no portion or share for himself. He delights not to be honored but to see his Saviour glorified in the eyes of men. His joy is to see Jesus promoted and himself neglected. He finds few who care to talk about that which is the supreme object of his interest, so he is often silent and preoccupied in the midst of noisy religious shoptalk. For this he earns the reputation of being dull and over-serious, so he is avoided and the gulf between him and society widens. He searches for friends upon whose garments he can detect the smell of myrrh and aloes and cassia out of the ivory palaces, and finding few or none he, like Mary of old, keeps these things in his heart.

It is this very loneliness that throws him back upon God. His inability to find human companionship drives him to seek in God what he can find nowhere else. He learns in inner solitude what he could not have learned in the crowd-that Christ is All in All.

Two things remain to be said about the man that is in this state of loneliness. First, he is not a haughty man, he is not holier-than-thou, and he is not an austere saint. He is likely to feel that he is the least of all men and is sure to blame himself for his loneliness. He wants to share his feelings with others and to open his heart to some like-minded soul who will understand him, but the spiritual climate around him does not encourage it, so he remains silent and tells his grief to God alone.

The second thing is that the lonely saint is not the withdrawn man who hardens himself against human suffering and spends his days contemplating the heavens. The opposite is true. His loneliness makes him sympathetic to the approach of the brokenhearted and the fallen and the sin-bruised. Because he is detached from the world he is all the more able to help it.

The weakness of so many modern Christians is that they feel too much at home in the world. In their effort to achieve restful “adjustment” to an unregenerate society they have lost their pilgrim character and become an essential part of the very moral order against which they are sent to protest. The world recognizes them (modern Christians) and accepts them for what they are. This is the saddest thing that can be said about them. They are not lonely, but neither are they saints.

The Genuine Christian is a Lonely Soul

The Christian, the genuine Christian, realizes that he is indeed a lonely soul in the middle of a world which affords him no fellowship. I contend that if the Christian breaks down on occasion and lets himself go in tears, he ought not to feel that he is weak. It is a normal loneliness in the midst of a world that has disowned him. He has to be a lonely man!

Those to whom Peter wrote were strangers in many ways and first of all because they were Jews. They were Jews scattered among the Romans and they never could accept and bow to the Roman ways. They learned the Greek tongue in the world of their day, but they never could learn the Roman ways. They were Jews, a people apart, even as they are today.
Besides that, they had become Christian believers so they were no longer merely Jews. Their sense of alienation from the world around them had increased and doubled. They were not only Jews—unlike the Gentiles around them—but they were Christians, unlike the Jews as well as unlike the Gentiles!

This is the reason that it is easily possible for a Christian believer to be the loneliest person in the world under a set of certain circumstances. This sense of not belonging is a part of our Christian heritage. That sense of belonging in another world and not belonging to this one steals into the Christian bosom and marks him off as being different from the people around him. Many of our hymns have been born out of that very loneliness, that sense of another and higher citizenship!

Citizenship is in heaven

That is exactly the thing that keeps a Christian separated—knowing that his citizenship is not on earth at all but in heaven above, and that he looks for the Savior to come. Who is there that can look more earnestly for the coming of the Lord Jesus than the one who feels that he is a lonely person in the middle of a lonely world?
Peter loved the Lord Jesus Christ and his letters to suffering believers clearly reveal that great and sweeping changes had come into his life. He had become stable, he had become solid, he had become the steady and dependable servant of Christ. Now he was able to see that suffering for Christ is one of the privileges of Christian life and he prepared his brothers and sisters for the future with his counsel: “Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering’85. but rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ” (1 Peter 4:12–13).

Fellow believers, it is the same kind of world in which we live in this 20th century. We do well to let the Apostle Peter speak to us!
No matter who you are, no matter what your education, you can read Peter’s First Epistle and understand it reasonably well and you can say to yourself, “The Holy Spirit is saying this to me!”
There isn’t anything dated in the Book of God. When I go to my Bible, I find dates but no dating. I mean that I find the sense and the feeling that everything here belongs to me. There is nothing here that is obviously for another age, another time, another people.

Many other volumes and many other books of history contain the passionate outpourings of the minds of men on local situations but we soon find ourselves bored with them. Unless we are actually doing research we do not care that much about something dated, something belonging only to another age.
But when the Holy Spirit wrote the epistles, through Peter and Paul and the rest, He wrote them and addressed them to certain people and then made them so universally applicable that every Christian who reads them today in any part of the world, in any language or dialect, forgets that they were written to someone else and says, ”This was addressed to me. The Holy Spirit had me in mind. This is not antiquated and dated. This is the living Truth for me—now! It is just as though God had just heard of my trouble and is speaking to me to help me and encourage me in the time of my distress!”

Brethren, this is why the Bible stays young always. This is why the Word of the Lord God is as fresh as every new sunrise, as sweet and graciously fresh as the dew on the grass the morning after the clear night—because it is God’s Word to man!
This is the wonder of divine inspiration and the wonder of the Book of God!

The Refiner's Fire 
Ten thousand enemies cannot stop a Christian, cannot even slow him down, if he meets them in a attitude of complete trust in God. They will become to him like the atmosphere that resists the airplane, but which because the plane's designer knew how to take advantage of that resistance, actually lifts the plane aloft and holds it there for a journey of 2,000 miles. What would have been an enemy to the plane becomes a helpful servant to aid it on its way. 

The main thing is this: we should never blame anyone or anything for our defeats. No matter how evil their intentions may be, they are altogether unable to harm us until we begin to blame them and use them as excuses for our own unbelief. Then they become potent to do us injury; nevertheless, we are to blame and not they. 

If this should seem like a bit of theorizing, remember that always the greatest Christians have come out of hard times and tough situations. Tribulations actually worked for their spiritual perfection in that they taught them to trust not in themselves but in the Lord who raised the dead. They learned that the enemy could not block their progress unless they surrendered to the urgings of the flesh and began to complain. And slowly, they learned to stop complaining and start praising. It is that simple--and it works!

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