p. 189 | WORDS BY THE WAY

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 14, 1877

WORDS BY THE WAY.

“I could write down twenty cases,” says a good man, “when I wished God had done otherwise than he did, which I now see, had I had my own will, would have led to extensive mischief. The life of a Christian is a life of paradoxes. He must lay hold on God, he must follow hard after him, he must determine not to let him go. And yet you must learn to let God alone. Quietness before God is one of the most difficult of all Christian graces; to sit where he pleases, to be what he would have us be, and this as long as he pleases.”

We must be drinking the living water from the smitten rock, or we cannot speak of its refreshing power. We must be hiding our guilty souls in the wounds of Jesus, or we cannot with joy speak of the peace and rest to be found there. This is the reason why unfaithful ministers are cold and barren in their labor. They speak, like Balaam, of a Saviour whose grace they do not feel. They speak, like Caiaphas, of the blood of Christ, without having felt its power to speak peace to the troubled heart. This is the reason why many good men have a barren ministry. They speak from clear head-knowledge, or from past experience, but not from a present grasp of the truth, not from a present sight of the Lamb of God. Hence their words fall like a shower of snow, fair and beautiful, but cold and freezing.—Sel.