“For God maketh my heart soft,
and the Almighty troubleth me”
Job 23:16
A softened heart results from having passed through valleys of trouble and perplexity. The voices that taunt, mock, and try our souls, saying “Where is your God?” will, in the end, be silenced. The evidence of His likeness will become an indelible aroma that unconsciously rises from such lives.
“Who is this that cometh out of the wilderness
like pillars of smoke, perfumed with myrrh and frankincense…?”
Song of Songs 3:6
The secret of the Lord is with those who emerge from their wilderness experiences. They do not linger in despair or faithlessness. Within their hearts is a vision and purpose that transcends the perplexity and troubles they find themselves in.
The prophetic offerings of the three wise men who travelled from afar to worship the One born in Bethlehem paid homage to HIM of the essential graces that would testify of His Person. Their gifts would also be characterized by His children who were to follow Him.
“And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary His mother, and fell down, and worshipped Him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto Him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh.”
Matthew 2:11
The gold of Him must be in us, “tried in the fire”. The royal fragrance of frankincense must be borne by hearts that have become humble. The sweet scent of myrrh comes only from a heart that has known great suffering and deprivation.
The Prophet Isaiah sets before us our Shepherd, High Priest and King with great distinction:
“He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from Him; He was despised, and we esteemed Him not.”
Isaiah 53:3
To follow Him is to know rejection, temptation, bewilderment and sorrow. Many came out of Egypt, but few endured through the wilderness.
“For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ. Nevertheless, with most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness.”
1 Corinthians 10:1-5 (ESV)
By the Holy Spirit, Paul is revealing to us the Christ who was ever present with Israel in the wilderness; He was their provision and is NOW ours. The truth of many being overthrown in the wilderness back then is also a valid testimony today. He is beseeching the believers at the Church in Corinth (and us) with an exhortation: “For I do not want you to be unaware” of this solemn truth.
May we give heed to His Word.
We must hear and receive the exhortations of His Spirit to remain faithful to Him regardless of our circumstances. HE will be with us. HE offers us Himself in Whom there is every provision for us to emerge from the wilderness “perfumed with myrrh and frankincense.”
“Let your loins be girded about, and your lights burning;
And ye yourselves like unto men that wait for their Lord…”
Luke 12:35-36
May our lights be burning with His passion. May we be girded as men, determined and unwavering. As Paul declared at the end of his magnificent Epistle to the Church at Corinth:
“Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.”
1 Corinthians 15:58
Jesus sadly declared concerning the “fields that were ripe unto harvest”:
“The harvest truly is plenteous,
but the labourers are few…”
Matthew 9:37
“Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his Lord hath made ruler over His household, to give them meat in due season? Blessed is that servant, whom his Lord when He cometh shall find so doing.”
Matthew 24:46
Blessed Servants
Blessed servants are those who amid their own difficulties, trials, and discouragement continue to abound in “the work of the Lord”; feeding, nourishing, and exhorting the people of God to press on into the riches of Christ!
“I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God,
that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice…”
Romans 12:1
Related Posts:
“It is when we unbosom ourselves to Him, and confide to Him all our cares and sorrows and temptations, that He walks with us, and abides with us, and opens to us the Scriptures concerning Himself — His dignity, His suitableness. His loveliness. His truth, His tenderness. His faithfulness, revealing Himself in us; causing our hearts to burn within us — to burn with love, gratitude, devotion, courage, joy — to bum with a celestial fire, which consumes all selfishness and sin, and glows, a pure, perennial flame, upon pure, living altars.”
— Richard Fuller,
Brian Troxel
Amen! True reading.
Of late, I have been experiencing an extraordinary emphasis on the excellence and extravagance of grace, for which I am greatly glad and grateful to our good and grand God of all grace and glory.
To be heart-held in our ardently affectionate Abba Almighty’s invincible, unfathomable grace is no less than safe salvation and sure sanctification.
Imperatively motivated to motivate one another to true love and resulting works of benevolence, intrinsically and inseparably involved and initiating same, is God’s inimitable grace of generosity.
Grace God Is so that ultimately, universally, endlessly, He gets all the glory He infinitely deserves for giving us all the grace we do not even, at the very least, ever deserve. Each time we inevitably stumble or slip, grace grabs or woos, wows and wins us, setting us right, sooner or later, yet again.
Like Christian, the man we all can closely relate to in Paul Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, we do not always decide divinely, yet by God’s all-glorious grace, that is, His unearned mercy and His unmerited favor, His divine enablement and His holy empowerment, ennobled we progress on our pilgrimage, not by preening our person, but by responding repentantly for restoration to relationship with the Righteous One.
As our all-gracious God is faithful and righteous in forgiving our sins when we confess them to Him, we ought to agree with Him by forgiving ourselves our sins. By God’s grace, having forgiven ourselves, healing happens homeward to the holy, happy highlands of heaven. Without healing, help from us, by the grace of God, to others is immeasurably hindered or not initiated.
My prayer is that with evermore acute awareness, we appreciate the acceptance of the ages-abiding wisdom, the providence from everlasting past, the provision to everlasting future, the tenacious tenderness of the ever-in-the-present merciful loving-kindness that is the unfailing grace of the One Beautiful Triune God Who Is Love Almighty, the Holy One, and the Justice, our Uncreated Creator, Sovereign Lord of History, including yours and mine.