Grace Gems for MARCH 2006

Grace Gems for MARCH 2006 Yours! Mine! (John Flavel, "The Fountain of Life") Lord, the condemnation was Yours, that the justification might be mine! The agony was Yours, that the victory might be mine! The pain was Yours, and the ease mine! The stripes were Yours, and the healing balm issuing from them mine! The vinegar and gall were Yours, that the honey and sweet might be mine! The curse was Yours, that the blessing might be mine! The crown of thorns was Yours, that the crown of glory might be mine! The death was Yours, the life purchased by it mine! You paid the price, that I might enjoy the inheritance! The fullness of His grace (Octavius Winslow, "From Grace to Glory" 1864) "From the fullness of His grace we have all received one blessing after another." John 1:16 Will you hesitate, then, child of God to sink your emptiness in this fullness; to drink abundantly from this supply; to go to Jesus . . . with every sin, the greatest; with every temptation, the strongest; with every need, the deepest; with every trial, the severest; with your mental despondency, your lowest spiritual frame yes, exactly as you are—and receive from Christ's boundless grace—grace to help you in the time of need? Hesitate not! Every drop of Christ's fullness of grace is yours! And you have . . . not a sin this grace cannot cancel, not a corruption it cannot subdue, not a trial it cannot sustain, not a burden it cannot enable you to bear. Yes, the Lord will give grace! He will give us grace for every position in which His providence places us. He will give sustaining grace under every trial He sends us. He will give preserving grace in every path of peril along which He leads us. He will give comforting grace in every afflictive dispensation by which He seeks to promote our holiness here, and so to advance our fitness for glory hereafter. There is no stintiness, no limit in the Triune God. He has given you grace for past exigencies, and He is prepared to give you more grace for present ones! "From the fullness of His grace we have all received one blessing after another." John 1:16 Snares, gins, and traps! (James Meikle, "The Traveler" 1730-1799) I am exposed to temptations from every quarter. As my finite wisdom cannot prevent my being tempted, so my feeble power cannot resist being overtaken by them. I have Your grace to adore, that I am not overcome with every temptation which assaults me. Human nature is like a pile of dry wood shavings; and temptation is like a spark of fire cast into it. It must be divine power that hinders all from going into a blaze! O kind compassion! O tender mercy! O glorious grace! I am nothing; hence I shall think humbly of myself—but highly of Your grace. What a thorny path is human life! How is it strewed with snares, gins, and traps—for head and feet, for heart and hands. If I lift up my head in pride, I fall into the condemnation of the devil. If I am not watchful in my goings, I am cast into a net by my own feet, and walk into a snare. Vanity is ready to fill my heart, and wickedness my hands. Satan has his deceptive and powerful weapons against each of my bodily senses. I am beset with snares on every side! Two lessens I am taught, which, through grace, I never shall forget: 1. To be distrustful of myself. 2. To be confident in God, and strong in His grace. "God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble." Psalm 46:1 "Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need." Hebrews 4:16 O Lord! I desire to be humbled Under a sense of my sins and unmerited mercies, I desire through grace, in sincerity and humility of soul, to approach to the Author of all my mercies, and to lay before You, O merciful Father! all my plans—desiring Your divine direction. And, in the first place, I confess my own sins. I desire to be humbled under my natural proneness to evil and aversion to good; for my many sinful thoughts, which You, O Lord, know; for my wrong conceptions of the great Jehovah, and the smallness of my holy fear when in Your presence, calling on You before whom all the earth should tremble. I also desire to be humbled for my limiting God, as if he were not Almighty; for not placing all my faith and hope on Him alone, but on appearances and probabilities; for my ingratitude to God for His many matchless mercies to me in feeding and clothing me, and giving me favor in the eyes of men with whom I had to do. Providence has never failed me, but always supplied me; yet in the time of prosperity I sinned, and joined with sinners in their follies, which now I lament, and desire to be humbled for. O to learn the language of Your rod! O Lord! I desire to be humbled for . . . all my prevailing lusts and passions; my spiritual pride, my ignorance of the things of God, my barrenness under the gospel, my lukewarmness about the things of Christ; my carelessness about pious duties. Ah! that ever I should doubt the good will of Him who heard my cry and delivered me out of the hand of my fierce afflictions, manifesting His mighty power. I desire to be humbled for my earthly-mindedness and my desire after temporal things—riches, honor, and glory—which perish and pass away. I desire to be humbled for that great mountain of sins accumulated on me since my last season of prayer. And now I desire to lay before You my petitions. And first of all, O to be daily getting nearer and nearer You; to be growing more and more acquainted with lovely Jesus, increasing more and more in grace, becoming more and more like You, and daily less conformed to the world; to be delighting more and more in spiritual things, given more and more to meditation on the glory to be revealed, loving Him more and more, who loved me! O to be delighting in God all the day long, living in His fear as before Him always, learning more and more submission to His disposals in providence, and more and more persuaded of the rectitude of His will, the equity of His law, the longness of His patience, and His care of His own. O to get some victory over prevailing sin, and that which so easily besets me! O, Let never the greed for money get a hold of my heart; keep me from covetousness. Now, O Lord, in the hope that You will hear, I lay all my petitions before You. Choose what you will, cast away what you will—I will be content. I commit myself to You. I take You as my God and Father, for my Savior, for my Sanctifier forever. O hear! I desire in truth, O majestic Jehovah! to call these heavens over my head, the hills and mountains around me, the growing grass—to be witnesses, that I this day subscribe with my hand to be Yours, wholly Yours. Amen, amen! So be it! James Meikle, July, 1752. (from a paper found among his remains) If God should damn you for all eternity (John Flavel, "The Fountain of Life") If the death of Christ was that which satisfied God for all the sins of the elect, then certainly there is an infinite evil in sin, since it cannot be expiated but by an infinite satisfaction. Fools make a mock at sin, and there are but few people who are duly sensible of, and affected with—the evil of sin. If God should damn you for all eternity, your eternal sufferings could not pay for the evil that is in one vain thought! It may be you may think this is harsh and severe—that God should hold His creatures under everlasting sufferings for sin. But when you have well considered, that the One against whom you sin is the infinite blessed God, and that sin is an infinite evil committed against Him; and when you consider how God dealt with the angels that fell, for one sin—you will alter your minds about it! O the depth of the evil of sin! If ever you will see how dreadful and horrid an evil, sin is, you must measure it either by the infinite holiness and excellency of God, who is wronged by it; or by the infinite sufferings of Christ, who died to pay its penalty; and then you will have deeper apprehensions of the evil of sin. If you wish to become weak-headed, unstable, and good for nothing (Harvey Newcomb, "The Young Lady's Guide to the Harmonious Development of Christian Character" 1843) Novel reading produces a morbid appetite for mental excitement. The object of the novelist generally is, to produce the highest possible degree of excitement, both of the mind and the passions. The effect is very similar to that of intoxicating liquors on the body. Hence the confirmed novel reader becomes a kind of literary inebriate, to whom the things of eternity have no attractions, and whose thirst cannot be slaked, even with the water of life. Novel reading is a great waste of time. Few will pretend that they read novels with any higher end in view than mere amusement. If anything valuable is to be derived from them, it may be obtained with far less expense of time, and with safety to the morals, from other sources. No Christian, who feels the obligation of "redeeming the time because the days are evil," will fail to feel the force of this remark. We have no more right to squander our time and waste our energies in frivolous pursuits—than we have to waste our money in extravagant expenditures! We are as much the stewards of God in respect to the one as the other. How dangerous thus to parley with temptation! If you wish to become weak-headed, unstable, and good for nothing—read novels! Mr. Hall comments—"If we would divide the novels of the present day into a thousand parts; five hundred of these parts must be at once condemned as so contemptibly frivolous as to render the perusal of them a most criminal waste of time! Four hundred and ninety-nine of the remaining five hundred parts are positively corrupting in their influence. They are as full of representations which can have no other tendency than to mislead, corrupt, and destroy—those who habitually peruse them. Perhaps highest merit than that can be attributed to novels, by some, is that they are 'innocent and amusing compositions.' This merit, small as it is, is greater than can be conceded. All books are not innocent which may be exempt from the charge of disseminating secularism and licentiousness. If they . . . convey false impressions of life, excite a distaste for its duties, and divert the mind from real life to fantasies, they are decidedly pernicious. This, to a greater or less extent, is the effect of all novels. Every discerning reader knows this to be the fact." Hannah More comments—"Novels, however free from evil in their more gross and palpable shapes, yet, from their very nature and constitution, they diminish sober mindedness. At best, they feed habits of improper indulgence, while nourishing a vain and visionary indolence, which lays the mind open to error, and the heart to seduction!" You are the one who has done this! (John Flavel, "The Fountain of Life" 1671) "I remained speechless. I did not open my mouth because You are the one who has done this!" (Psalm 39:9) Look upwards, when tribulations come upon you! Look to that sovereign Lord, who commissions and sends them upon you. You know that troubles do not rise out of the dust, nor spring out of the ground, but are framed in heaven. Troubles and afflictions are of the Lord's framing and devising, to reduce His wandering people to Himself. You may observe much of divine wisdom in the choice, measure, and season of your troubles. God acts sovereignly, in electing the instruments of your affliction; in making them as afflictive as He pleases; and in making them obedient both to His call, in coming and going, when He pleases. Now, could you in times of trouble look up to this sovereign hand, in which your souls, bodies, and all their comforts and mercies are—how quiet would your hearts be! Oh, when we have to do with men, and look no higher, how do our spirits swell and rise with revenge and impatience! But if you once come to see that man as a rod in your Father's hand, you will be quiet. "Be still, and know that I am God." Consider with whom you have to do; not with your fellow, but with your God, who can puff you to destruction with one blast of His mouth; in whose hand you are, as the clay in the potter's hand. It is for lack of looking up to God in our troubles, that we fret, murmur, and despond at the rate we do. "It is the Lord. Let Him do what seems good to Him." (1 Samuel 3:18) Cursed sin! (John Flavel, "The Fountain of Life" 1671) O how inflexible and severe is the justice of God! What, no abatement? no sparing mercy? No, not even to His own Son! Cultivate a deep indignation against sin. Oh cursed sin! It was you who slew my dear Lord! For your sake He underwent all this! If your vileness had not been so great, His sufferings had not been so many. Cursed sin! You were the knife which stabbed Him! You the sword which pierced Him! Lopsided religion (Harvey Newcomb, "The Young Lady's Guide to the Harmonious Development of Christian Character" 1843) There is, perhaps, a peculiar tendency to lopsided religion in our age of excitement and activity. Nothing delights the senses like harmony. The eye rests with pleasure on the edifice which is complete in all its parts, according to the laws of architecture. And the sensation of delight is still more exquisite, on viewing the harmonious combination of colors, as exhibited in the rainbow, or the flowers of the field. The ear, also, is ravished with the harmony of musical sounds; and the palate is delighted with savory dishes. The beauty and loveliness of Christian character depend on the harmonious culture of all the Christian graces in due proportion. If one is deficient, and another too prominent, the idea of deformity strikes the mind with painful sensations; like harsh, discordant musical sounds; or like the disproportionate combination of colors. Where all the graces exist in due proportion, they will form a lovely character, harmonious and beautiful as

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Grace Gems for MARCH 2006

Grace Gems

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