Word of Encouragement (9/4/2020)
Today, let's delight ourselves in the firmness of God’s promises.
Firmness here means reliable: “Every promise God gives will be fulfilled; therefore, not a single promise will disappoint a believer’s hope and trust” (p. 44). This is so because God is all-powerful. He is not like us, who often break our promises despite our best intentions and efforts because we are weak and incapable. If God is able to bring out of nothing this whole universe simply by the power of His Word, what can be too difficult for Him? We might be overwhelmed when we look to the mountains but it is God, who made the mountains. Therefore, He is able to flatten them in a moment as well. Spurstowe says that we should “have such conceptions of the power of God, as that whatever… impediments do arise between the promise and the fulfilling of it, though as high as mountains and as strong as the gates of hell, [they will be] by faith looked upon as difficulties which cannot check the power of God, but only magnify it’” (p. 45).
The following words of Spurstowe touched me and encouraged me deeply. I hope they do the same for you, too!
“No valley of trouble will be to him without a door of hope, no barren wilderness without Manna, no dry rock without water, no dungeon without light, no fiery trial without comfort, because he [i.e., the believer] has the same Word and the same God to trust unto, whose power opened the sea as a door to be a passage from Egypt to Canaan, who led Israel in the desert with bread from heaven and water from a rock, who filled Peter’s prison with a shining light, who made the three children to walk to and fro amidst the fiery furnace with joy and safety” (p. 46).
Do you see how the valley of trouble coexists with a door of hope, etc.? The removal of the valley of trouble, the barren wilderness, the drought, the dungeon, the fiery trial, etc., will come only at the Second Coming of Christ, when this world of change and decay will be replaced with a world of eternal life and resurrection. That is the firmest and most certain promise of God. If we expect God’s answer to be in the removal of the valley of trouble (at least in this life), we may not see the door of hope God provided for us. God may bring our wilderness moments to an end (even in this life) but we must learn to persevere with the daily manna He provides for us in the meantime. May the Lord open our eyes to see His presence in the midst of our troubles, in the midst of our daily journey to heaven!