The Genuine Breathings of a Child-like spirit...
"And now, Lord, what wait I for? my hope is in Thee." -Psalm 39:7 [KJV]
True
religion is a very simple thing. Simplicity is stamped upon all the
works of God, and especially upon the work of grace. The more genuine,
therefore, our religion is, the more simple it will be. To be simple is
to be child-like, and to be child-like is to have the mind and spirit
without which no man can enter into the kingdom of heaven.
Can
we, then, with this child-like simplicity, walk step by step here with
David, and follow him throughout? Can we put our seal to these things
and say, "Lord, what wait I for?" Is your religion brought into this
narrow point? "Truly my soul waiteth upon God; from Him cometh my
salvation" (Psalm 62:1.) "My soul, wait thou only upon God; for my expectation is
from Him" (Psalm 62:5.)
Such a frame of soul is indeed from the hand of God,
for no man ever did, or could bring himself into it. And if we can enter
into one part of these heavenly breathings, we shall be able to enter
into the others, and say, "My hope is in Thee." Feeling the weight and
burden of sin, we shall be constrained to cry, "Deliver me from all my
transgressions;" and feeling our own weakness, and the evil of our
hearts, we shall add, "Make me not the reproach of the foolish" (see Psalm 39:8.)
If,
then, we can sincerely, before God, employ these petitions, may we not
ask who produced them? Who wrought this experience in the soul? From
whose hands did it come? Surely, surely, the same Lord that taught
David, must have taught us; the same power that wrought in him, must
have wrought in us, before we could, in sweet experience, enter into
this feeling language, and adopt it as our own.
Here,
therefore, we see a little of what true religion is; here we see what
are the genuine breathings of a child-like spirit, and what is the
experience of a man of God; and it will be our mercy if we can see in
his experience a sweet counterpart of our own.
-preacher J.C. Philpot (1802–1869 A.D.)
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