"Salvation is of the LORD." -Jonah 2:9

"Let the weak say, I am strong." -Joel 3:10 [KJV] Where is the weak, doubting sinner? Stand forth, my soul, thy Lord arraigns thee; He judges and passes sentence of reproof upon thee. “O thou of little faith, wherefore dost thou doubt?” (Matthew 14:31.) Your doubts come from your little faith: your doubts prevent the increase of faith. You can easily believe the Lord is displeased at your sins.  What is sin, but disobeying His commands? But did you never consider it as a sin, a great sin, not to believe when He commands? Not to be obedient to His word, when He requires you to be strong in faith— “Strong in the grace which is in Christ Jesus” (II Timothy 2:1.) “Strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might” (Ephesians 6:10.) O you do not enough attend to this!  But you say, “I am so weak in myself.” Who is not? He who thinks he is not, is the weakest of all in self-knowledge. The great, the strong, the inspired Paul, gives this challenge. “Who is weak, ...

"I will strengthen them in the LORD, and they shall walk up and down in His name, saith the LORD."   -Zechariah 10:12 [KJV]  My soul, mark these words, how precious they are; and mark the Speaker and Promiser, and consider how sure they are. Is not this God the Father speaking of the church, and most graciously assuring the church that He will strengthen the church in Jesus, the church's glorious Head? Is not this said with an eye to Christ, who is represented in another part of this blessed prophecy as calling upon the church to attend to Him, who is come to build the temple of the Lord, and to bear all the glory, and who expressly saith that the church shall know that He, the LORD of Hosts, is sent by the LORD of Hosts unto His people? Who but the LORD of Hosts could build the temple of the LORD of Hosts; or who but Him bear all the glory? - Zechariah 10:12 So then, my soul, observe that Christ is the strength, as well as the righteousness of His redeemed...

"Joseph is a fruitful bough, even a fruitful bough by a well; whose branches run over the wall: the archers have sorely grieved him, and shot at him, and hated him: but his bow abode in strength, and the arms of his hands were made strong by the hands of the mighty God of Jacob." -Genesis 49:22-24 [KJV] One would have thought that Joseph being a fruitful bough could have looked with complacency, almost with holy scorn, upon these archers who shot at him, but it was not so; "they sorely grieved him." To be sold by his own brethren into Egypt; the dreams and visions God had given him to be derided; to be cast into prison as an ungodly man through the very person who was tempting him to ungodliness, and there to be neglected and forsaken; how these archers had shot their arrows against his bosom, and sorely grieved him! It was because he had the fear of God, because his feelings were tender, that the arrows found a place.  Had he had a bosom of steel, h...