Encouragement in the Storms
"Continue
thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of."
-II
Timothy 3:14 [KJV]
Various
hindrances
meet the child of God in his path heavenwards. And their tendency is
such, that but for the grace of God, they would effectually succeed
in driving him from the faith. When, then, he has to meet a head
wind blowing right in his teeth, when the storm and hail beat roughly
upon him, when the waves rise high and the stream runs strong, there
seems no getting on; and he fears that he shall be like "the
children of Ephraim, who, being armed, and carrying bows, turned back
in the day of battle."
And
yet there is that grace implanted
in his heart, there is that faith which God the Spirit first created
and still keeps alive in his soul, that though he may for a moment be
driven aside, he yet never turns his back upon the truth; though
retarded for a moment, his face is still Zionwards. I can say for
myself, that all the trials I have passed through, all the
temptations I have been in, and all the persecutions I have had to
endure, from sinner and from saint, have only served to rivet the
truth of God more firmly in my heart.
I
find the trials, sufferings, exercises from without and from within,
instead of driving faith out of the soul, having that effect which
Satan would produce by them, and driving the heart from truth into
error, from the Church of God into the world,—I can say, from
feeling experience, that these inward and outward trials only rivet
the truth, and the love of the truth, more deeply in my heart; and
instead of driving out faith, they have only tended to strengthen,
encourage, and confirm it.
-Gospel
report by preacher J.C. Philpot (1802 – 1869 A.D.)
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