What a Great Deliverer is Christ our Lord!
"Jesus
said unto her, I
am the resurrection, and the life."
-JOHN
11:25 [KJV]
How
often we sink into places where we are in our feelings dead men. Has
sin never slain you? Have convictions never, so to speak, knocked the
life of God out of your soul? Has Satan never come with his fiery
darts, with all the artillery of hell, and sought to scorch up every
gracious feeling and every living desire? And have you not sunk at
times in your soul into such miserable deadness of spirit, that it
seemed that not only there and then you were devoid of all grace, but
that it was an impossibility for grace ever again to renew and revive
your soul? Here you were dead. I have often been here, which enables
me to describe it to you. Yet with all this, there is a longing look,
a heartfelt groan, a heaving sigh, a resisting unto blood, not an
utter giving way, nor sinking down into miserable despair. God the
Spirit kept alive His work upon the soul, and Christ Himself as the
resurrection dropped into our bosom, raised up and drew forth towards
himself some fresh movements of that life which is in him.
There was thus fulfilled that gracious consequence of his resurrection, "Whosoever believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live." Oh, amidst all our deadness, all our gloom and desolation, all our emptiness, barrenness, and helplessness, if there be in our souls a longing look, a heartfelt cry, an earnest groan, a sincere desire toward Him who is the resurrection, our prayer will ascend into His pitying, sympathising ear; and as He is the resurrection, He will once more raise up into life and feeling our dead and drooping soul. We have no other source of life. If we were altogether and really dead, we should always continue dead unless He were the resurrection. But because He is the resurrection, He can re-animate, revive, renew, and requicken us by pouring into our hearts fresh life and feeling. It will be our mercy to be ever looking unto Him, hanging upon Him, believing in Him, trusting to Him, and giving Him no rest until He appear again and again to the joy and rejoicing of our heart.
There was thus fulfilled that gracious consequence of his resurrection, "Whosoever believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live." Oh, amidst all our deadness, all our gloom and desolation, all our emptiness, barrenness, and helplessness, if there be in our souls a longing look, a heartfelt cry, an earnest groan, a sincere desire toward Him who is the resurrection, our prayer will ascend into His pitying, sympathising ear; and as He is the resurrection, He will once more raise up into life and feeling our dead and drooping soul. We have no other source of life. If we were altogether and really dead, we should always continue dead unless He were the resurrection. But because He is the resurrection, He can re-animate, revive, renew, and requicken us by pouring into our hearts fresh life and feeling. It will be our mercy to be ever looking unto Him, hanging upon Him, believing in Him, trusting to Him, and giving Him no rest until He appear again and again to the joy and rejoicing of our heart.
-Gospel
report by preacher J.C. Philpot (1802 – 1869 A.D.)
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