The Captain of our Salvation, Christ JESUS
"Thou
therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ."
-II
TIMOTHY
2:3 [KJV]
We
often get into states and frames of mind, where we need something
else besides consolation. A child would not grow, if it were always
fed upon sweetmeats. It must have exercise, and be exposed to the
weather, and have the cold winds blow upon its face, and be hardened,
so as to enable it to bear the chill winter and the nipping frosts.
So
the child of God is not always petted, and fed upon love-tokens. He
is not always carried in the warm bosom, or sucking the breasts of
consolation, but he has to learn lessons to fit him to be a soldier.
The soldier, we know, has to endure hardships. He has to lie all
night upon the wet grass; to be pinched with hunger, parched with
thirst, and nipped with cold; to make harassing marches; to hear the
roar of the cannon and the whistling of the bullets, "the
thunder of the captains and the shouting;" to see the flash
of the sabre uplifted to cut him down, and the glitter of the bayonet
at his breast, aye, and to feel painful and dangerous wounds.
So
with the spiritual soldier in God's camp. He has to hunger and
thirst, to suffer cold, nakedness, and hard privations, to be shot at
by the arrows of calumny and the fiery darts of Satan, to make
harassing marches through an enemy's country, to suffer painful
wounds, and by these very exercises learn to be a soldier. Only so
far as he is thus exercised spiritually can he learn the art of war,
can he know how to fight and make effectual battle under the banners
of the Lord against the enemies of his salvation.
-Gospel
report by preacher J.C. Philpot (1802-1869 A.D.)
April
17th, EARS FROM HARVESTED SHEAVES
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