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

"Should not a people seek unto their God?" -Isaiah 8:19 [KJV] To be sure they should. My soul, what would become of thee, in thine exercises, hadst thou not had a God in Christ to fly to, and a God in Christ to depend upon? Where wouldest thou find a bosom to pour all thy griefs into, did not Jesus say to thee, as to the sorrowful father, concerning his child, "Bring him hither to Me?" Thou knowest, dearest Lord, that there are circumstances into which I am cast, where none but Thyself can help; and even if help could be derived from man, yet who is there to whom I could seek with a certainty of success? "My friends," saith Job, "have dealt deceitfully, like a brook;" like a brook which, dried up by the summer heat, disappoints the traveller when he most needs supply to slake his thirst. Oh for grace to centre all my desires in Thee, and to seek unto Thee with all my concerns! Blessed Lord! Let that devout frame of David, in the wilderness, b...

"Abide in Me, and I in you." - John 15:4 [KJV] The Lord did not use these words as though there were any power in the creature to abide in Him. But He was pleased to use them that they might be blessed to His people when the Holy Spirit applied them to the heart; for He adds,  "And I in you."   The one is the key to the other. If we abide in Christ, Christ abides in us. It is by Christ abiding in us, that we are enabled to abide in Him.   But how does Christ abide in us? By His Spirit. It is by His Spirit He makes the bodies of His saints His temple; it is by His Spirit that He comes and dwells in them. Though it is instrumentally by faith, as we read, "that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith;" yet it is through the communication of His Spirit in the soul, and the visits of His most gracious presence. Thus He bids us, encourages us, and influences us to abide in Him by His abiding in us. But His abiding in a child of God may be known by certain eff...

"And the earth helped the woman."   -Revelation 12:16 [KJV] How blessed is it to see the hand of the Lord, when no hand beside can be near to help! And that when our situation is as lonely and forlorn as that of the pelican in the wilderness, Jesus is still near; and we are never less alone than when alone! When the church brought forth her offspring, and hell stood ready to devour it, God sheltered it from his jaws. And when he cast forth a flood to sweep the church away, the earth helped the woman, by opening its mouth, and swallowing it up.   My soul! Look into thine own circumstances, and trace the Lord's dealings, and thou wilt find a great multitude o£ corresponding instances. It is from the inattentive minds of the Lord's people, that mercies so often pass and repass, and they see them not. There are thousands of them in every believer's life, that he is as unconscious of, as the world are of the sweet-blowing flower of the desert, which sheds her rich perf...

"I am He that liveth, and was dead; and behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death." - Revelation 1:18 [KJV] O what a mercy that He Who was dead lives at God's right hand! that He lives as a risen Head; that He is not a dead Saviour; but a Saviour that lives for evermore; that can and does bless; that can and does comfort; that can and does bring the soul safely through all. He is not a Saviour that stands as it were upon the brink of a river, and pulls us out when we have swum half way out ourselves; He is not a Saviour that will take us half way to heaven, and then, as Rutherford says, let us "fend" or shift for ourselves.  He must take us to heaven throughout. We are nothing, we have nothing without Him. He must be, as He is, our "all in all." We value Him in His death, nothing but His death could reconcile us to God; we value Him in His life, nothing but His life can save. We want salvation now; salvation in the...

  Weekend Gospel message to follow for All Hands (23-25SEP22 A.D.) Heads-Up --- Please find enclosed encouragement in   SO GREAT SALVATION by the perfect and finished work of our Lord Jesus Christ in saving poor, needy and wretched sinners by His sovereign free grace - Almighty God's unmerited favor - from our sins and from Hell: In the Scriptures, we see that salvation by God’s free and sovereign grace based on the glorious Person and finished work of Christ as the Surety, Substitute, Redeemer, Life-giver, and Preserver of God’s elect is an all-glorious and all-encompassing truth. It spans both eternity and time where what God has purposed, decreed, and declared in His eternal mind, is worked out and accomplished in time as He “worketh all things after the counsel of His own will” (Ephesians 1:11).   We are creatures of time, and we can only think in terms of time. But let us not try to bring God down to our level. God suspends time. He is not subject to time, and...

"Who maketh thee to differ from another?"   -I Corinthians 4:7 [KJV] My soul, sit down, in the cool of this lovely evening, and in the recollection of distinguishing mercies look up and behold the gracious hand that" maketh thee to differ from another; until thine heart overflow, in a view of the wonderful subject, with thanksgiving, love, and praise. If thou wilt open the volume of thine own life (and surely, of all volumes, when explained by the word of God, it is the most interesting to read) thou wilt behold such a multitude of instances, in all the departments of "nature, providence, and grace," as under divine teaching, will bring home the question with the most awakened earnestness to the heart, and cause thee frequently to exclaim, as thou passest on, "Who maketh thee to differ from another?"   Every defect of nature in others, every poor cripple, or the blind, or deaf, which thou meetest with; the want of intellect, or the want of understandi...

  "The kingdom of God is not in word, but in power."   -I Corinthians 4:20 [KJV] It is through the word of God in the hands of the Spirit, that this kingdom is set up in the soul. All God's people are agreed on this point, that they have no more religion than they have inward power. And all the living family are sighing, each according to his measure and season, after the manifestation of this divine power in their souls. Those that are under the law, and toiling under heavy burdens, are sighing after relief, and for that relief to come in divine power—power that shall cast all their sins into the depth of the sea. Those who having tasted that the Lord is gracious have lost their first love, are at times breathing out their inmost desire after power to revive their souls. Those who are beset with powerful temptations, and struggling, often ineffectually, with base lusts, are crying after power to deliver their feet from the fowler's snares. Those who are hard, need po...