CONSOLATION
“Trust in the
Lord and do good: so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be
fed. Delight thyself also in the
Lord; and he shall give thee the desires of thy heart. Commit thy way unto the
Lord; trust also in him,
and he shall bring it to pass; and he shall bring forth thy righteousness as
the light, and thy
judgment as the noonday. Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for him.”-Psa. 37:3-7.
While the Word of
God abounds in precepts and admonitions, in warnings and instructions, and
while it lifts high the standard of moral excellence-so high that in our weak
and fallen condition we cannot attain unto it, and in our efforts to do so in
the midst of a crooked and perverse generation we must of necessity encounter
the wrath of all the powers of darkness strongly entrenched in the hearts of
fallen fellow-men, this same blessed Word comes to the faithful children of God
in the very midst of this battle of life with sweet and refreshing consolation.
Consolation! What is it? Oh, you who have never enlisted under the banner of
the cross, you who have never made an honest endeavor to withstand the powers
of darkness, to fight the good fight of faith, to stem the current of your own
fallen nature’s tendencies, or to contend earnestly for truth and righteousness
in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, what can you know of the
sweets of divine consolation? It is the balm for wounded spirits on the battle
fields of time; the cooling draught for fainting souls hard pressed by the
relentless foe; the soothing caress of a loving hand upon the fevered brow of a
noble contender for truth and righteousness; the gentle whisper of hope and
courage when the heart and flesh begin to fail-that is consolation, divine
consolation, the only consolation that has any virtue of healing and refreshing
in it. But it is reserved only for those noble souls who are faithfully bearing
the burden and heat of the day, while those who listlessly drift with the
current of the world’s favor, and of the downward tendencies of the carnal
nature, can never have an intimation of its sweetness.
It is to the faithful soldiers of the Lord that the above words of the Psalmist
are addressed-to the persecuted, tempted and tried. Hear them, tempest-tossed
and fainting souls: they were long ago penned by the Lord’s prophet for your
edification- “Fret not thyself,” but “trust in the Lord and do good, so shalt
thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed.” How strong is the Lord,
how wise and good! His promises have never failed to those that put their trust
in him. We may feel that our efforts to be good and to do good are very
unproductive, and that the opposition from within and without is very strong;
but it is when we are weak-when we thus realize our own incompetency-that we
may be “strong in the Lord and in the power of his might.” Let us endeavor to
make straight paths for our feet, lest that which is lame be turned out of the
way, and then lay hold of the Lord’s strength to help us pursue our course in
the narrow way of difficulty and trial. The fact that we are weak and lame does
not separate us from the love and power of God; for “he knoweth our frame, he
remembereth that we are dust.” He knows that we have the treasure of the new
nature in earthen vessels, and therefore it is that, while we strive to
overcome, we have his proffered sympathy and aid and the imputed righteousness
of Christ for our all-sufficient covering. “Trust in the Lord and do good, so
shalt thou dwell in the land; and verily thou shalt be fed.” Our food and
shelter will be sure: he will never leave nor forsake his own, but will make
all things work together for good to them.
“Delight thyself also in the Lord, and he shall give thee the desires of
thine heart.” This delight in the Lord is a still more advanced step in the
Christian life. It is a blessed thing to learn to trust in the Lord; but it is
when continued trust and responsive providences have ripened into personal
acquaintance and fellowship with God that we learn to delight in him. Yes, it
is when heart answers to heart, when pleading prayer brings recognized answers
of peace, when the divine care and love are specially seen in the guidance of
our way: in a word, when we come to feel that the Father and the Son have so clearly
manifested themselves to us that we can recognize their abiding presence with
us. Ah! then it is that we begin to delight ourselves in the Lord. Then,
however dark may be the way, or however heavy may be the storm that rages about
us, the balm of divine consolation is always there, so that the child of God,
though often troubled on every side, is not distressed; though perplexed, he is
never in despair; though cast down, he is not destroyed; and though persecuted,
he is never forsaken.
To delight thus in the Lord is to have the affections centered in him; it is to
have the heart in such sympathy with righteousness and truth as to see in God
the fountain of all goodness and truth, the one altogether lovely. The Psalmist
expresses such an attitude of heart when, personifying our Lord Jesus, he said,
“I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my heart.” And
again, “O how love I thy law! It is my meditation all the day.” And again, when
he says, “O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for
thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land where no water is. .
. Because thy loving kindness is better than life, my lips shall praise thee. .
. My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness, and my mouth shall
praise thee with joyful lips when I remember thee upon my bed, and meditate on
thee in the night watches. Because thou hast been my help, there-fore in the
shadow of thy wings will I rejoice. My soul fol-loweth hard after thee: thy
right hand upholdeth me.”-Psa. 63.
Such an experience springs only from the felt consolations of divine grace in
times of sore and pressing need, and however great the afflictions or the
trials of faith, patience and endurance that lead to such an acquaintance with
God, there is great cause for rejoicing in them; for
“E’en sorrow, touched by heaven, grows bright
With more than rapture’s ray,
As darkness shows us worlds of light
We never saw by day.”
When the heart has been thus centered in God, it is its most natural impulse to
commit its way to him. As one has beautifully expressed it-
“We’d rather walk in the dark with God
Than go alone in the light;
We’d rather walk by faith with him
Than go alone by sight.”
And how precious is
the promise to those who thus learn to trust in the Lord and go on doing good,
no matter how obstinate or fierce may be the persecution it may excite, and who
delight in the Lord and confidently commit their way to his loving wisdom.
Surely they shall have the desires of their heart, and no good thing will he
withhold from them. Their fervent prayers avail much, and in his own good time
their righteousness, however misrepresented and evil spoken of now, shall be
brought forth as the light-clear, cloudless and widely manifest; and their
judgment, the justice and righteousness of their hearts, as the noon-day. And
even while we remain here as aliens and foreigners in the enemy’s land, verily
we shall be fed, both with the temporal bread and with the bread of heaven for
our spiritual sustenance. “Rejoice in the Lord, O ye righteous, and give thanks
at the remembrance of his holiness.”
But the Psalmist adds one more important word of counsel to the Lord’s beloved
children. It is this-“Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for him.” Do not
make the mistake of expecting him to give you the desires of your heart at the
very instant of your request; to make your path peaceful, easy and pleasant as
soon as you commit your way to him; and at once to bring forth your
righteousness as the light and your judgment as the noon-day. He has not
promised to do that. Time is necessary for the working out of his kind
providences in our individual affairs; for God works on philosophical
principles and for lasting and blessed results. So-
“If not today, be thou content, poor heart!
God’s plans, like lilies pure and white, unfold;
We must not tear the close-shut leaves apart;
Time will reveal the calyxes of gold.”
This waiting, under severe trial or affliction, will indeed be a blessing in
disguise, if the soul be rightly exercised unto patience, endurance, faith,
hope, meekness, long-suffering, kindness and true Christian fortitude. And it
will be in the darkness of these waiting seasons that the blessed stars of hope
will shine the brightest, and the bright Morning Star, the harbinger of day,
will shed his beams into the deepest recesses of our hearts. “They that wait
upon the Lord,” says the Prophet (Isa. 40:31), “shall renew their strength; they
shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary, and they
shall walk and not faint.”
Blessed promises! and, to the praise of his abounding grace, his saints of the
past and present all bear ample testimony of their fulfillment.
“Who need faint while such a river
Ever flows our thirst to assuage?
Grace, which, like the Lord, the giver,
Never fails from age to age.”