To Always Be Pleased with Him
I have been reading Iain Murray's book, Pentecost Today?, and was convicted and encouraged to seek anew my joy in God. Here is the excerpt that really grabbed me tonight: 1.
Our first joy is to be in God himself and in his relation to us. And that is a joy for all seasons and all circumstances.
A man such as W.C. Burns understood this when in China he was content to labour quietly far away from the scenes of success and popularity which he had known in his homeland of Scotland. For the most part he sowed what others would reap. That he did not do this in sadness, his biographer noted, is an example 'to every labourer in the Lord's vineyard, teaching us not to live upon the stimulus of a present success, even in the conversion of souls.'2. The same lesson is well stated by John Colquhoun, a fellow Scot:
The Christian must study, in the faith of God's redeeming love to him, so to love God in Christ, as to be at all times pleased with him. In proportion as he loves his God and Father, he will be pleased with him, with all his perfections, and with all his will; and if he be always pleased or delighted with God, he will in the same proportion, be always comfortable, always delighted in his own soul. To be constantly pleased with God in Christ, and with all the will of God is, indeed, a difficult and high attainment; but the believer cannot otherwise become so rooted and grounded in love to him as to attain settled consolation. 3.
1. Pentecost Today?, Iain Murray, Banner of Truth Trust, 1998, p.78.
2. Memoir of Burns, Islay Burns, p 553
3. A Treatise on Spiritual Comfort, 2nd Ed., John Colquhoun, Edinburgh, 1814, p.404.
Our first joy is to be in God himself and in his relation to us. And that is a joy for all seasons and all circumstances.
A man such as W.C. Burns understood this when in China he was content to labour quietly far away from the scenes of success and popularity which he had known in his homeland of Scotland. For the most part he sowed what others would reap. That he did not do this in sadness, his biographer noted, is an example 'to every labourer in the Lord's vineyard, teaching us not to live upon the stimulus of a present success, even in the conversion of souls.'2. The same lesson is well stated by John Colquhoun, a fellow Scot:
The Christian must study, in the faith of God's redeeming love to him, so to love God in Christ, as to be at all times pleased with him. In proportion as he loves his God and Father, he will be pleased with him, with all his perfections, and with all his will; and if he be always pleased or delighted with God, he will in the same proportion, be always comfortable, always delighted in his own soul. To be constantly pleased with God in Christ, and with all the will of God is, indeed, a difficult and high attainment; but the believer cannot otherwise become so rooted and grounded in love to him as to attain settled consolation. 3.
1. Pentecost Today?, Iain Murray, Banner of Truth Trust, 1998, p.78.
2. Memoir of Burns, Islay Burns, p 553
3. A Treatise on Spiritual Comfort, 2nd Ed., John Colquhoun, Edinburgh, 1814, p.404.
posted by Jeffrey A. Norris at
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