Faith's Resting Place
Unknown Author
Table of Contents
Faith's Resting Place
If my soul rests entirely on the work of Christ and His acceptance, as the One who appears in the presence of God for me, that is a finished work, and a perfect infinite acceptance." "As He is, so are we in this world.," so that herein is love with us made perfect, that we should have boldness in the day of judgment. Now what men substitute for this is the examination of the effects of the Spirit in me.
The effects of regeneration are put as the ground of rest in lieu of redemption; whence I sometimes hope when I see those effects, sometimes despair when I see the flesh working. Having put the work of the Spirit in the place of the work of Christ, the confidence I am commanded to hold fast never exists, and I doubt whether I am in the faith at all. All this results from substituting the work of the Spirit in me for the work, victory, resurrection, and ascension of Christ actually accomplished—the sure, because finished resting-place of faith, which never alters, never varies, and is always the same before God. The discovery of sin in you, hateful and detestable as it is, is no ground for doubting; because it was by reason of this, to atone for this, because you were this, that Christ died; and Christ is risen, and there is an end of that question.
Faith's Resting Place
"MY GROANING." (Psa. 38:9).—A groan to God, however deep the misery, however prostrate the spirit, however unconscious that we are heard, is always received above as the intercession of the Spirit, and answered according to the perfectness of God's purpose concerning us in Christ. Therefore the charge is, "They have not cried unto me with their heart, when they howled upon their beds." There is no consequence of sin which is beyond the reach of this groaning to God, nothing but the self-will which will not groan to Him at all. This is a blessed thought! Such is our intercourse with God in joy and in sorrow; and I doubt not that in us poor blessed creatures, the truest, the most blessed (what will shine most when all things shine before God), are these groans to Him; they cannot, indeed, be in their fullness but where the knowledge of the glory of blessing is. I can see them precede the greatest works and words of Jesus. The sense of the wilderness, taken into His heart, made but the streams which could refresh it flow forth in the sympathy of the Spirit which it called forth; and now the Spirit is IN US.
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