Each section under a new subtitle has been excerpted from a different article, all written by J. N. Darby.
Cares and Trials
With regard to our cares and trials, Christ does not take us out of them. “I pray not that Thou shouldest take them out of the world” (John 17:1515I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil. (John 17:15)). While He leaves us in the world, He leaves us liable to all that is incidental to man, but in the new nature He teaches us to lean on God. The thought with us often is that, because we are Christians, we are to get away from trials, or else, if in them, we are not to feel them. This is not God’s thought concerning us.
The nearer a man walks with God, through grace, the more tender he becomes as to the faults of others; the longer he lives as a saint, the more conscious of the faithfulness and tenderness of God and of how it has been applied to himself.
We are not to expect never to be exercised or troubled or cast down, as though we were without feeling. “They gave Me also gall for My meat; and in My thirst they gave Me vinegar to drink” (Psa. 69:2121They gave me also gall for my meat; and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink. (Psalm 69:21)). The Lord thoroughly felt it all. “Reproach,” He says, “hath broken My heart” (Psa. 69:2020Reproach hath broken my heart; and I am full of heaviness: and I looked for some to take pity, but there was none; and for comforters, but I found none. (Psalm 69:20)). But there is this difference between Christ in suffering and affliction and ourselves — with Him never an instant elapsed between the trial and communion with God. This is not the case with us. We have first to find out that we are weak and cannot help ourselves, and then we turn and look to God.
The Lord Keeps His Own
It is a comfort to know that through all the Lord will keep His own. I do not mean that laborers and all saints should not be exercised as to it, but that when they see failure they have this to fall back upon. We desire to see them as a watered garden, and what a joy it is when we see them so! It is the power of the Spirit of God which makes them united and happy together, but then He must work in the individual heart, that it may be so, that they may be as “willows by the water courses.” And there is grace enough in Christ to do it. The text has often been a comfort to me, “My grace is sufficient for thee” (2 Cor. 12:99And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. (2 Corinthians 12:9)), but then we must learn, and experimentally, that we are nothing. We all know that it is true, but we must learn to walk in the sense of it. It makes the difference between one saint and another, only we must refer to Christ in grace, or we might get discouraged. But a man who is discouraged is not really there: He does not find strength, but where is he looking for it? When we are really nothing, we look to Christ and we know that He can do everything and, while contending in prayer for a blessing, we know that He does, and orders everything. But this does suppose a just sense of our own nothingness and blessed confidence in God, so that knowing His love we can leave all to Him, knowing that He does all at any rate and that He will make all issue in blessing.
The Heart of Jesus
I thought that she (a sister who was going through real difficulties in her life) might be discouraged and cast down by this affliction. If it is so, let her remember that His ways are not as our ways and that the heart of Jesus, of Him who smites us, has itself passed through all the trials through which He makes us pass—that He cannot make us taste anything for our good without having drunk Himself all its bitterness to the dregs. He knows what He is doing; He suffers all that He inflicts. It is His love, His knowledge of all that makes Him do all that He does. Let us have full confidence in Him who has been tempted in all things like unto us.
Communion
In connection with your work, seek the Lord’s face and lean on Him. When the body is not robust, one is in danger of doing it as a task, as an obligation, and the spirit becomes a little legal, or one yields to weariness and is discouraged before God. Work is a favor which is granted us. Be quite peaceful and happy in the sense of grace; then go and pour out that peace to souls. This is true service, from which one returns very weary, it may be, in body, but sustained and happy; one rests beneath God’s wings and takes up the service again till the true rest comes. Our strength is renewed like the eagle’s. Ever remember, “My grace is sufficient for thee: for My strength is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:99And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. (2 Corinthians 12:9)). Seek, above all, personal communion with the Lord.
God’s Mind in Communion
Before we enter upon any particular service, before anything can be done, if we have not the certainty of God’s guiding us by His eye, we should seek to get it, judging our own hearts as to what may be hindering. Suppose I set about doing a thing and meet with difficulties; I shall begin to be uncertain as to whether it is God’s mind or not, and hence, there will be feebleness and discouragement. But, on the other hand, if acting in the intelligence of God’s mind in communion, I shall be “more than a conqueror,” whatever may meet me by the way.
Chastisement
There is a class of trials that come from without: They are not to be cast off; they must be borne. Christ went through them. We have not, like Him, resisted even to the shedding of our blood rather than fail in faithfulness and obedience. Now God acts in these trials as a father; He chastises us. They come perhaps, as in the case of Job, from the enemy, but the hand and the wisdom of God are in them. He chastises those whom He loves. We must, therefore, neither despise the chastisement nor be discouraged by it. We must not despise it, for He does not chastise without a motive or a cause (moreover, it is God who does it), nor must we be discouraged, for He does it in love.
The Flesh in Us
It is a serious thing to maintain God’s cause when the flesh is in us, and Satan disposes of the world to hinder and deceive us. But do not be discouraged, for God works in you; greater is He that is in us than he that is in the world. You cannot be in wilderness difficulties unless you have been redeemed out of Egypt. “My grace is sufficient for thee,” says Christ. “My strength is made perfect in weakness.” “If God be for us, who can be against us?” The secret is lowliness of heart and the sense of dependence and looking to Christ with confidence, who has saved us and called us with a holy calling. You cannot mistrust yourself, nor trust God, too much. The true knowledge of redemption brings one into perfect peace, into true and constant dependence on the Redeemer.
Before God or Man?
Poor Elijah! He had a lesson to learn, which we ourselves, weak and poor as we are, need to learn also. When Elijah stood before the Lord, he could by the Lord’s power stop or send rain to the earth. But when he stood, not now before the Lord, but before Jezebel, he was then without strength, and this ungodly woman was able to cause him to fear. Downcast, Elijah therefore goes into the wilderness, sits down under a juniper tree and asks the Lord to take away his life (1 Kings 19:4). How little did he remember what the Lord had done for him; how little did he enter into the mind of God and expect that chariot of fire which would shortly take him up to heaven (2 Kings 2:11)!
So is it with us. We are downcast, discouraged and weak in ourselves as soon as we fail to live in faith and prayer, and at such a time we cannot say, as Elijah in 1 Kings 18, “The Lord ... before whom I stand.”
Faith
The faith which comprehends the goodness of God and sighs for the time when the people shall enjoy their privileges always confesses the sin which has obliged God to deprive His people for a time of these privileges. Faith never becomes discouraged, as if God were unfaithful; on the contrary, it insists upon the blame being with the people and that God has only acted faithfully in thus dealing with them. The interest which Daniel felt in his people led him to the consideration of the prophet Jeremiah, and then he entreats the Lord to confirm this blessing which He had promised by Jeremiah, that is, that He would accomplish the deliverance of His people from captivity.
A Truly Humble Man
Faith has constant, unfailing confidence in Christ. I know what sorrow is, but discouragement I do not know. If you are counting on your own strength, then I am not surprised at your discouragement, but “He that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep” (Psa. 121:44Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep. (Psalm 121:4)). We ought to be humbled — ah! humbled in the dust, if you please, but never discouraged. A truly humble man is not discouraged; the discouraged man is not a humble man, for he has trusted, as man, to something besides God; true nothingness cannot.
God’s View
It is very important for us to see sometimes the church from above, in the wilderness, but in the beauty of the thoughts of God, a pearl without price. In the midst of the camp below, in the desert, what murmurings and complainings; how much indifference, what carnal motives, would have been witnessed and heard! From above, from him who has the vision of God, who has his eyes open, everything is beautiful. “I stand in doubt of you” (Gal. 4:2020I desire to be present with you now, and to change my voice; for I stand in doubt of you. (Galatians 4:20)), says the apostle, and immediately after, “I have confidence in you through the Lord” (Gal. 5:1010I have confidence in you through the Lord, that ye will be none otherwise minded: but he that troubleth you shall bear his judgment, whosoever he be. (Galatians 5:10)). We must get up to Him, and we shall have His thoughts of grace, who sees the beauty of His people, of His assembly, through everything else [the murmurings and the complainings], for it is beautiful. But for this, one would be either entirely discouraged or satisfied with evil. This vision of God removes these two thoughts at once.
The Ruin of the Church
One finds so many wants (needs), so sorrowful a state of the church, that it astonishes, though I have believed and taught it nigh 40 years, but it encourages too. We never ought to be discouraged, because the Lord we trust in never fails, nor can. In 2 Timothy, when all was in ruin and declension, Paul looks for his dear son to be strong in the faith: There never is so good a time for it, because it is needed, and the Lord meets need. I have the strongest sense that all is breaking up, but that makes one feel more strongly and clearly that we possess a kingdom which cannot be moved.
J. N. Darby (excerpts from his writings)