Editor’s Note: In 2 Corinthians 12:14 we read these words, penned by a father: “I seek not yours, but you: for the children ought not to lay up for the parents, but the parents for the children.” How happy are children whose parents seek, as the Apostle Paul did, to lay up for them a store of true riches from the Word of God, gleaned in communion with Himself. We begin this series of short meditations sent from a father to his beloved children, with the prayer and desire that they will serve as a source of blessing and encouragement to all who read them.
“And they that know Thy name will put their trust in Thee: for Thou, Lord, hast not forsaken them that seek Thee” (Psa. 9:10).
To know Him is to trust Him. The more we know Him, the more we trust Him. Therefore our need is to get to know Him better. How important to have our faces in the right direction. Truly our greatest need in this life is to have our faces toward Him. There may be bumps in the road and times that are hard, but the direction is right and all those bumps and hard times will only be reason to prove Him who has promised never to leave us nor forsake us.
“Yea, they turned back and tempted God, and limited the Holy One of Israel” (Psa. 78:41).
Is it possible that an eternal, all-powerful God can be limited? In His own sovereign person it is impossible. But when it touches His working in the lives of His creature man, since we are created as responsible moral beings, our unbelief limits His working in our lives. To not believe God, John tells us (1 John 5:10), is to make Him a liar. “He did not many mighty works there [His own country] because of their unbelief ” (Matt. 13:58).
May God grant that we can discern if the doubts that we have relate to ourselves or other persons around or our God. We have abundant reason to mistrust ourselves. “He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool” (Prov. 28:26). The Word of God even tells us that it is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man (Psa. 118:8). This indicates that even though we should not be mistrusting of people in general, still there may be reason to mistrust them at times. But never will there ever be a reason to mistrust our God. To do so only limits His working for us and in us what is for our ultimate good. We often mistrust because of our lack of understanding. But that indicates that we trust our understanding more than His.
R. Thonney