HOW many are deterred from coming to the Savior, or, at all events, from confessing Him as their Savior through fear of their inability to stand. Knowing something of their inherent weakness, and of the awful power with which the enemy can present his temptations, they hesitate to take upon them the holy name of Christ, lest by their subsequent conduct they should bring dishonor upon it.
While respecting such conscientiousness, I venture to suggest that it arises from ignorance as to two great facts. First, our own utter and absolute weakness; second, God's power and willingness to uphold us in the day of temptation. For if some little knowledge of our frailty leads us to regard the future as bristling with difficulties, the discovery of our complete lack of strength would cause us to regard it rather as full of impossibilities. We should then conclude that power to sustain us must come from outside ourselves altogether, that if we are to continue for a moment to stand, in the face of all the forces which Satan will marshal against us, it must be by the power of God.
See, I have a penknife, which I will try to stand on its end. The end is rounded and smooth, and I have set myself a—what kind of task? A difficult one? "No," you reply, "an impossible task. You can never make that penknife stand up on its end." Behold, then, the impossible task actually accomplished! The penknife is standing!
“But," you remark, "you are holding it!”
Of course I am. Did you think I was foolish enough to imagine that I could make it stand in any other way? That were indeed an impossibility. But to make it stand by holding it up is neither impossible nor difficult.
Let me now read you a line from Romans 14th chapter, containing a magnificent promise. You will find it in the fourth verse: "He shall be holden up; for God is able to make him stand." Of whom are such glorious words predicated? Look at the preceding verse, and you will see. It says, "God hath received him." Then of every one whom God has received (as the father in the parable received his repenting and returning son) it is stated that God is able to make him stand.
Can you find room for those misgivings which have tortured you, in the face of such words as these?
But we are not mere machines, nor does God treat us as such. If we are "kept by the power of God," it is through the exercise of faith on our part. We are told this in 1 Peter 1:55Who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. (1 Peter 1:5). And we need to know how God holds us up.
Come with me to yonder flour-mill. Do you see that heap of empty sacks in the corner? Take hold of one and try to make it stand up. What! You cannot. You say I am asking you to do an impossibility! No, no; ask the miller to make it stand, and to show you how he does it.
The miller takes the sack with a smile and holds it under the chute down which the white, newly ground flour is falling. Soon the sack is full. Now is there any difficulty in making it stand? No indeed, it stands by the weight of what it contains.
Learn then thereby, that in order to make us stand God feeds us and fills us with what will strengthen our souls. Christ is the food of His people. As we appropriate, by faith, His death in its far-reaching significance—a significance in which we are ever finding fresh depths—as we feast on His love and enter by the grace of the Holy Spirit into the enjoyment of those things which will be our everlasting portion, our souls are made strong. The joy of the Lord is our strength. The fullness of God's blessing satisfies our hearts. We look up to Christ with grateful and adoring eyes, and as we walk with Him, study Him, listen to His words, feed upon all that He is, we are "kept by the power of God" and can sing:
“Temptations lose their power
When THOU art nigh!”
But there is yet another means by which God holds us up. Do you see this egg? What will you say if I propose to make it stand on its end without my holding it? You may not say now that it is impossible, but is it not what you think?
See! I take it and give it a hard knock upon the table. The shell cracks and splinters. There is a dent at the end of the egg. On that dent I set it, and lo, it stands!
What a lesson lies here for us! It is by means of the hard knocks, the trials under which we groan, the times of adversity and sorrow, that God sometimes holds us up and makes us stand. Prone to be self-reliant, we have to learn that, like Mephibosheth, we are not only cripples when grace first reaches us, but cripples to the end of life's story. And of this God has to remind us again and again. His gracious hand is laid upon us in sore affliction: Why? Not because He is angry and is punishing us, but in order to break our self-reliance and stubborn wills; in order to save us from the fall that follows pride, through saving us from the pride that goes before the fall. Who would not then take these blows, these trials of faith, these infirmities and sorrows, with sincere thanksgiving, when we remember that thereby God fulfills His faithful promise: "He shall be holden up?”