We are going forth with a trust so sacred, And a truth so divine and deep, With a message clear and a work so glorious, And a charge—such a charge—to keep. Let it be your greatest joy, my brother, That the Lord can count on you; And if all besides should fail and falter, To your trust be always true.
“Delight thyself in the Lord” (Ps. xxxvii. 4).
Daniel’s heart was filled with God’s love for His work and kingdom and his prayers were the mightiest forces of his time, through which God gave to him the restoration of Israel to their own land, and the acknowledgment by the rulers of the world of the God of whom he testified and for whom he lived.
There is a beautiful promise in the thirty-seventh Psalm, “Delight thyself in the Lord, and He will give thee the desires of thine heart,” which it is, perhaps, legitimate to translate, that not only does it mean the fulfilment of our desires, but even the inspiration of our desires, the inbreathing of His thoughts into us, so that our prayers shall be in accord with His will and so shall bring back to us the unfailing answer of His mighty providence.
Teach me Thy thoughts, O God! Think Thou, Thyself, in me, Then shall I only always think Thine own thoughts after Thee.
Teach me Thy thoughts, O God! Show me Thy plan divine: Save me from all my plans and works, And lead me into Thine.
“The things which are seen are temporal” (II. Cor. iv. 18).
How strong is the snare of the things that are seen, and how necessary for God to keep us in the things that are unseen! If Peter is to walk on the water, he must walk; if he is going to swim, he must swim, but he cannot do both. If the bird is going to fly it must keep away from the fences and the trees, and trust to its buoyant wings. But if it tries to keep within easy reach of the ground, it will make poor work of flying.
God had to bring Abraham to the end of his own strength, and to let him see that in his own body he could do nothing. He had to consider his own body as good as dead, and then take God for the whole work, and when he looked away from himself, and trusted God alone, then He became fully persuaded that what He had promised, He was able also to perform.
This is what God is teaching us, and He has to keep away encouraging results until we learn to trust without them, and then He loves to make His word real in fact as well as faith.