Favorite Pastor Quotes 6

Favorite Pastor Quotes 6



I perceive that your heavenly Father has again put you into the furnace!

(Letters of John Newton)

My Dear Madam, 
I perceive that your heavenly Father has again put you into the furnace, and I trust that He will divinely impress upon your heart, that there is a needs be for it--and that the outcome of your present trial shall surely end in good to your soul.

His Word tells us that trials are absolutely necessary, and why they are so--as He would not afflict those whom He loves, but for their real profit. So He chooses those afflictions for us, and appoints them for us at such seasons, and attended with such circumstances--as He sees will be (all things considered) most for our spiritual advantage. The afflictions and trials of His people are always sent, either tocure--or to prevent something still worse.

Satan is compared to a fowler, and we sometimes are as little upon our guard as a thoughtless bird--the danger is close to us, but we are not aware of it. But, as a sudden noise affrights the bird, and makes it take wing and escape the snare--so the Lord often disappoints the devices of the enemy, by sending a seasonable trial to His dear children, which arouses them, and makes them flee to Him for safety.

I have often thought that if David had fallen and broke his leg when he was going up to the housetop--he would have missed the sight of Bathsheba, and that long train of evils which made him cry out of broken bones in a still more painful sense. 

Just so, we do not know how things might have been with us--if such or such a painful dispensation had not happened. A course of continual prosperity might have lulled us to sleep. We must admit this, when we find ourselves still apt to be drowsy--even though the Lord is pleased to put thorns into our pillow. 

Notwithstanding the feeling proofs we have of the vanity of the present state, our spirits are still too apt to cleave to the dust. What then might have been the case--had our path been always smooth?

He is a good master to serve--I have found Him to be so for thirty years. 

Cheer up, dear Madam, the Lord does all things well! Do not be afraid of storms--for you have an infallible Pilot who will guide you with His eye, uphold you with His arm, and is every minute bringing you nearer to the harbor of eternal rest and peace!

We have just began harvest in these parts. The grain has passed through a variety of weather. Frosts and winds, rains and heat, each of which, singly, would have destroyed it--have each in their places (through the blessing of the Lord's overruling providence) concurred to bring it to its present maturity. The farmers here, as well as elsewhere, have had different fears and complaints at different times; they have thought sometimes the weather too cold or too hot, too wet or too dry, by turns. But their fears were groundless and vain--the crop is ripe, the stalks are loaded, and bend under the weight of the grain. 

Is not this an emblem of the spiritual life? What changes of weather have we passed through, since the seeds of grace were first sown in our hearts! How often have we been ready to murmur at the appointments of the Heavenly Gardener! How hardly could we be persuaded that the afflictions, temptations, and trials which we have been exercised with--have, in their places, been no less subservient to our growth, than the more pleasing sunshine we have been sometimes favored with? 

Yet, I trust, we are still growing and getting forward. Neither frost or floods have been able to destroy us; and Oh, Madam, (may our hearts rejoice at the thought!) the harvest is approaching! When He sees that we are fully ripe--when all that He has designed to do for us, in us, and by us, is completed--then He will separate us from these clods of earth, and remove us into His dwelling place, where we shall be done with fears and trials forever!

We shall not then live this poor dying life--neither shall we have to complain of an evil heart of unbelief. We shall not complain of a cold and careless heart--because we shall be at the fountain-head of all our best wishes and desires! We shall be enjoying, through eternal ages, that ineffable bliss which is prepared for all who love God, and who have been called by divine grace, out of the service of sin, Satan, and the world--to love and serve Him who is the Rock of eternal ages. Yes, my dear Madam, we shall, with unspeakable delight--see Jesus as He is, and be completely like Him! Let us, then, not be weary in well doing; for, in due season, we shall reap, if we fail not.

I am, my dear Madam,
Your obliged and affectionate Servant,
John Newton
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It is no wonder that they were so dejected!

(James Buchanan, "The Office and Work of the Holy Spirit")

"I am now going away to Him who sent Me . . . Because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart." John 16:5-6

It is no wonder that they were so dejected in the prospect of losing the personal presence of Him who was . . .
  their kindest friend,
  their unwearied benefactor,
  their patient teacher--whose . . .
wisdom was their guide, 
power was their defense, 
sympathy was their consolation, 
approval their was reward, and 
salvation was their highest hope. 

They were attached to Him as a personal Friend--by the strongest ties of gratitude, and admiration, and love. 

They had long associated with Him on terms of most endearing intimacy. 

They had often looked with delight on His compassionate countenance, 'full of grace and truth'. 

They had listened to his public preaching and His private conversation, when 'He spoke as never any man spoke'. 

They had witnessed His miracles of mercy, and His life of unwearied beneficence, 'when He went about continually doing good'. 

They had themselves received at His hands every benefit which divine love, combined with the most perfect human kindness, could bestow. 

And can we deem it astonishing, if the thought of parting with such a Friend, whose appearance, and voice, and person were entwined with their fondest affections--filled their hearts with especial sadness?
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The Death of Children

George Mylne

Oh! what a world we live in! How full of painful facts and harrowing incidents! How many souls are ushered into life; each one the offspring of a parent — each one tied to the native stock, by bonds of strictest intimacy! And thus a parent sees himself multiplied and reproduced in "olive branches round his table." Are they not bone of his very bone, flesh of his very flesh, bound up with him in all that is binding; their interests identical with his own; his energies expended on them, his thoughts devoted to them? For them he labors, for them he lives; their every pleasure twofold, both theirs and his; their every sorrow reflected in his own; his very life lived over again in theirs. In them, and with them, he plays with childhood's toys afresh. With them, in thought, he goes to school once more, and learns his early lessons over again. With them he joins once more in childish sports.

How closely dovetailed into one another, are a parent and his child, if only there be first the inclination, then time and opportunity, to cultivate parental ways — for, alas! this falls not to the lot of all, for where there is the will there may not always be the way. It is pleasant to see a father walking with his son, their very manner betokening a mutual intimacy, companionship in thought and feeling, like brothers in friendship — yet neither childlike reverence nor parental dignity lost sight of. And if so with son and father, is it not the same with a mother and her daughters, only, if possible, more intimate the union still?

But such is life, and such the law of its realities in fallen man, that joys prepare the way for sorrows, proportionate in degree. The closest unions are but preludes to the keenest separations; so that, in life's pictures, each gleam of light is counterbalanced with its shadow; and, sooner or later, sunny days are sure to usher in a night of darkness. And hence the fact of parents weeping for their children, and refusing to be comforted — their very persons, as it were, smarting as though a limb were amputated.

"The flowers of spring have come and gone;
Bright were the blossoms, brief their stay.
They shone, and they were shone upon;
They flourished — faded — passed away.

"So, hidden from our sorrowing eyes,
Our young, sweet spring-bloom buried lies;
One blast of earth swept o'er the flower —
It died, the blossom of an hour."

Reader, is this your sad condition? Have you lost a child? Whether son or daughter, infant or of riper years, it is much the same — in any case, a portion of yourself is gone. How sharp the visitation! How short its work! The grave has opened and has closed again; yet closed it not before it received its tenant — until in its yawning space you had committed "dust to dust, ashes to ashes, earth to earth." How shrank your soul within you, as you heard those moving words, that grating sound upon the casket! And as you hastened home, enrapt in your tenderness, the thoughts of other children left to you (if indeed you have them), healed not the smart, nor seemed to make amends for your lost treasure. Oh, what a fearful wrench it must have been, to tear that branch from out its parent stem, never to grow and flourish there again! Oceans of tears shed over that silent grave would not avail to bring your loved one back to you. Long might you kneel on that cold ground, and yet, nor verdant sod, nor marble tomb, nor modest headstone, could listen to your sobbing tale.

Think not, my friend, I blame you for your tears; neither does God reprove you. He knows that you must feel the wound inflicted on your sorrowing heart. He knows your frame, remembers you are dust (Psalm 103:14), and bids you seek Him in your tears, inviting you to tell your sorrows freely into His waiting ear. Believe me, this is the only remedy. Must the grave be visited unceasingly, and sorrow nursed until it becomes a morbid ailment a wound unsoftened with ointment, a standing sore; and all, because you sorrow to yourself, and not to Jesus?

Poor mourner, no! This is not the path to consolation, nor yet to rightly exercised distress. Do you ask, "What would you have me do?" See Love in it my friend! Is it not written, "God Is Love?" (1 John 4:8, 16). It was God who did it! It was God who took your child. Shall we say that God is love, in all but this? Have we found an end to His perfections — a limit to His love? Are there, then, exceptions to His perfect rule? No, God is love. Has He required of you what He Himself was not prepared to do? Has He not set you the example? Did God withhold His Son, His Only Son, for you and your salvation? Then say, could you withhold your child, when thus it pleased Him to ask you for what He only lent you for a season?

If you have grace, my friend, the grace of God in Jesus Christ, you only have to reason with yourself, to say "Amen" to God's appointment. Your heart will bleed — it must, it will. Shall a blow be dealt, and the frame not stagger at it? Yet faith will rise above it, and while you weep, the rainbow tints of resignation will cast prismatic glories on your tears. Visit not the tomb for mournful musings. If you can do it in joyful expectation of the coming day — the day of days — the resurrection morn, when earth shall render up the righteous dead to meet their Lord, then you may go with profit to the tomb — not otherwise. Take heed, then, what you do.

But if this way be foreign to your mind, and you can only weep as those who have no hope (1 Thessalonians 4:13) — if you cannot go to Jesus in your tears, nor take Him with you to the tomb — you need to be enlightened by the Spirit, not only for healthful mourning, but for eternal life.