Month: January 2012

Happen-ness

·

Vance Havner 90x115by Vance Havner

John Henry Newman wrote, “Those who make comfort the great subject of their preaching seem to mistake the end of their ministry. Holiness is the great end. Comfort is a cordial but no one drinks cordials from morning to night.” Happiness is not the chief end of our faith. God would make us holy and then we shall be happy with His joy. There is all the difference in the world between the happiness of this age (which ought to be spelled “happen-ness,” since it depends on what happens) and the joy of the Lord.

by Vance Havner

God’s Best

·

A.B. Simpson 90 x115by A.B. Simpson

Cast down, but not destroyed—2 Corinthians 4:9

How did God bring about the miracle of the Red Sea? By shutting His people in on every side so that there was no way out but the divine way. The Egyptians were behind them, the sea was in front of them, the mountains were on both sides of them. There was no escape but from above.

Someone has said that the devil can wall us in, but he cannot roof us over. We can always get out at the top. Our difficulties are but God’s challenges, and many times He makes them so hard that we must get above them or go under.

In the Providence of God, such an hour furnishes us with the highest possibilities for faith. We are pushed by the very emergency into God’s best.

Beloved, this is God’s hour. If you will rise to meet it you will get such a hold upon Him that you will never be in extremities again; or if you are, you will learn to call them not extremities, but opportunities. Like Jacob, you will go forth from that night at Peniel, no longer Jacob, but victorious Israel. Let us bring to Him our need and prove Him true.

by A.B. Simpson