There is a time for all things in the believer's experience-for confession, prayer, and praise.
Posted : 26 Apr, 2013 02:22 AM
Psalm 119:65 You have dealt well with Your servant, O Lord,
according to Your word.
There is a time for all things in the believer's experience-for
confession, prayer, and praise. This Psalm mostly expresses
the confessions and prayers of the man of God-yet mingled
with thankful acknowledgments of mercy. He had prayed-
"Deal bountifully with Your servant." Perhaps here is the
acknowledgment of the answer to his prayer-You have dealt
well with Your servant, O Lord, according to Your word. And
who among us has not daily reason to make the same
acknowledgment? Even in those trials, when we have
indulged hard thoughts of God, a clearer view of His
judgments, and a more simple dependence upon His
faithfulness and love, will rebuke our impatience and unbelief,
and encourage our trust. Subsequent experience altered
Jacob's hasty view of the Lord's dealings with him. In a
moment of peevishness, the recollection of the supposed
death of a beloved son, and the threatened bereavement of
another, tempted him to say-"All these things are against me."
At a brighter period of his day, when clouds were beginning to
disperse, we hear that "the spirit of Jacob revived: And Jacob
said, It is enough; Joseph my son is yet alive, I will go and see
him before I die." And when his evening sun was going down
almost without a cloud, in the believing act of "blessing the
sons of" his beloved "Joseph," how clearly does he retract the
language of his former sinful impatience!-"God, before whom
my fathers, Abraham and Isaac, did walk-the God which fed
me all my life long to this day-the Angel which redeemed me
from all evil, bless the lads!" This surely was in the true spirit
of the acknowledgment-You have dealt well with Your servant,
O Lord, according to Your word. And how is it that any of us have ever harbored a suspicion of
unbelief? Has God in any one instance falsified His promise?
Has "the vision" failed to come at the end? Has it ever "lied?"
Has He not "confirmed His promise by an oath," "that we
might have two immutable things" as the ground of "strong
consolation?" Any degree less than the full credit that He
deserves, is admitting the false principle, that God is a man,
that He should lie, and the son of man, that He should repent.
It weakens the whole spiritual frame, shakes our grasp of the
promise, destroys our present comfort, and brings foreboding
apprehensions of the future. Whereas, if we have faith and
patience to wait,-"in the mount the Lord shall be seen." "All
things" may seem to be "against us," while at the very
moment, under the wonder-working hand of God, they are
"working together for our good." When therefore we "are in
heaviness through manifold temptations," and we discover a
"needsbe" for it all; and "the trial of faith is found unto praise
and honor and glory"-when we are thus reaping the fruitful
discipline of our Father's school, must we not put a fresh seal
to our testimony-You have dealt well with Your servant, O
Lord? But why should we delay our acknowledgment until we
come out of our trial? Ought we not to give it even in the midst
of our "heaviness?" Faith has enabled many, and would
enable us, to "glorify God in the fires;" to "trust" Him, even
when "walking in darkness, and having no light;" and, even
while smarting under His chastening rod, to acknowledge, that
He has dealt well with us.
But if I doubt the reasonableness of this acknowledgment,
then let me, while suffering under trials, endeavor to take up
different language. 'Lord, You have dealt ill with Your servant;
You have not kept Your word.' If in a moment of unbelief my
impatient heart, like Jacob's, could harbor such a
dishonorable suspicion, my conscience would soon smite me
with conviction- 'What! shall I, who am "called out of darkness
into marvelous light"-shall I, who am rescued from slavery and death, and brought to a glorious state of liberty and life,
complain? Shall I, who have been redeemed at so great a
price, and who have a right to "all the promises of God in
Christ Jesus," and who am now an "heir of God, and joint heir
with Christ," murmur at my Father's will? Alas, that my heart
should prove so foolish, so weak, so ungrateful! Lord! I would
acknowledge with thankfulness, and yet with humiliation, You
have dealt well with Your servant, according to Your word.'
But how sinfully do we neglect these honorable and cheering
acknowledgments! Were we habitually to mark them for future
remembrance, we should be surprised to see how their
numbers would multiply. "If we should count them, they are
more in number than the sand." And truly such recollections enhancing every common, as well as every special mercy would come up as a sweet savor to God "by Christ Jesus."
"Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless His
