This is the second part of season five on outward wants. We already looked at two helps from Flavel that can help us keep our hearts even when we lack basic needs for our bodies. This is a time when many are tempted to doubt God’s providence, and when our hearts are laid bare. It is also a time when we can experience great growth and confidence in the Lord. Two helps we looked at so far are the following: (1) when you face outward need, remember that even the most holy of God’s servants went through that season (it is not a sign of God’s disfavour); and (2) believers have the promises of God, meaning that we have no reason to despair or to think that God will ever abandon us. Here is help number three:
3.) If it be bad now, it might have been worse. Has God denied thee the comforts of this life? He might have denied thee Christ, peace, and pardon also; and then thy case had been woeful indeed.
You know God has done so to millions. How many such wretched objects may your eyes behold every day, that have no comfort in hand, nor yet in hope; that are miserable here, and will be so to eternity; that have a bitter cup, and nothing to sweeten it—no, not so much as any hope that it will be better. But it is not so with you: though you be poor in this world, yet you are “rich in faith, and an heir of the kingdom which God has promised.” Learn to set spiritual riches over against temporal poverty. Balance all your present troubles with your spiritual privileges. Indeed if God has denied your soul the robe of righteousness to clothe it, the hidden manna to feed it, the heavenly mansion to receive it, you might well be pensive; but the consideration that he has not may administer comfort under any outward distress. When Luther began to be pressed by want, he said, “Let us be contented with our hard fare; for do not we feast upon Christ, the bread of life?” “Blessed be God,” said Paul, “who hath abounded to us in all spiritual blessings.”
If you are a Christian, then your condition can be unimaginably worse than it currently is. None of the helps mentioned so far in this devotional series can be of any use to those not saved through Christ. There is nothing in what we are that God has chosen to show favour on us. We are less than worms with regard to what we can offer Him, especially in our sinful condition. Everything is grace for us, but He could have so easily left us without this grace. So, when you face want for your needs, remember how much worse your life could have been without Christ. Such reflection should bring you to praise and admiration for God.
4.) Though this affliction be great, God has far greater, with which he chastises the dearly beloved of his soul in this world. Should he remove this and inflict those, you would account your present state a very comfortable one, and bless God to be as you now are. Should God remove your present troubles, supply all your outward wants, give you the desire of your heart in creature-comforts; but hide his face from you, shoot his arrows into your soul, and cause the venom of them to drink up your spirit: should he leave you but a few days to the buffetings of Satan: should he hold your eyes but a few nights waking with horrors of conscience, tossing to and fro till the dawning of the day:—should he lead you through the chambers of death, show you the visions of darkness, and make his terrors set themselves in array against you: then tell me if you would not think it a great mercy to be back again in your former necessitous condition, with peace of conscience; and account bread and water, with God’s favor, a happy state? O then take heed of repining. Say not that God deals hardly with you, lest you provoke him to convince you by your own sense that he has worse rods than these for unsubmissive and froward children.
Proverbs 13:7 gives us some good perspective on this: “One man pretends to be rich but has nothing; another pretends to be poor but has great wealth” (HCSB). We do not yet see what we possess, even when in bodily need. You can have all of your needs met in abundance, and still be cold, naked, and blind. Jesus also offers advice that can apply to times of want. This was right after His baptism, when He was taken into the desert to be tempted by the devil: “Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the Devil. After He had fasted 40 days and 40 nights, He was hungry. Then the tempter approached Him and said, ‘If You are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.’ But He answered, ‘It is written: Man must not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God’” (Matt. 4:1-4). What is Jesus saying here? He is saying that the truth of Scripture is more important for nourishment than even bread for the body. Eating bread, when compared with Scripture, is not just as reading the Bible. Bread is something that you chew on (reflection), swallow (apply to your life) and digest (whereby it becomes a part of you). This bread sustains you, keeps you alive, gives you the strength to carry out your work, and keeps you from poor spiritual health. Having this is far more important and significant than even having our daily food. If this is what Christ values, then who are we to elevate bodily food and needs above our diet of the Word? And if we have the Bible, then we are blessed far beyond many of our brothers and sisters who came before us. Many have starved for lack of the Bible in their language. So, study and memorize the Scriptures, that His truth can always be on your heart (Deut. 6:6). Then you will always have food, even for times when we do not have access to the Scripture. The world hates the Bible. We currently have a window of open access to it. This window may very well be closing. So, prepare for times of true drought. These will carry you through, even in days of bodily need.
5.) If it be bad now, it will be better shortly. Keep thy heart by this consideration, ‘the meal in the barrel is almost spent; well, be it so, why should that trouble me, if I am almost beyond the need and use of these things?’ The traveler has spent almost all his money; ‘well,’ says he, ‘though my money be almost spent, my journey is almost finished too: I am near home, and shall soon be fully supplied.’ If there be no candles in the house, it is a comfort to think that it is almost day, and then there will be no need of them. I am afraid, Christian, you misreckon when you think your provision is almost spent, and you have a great way to travel, many years to live and nothing to live upon; it may be not half so many as you suppose. In this be confident, if your provision be spent, either fresh supplies are coming, though you see not whence, or you are nearer your journey’s end than you reckon yourself to be. Desponding soul, does it become a man traveling upon the road to that heavenly city, and almost arrived there, within a few days’ journey of his Father’s house, where all his wants shall be supplied, to be so anxious about a little meat, or drink, or clothes, which he fears he shall want by the way? It was nobly said by the forty martyrs when turned out naked in a frosty night to be starved to death, “The winter indeed is sharp and cold, but heaven is warm and comfortable; here we shiver for cold, but Abraham’s bosom will make amends for all.”
‘But,’ says the desponding soul, ‘I may die for want.’ Who ever did so? When were the righteous forsaken? If indeed it be so, your journey is ended, and you fully supplied.
‘But I am not sure of that; were I sure of heaven, it would be another matter.’ Are you not sure of that? then you have other matters to trouble yourself about than these; methinks these should be the least of all your cares. I do not find that souls perplexed about the want of Christ, pardon of sin, &c. are usually very solicitous about these things. He that seriously puts such questions as these, ‘What shall I do to be saved? how shall I know my sin is pardoned?’ does not trouble himself with, “What shall I eat, what shall I drink, or wherewithal shall I be clothed?”
In times of want, we become quite acquainted with what we truly need. Needing your sins to be forgiven and to be found in Christ are needs far above any comparison with your mere bodily needs. The need for Christ is dire for every human being. Christ is the greatest help in this life and our whole substance in the next. Bodily food only benefits and sustains during our short lives on earth, and this only in a minimal way! Bodily food can never give us what we truly need. It only serves to delay our inevitable deaths! The mere functioning of our bodies is far inferior to the freedom found, and the eternal life-giving substance, in Christ. One of itself entails merely coasting aimlessly through life, working to sustain machinery that is here one day and gone the next. The other is the bread Christ offers, which gives meaning and breadth to our short time on earth and beyond unto everlasting. Can you see that having bodily food, if we have not Christ, is meaningless? Without Christ, we are as cattle waiting for the meatgrinder. We can eat, but for what purpose? To be, as Peter said, caught and destroyed (2 Pet. 2:12)? That is the lot of the wicked. Solomon recognized that enjoying the benefits of life are only good with God: “who can eat and who can enjoy life apart from Him?” (Eccl. 2:25). And any enjoyments that the wicked may have on the earth are fleeting and their end is despair. Is it clear how the bread of life far outweighs the mere bread for the body? Hear the words of Christ:
[D]on’t worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ For the idolaters eagerly seek all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be provided for you. Therefore don’t worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own (Matt. 6:31-34).
Seeking God’s kingdom and righteousness is the proper response to being in need (not being anxious about it). And not only will God look over you on the earth, but you will pass to life also. It is truly a short trip from this life to the next. So, take comfort from the fact that the body you now have is passing away, and you, like a seed, will have a new and perfect body; a body which you are now feeding with the words of life!
Next time we will be looking at two more helps in the season of outward wants.