GOD’S WAYS
A John E Temple
Psalm 17: 5
Psalm 23: 3
Romans 8: 18
I would like to say a little as to God’s ways, God’s ways for His saints. I was led to the first two scriptures just after the Lord took our sister home to be with Himself. The last scripture was brought to me earlier this week by a brother; they fit in together. What I have to say as to those two scriptures in the psalms stems from part of a note in regard of God’s way or ways that is given in our Bibles in Proverbs 2: 9 note i. One of the references there speaks of ‘God’s path for the saint, which does not always lead where we expect, or so that we can see straight on in it’.
These two scriptures in the psalms are linked by the thought of the way. It came to me in regard of our sister: who would have thought of the way that God led her, being in the nursing home for over twenty years, and able to do so very little for herself? But it was God’s way. I do not want to expand on that exactly, although in these situations you can understand naturally we might ask, ‘Why?’. Why was it? Why has that happened? Why has this been allowed to happen? Beloved, although our sister being in a weakened situation for so long is an extreme case, challenging things do come into our lives; and so I thought a word of encouragement might help us to realise that when difficult things arise in God’s ways with us, and we are appreciate that they are so. We do not always understand; we do not always see. We certainly may not, as the note suggests, be taken in the way that we expect; and the way certainly may not always enable us to see right on. Who could have seen right on with our sister when, following surgery, she was taken into that nursing home; that it would have led on in that way? I can say that our sister found a certain acceptance in that way, acceptance of God’s ways with her. There was a quietness - yes, you might say that was natural on account of her weakness - but also a certain restfulness and acceptance day after day in God’s way with her.
I will come briefly to the scriptures read. “When thou” - that is Jehovah - “holdest my goings in thy paths, my footsteps slip not”. It suggests that that is when I come to recognise what God is doing, what He is holding. I know it says “When”; it does not simply say, ‘Thou dost hold’, but I think the “When” would suggest that it is when I come to it as realising that is what is happening; “thou holdest my goings in thy paths”. God has a path for me, a path for you, and it is not only the path, but the way I am to go in that path: “When thou holdest my goings”. Am I content, am I restful? Do I see that it is God who is leading me in it? When I do, I can be assured that, while I may not see all things in relation to it, “my footsteps slip not”. Why not? because God is doing the holding. It may seem unusual at a burial to take the scriptures up in this way, but I think that with the background of our sister, and our seeing the lives of one another in the path, no two the same, we may wonder at times. If we ask ‘Why?’, let it not be a ‘why’ of discontentment, but a ‘why’ of desiring to see more God’s ways with me so, that my knowledge of Him may increase.
We get that suggestion in Psalm 23: “He restoreth my soul”. I understand that, when it says He restoreth or He reviveth, it does not mean necessarily that I have fallen out of the way or anything like that, nor done anything wrong in itself, but sometimes we need this reviving. We need rekindling, dear brethren, in our spirits. First we get, “He restoreth my soul” and then, “He leadeth me” - now we get His leading; “he leadeth me in paths of righteousness”. Surely the believer would desire to know these ways. You would expect to move in a path of righteousness, but we are to know God in these paths. However, I am not emphasising the character of the paths, for there would be other godly features marking them, but that we come to “for his name’s sake”. We come to it that it is not only that God is leading us in these paths, it is not only that we may be preserved in that way, but above all it is for what is for Him in it. It is “for his name’s sake”.
I turn to the final scripture. There are the paths here, the ways, but there is going to be a culmination as well; God is heading up to what will be: there will be “the coming glory to be revealed to us”. Meanwhile God’s paths for us do involve suffering. Paul says it here, and what a sufferer he was. He is not saying this abstractly; he is saying it as one who had known suffering very soon after he was converted. It was not long before he found himself in a pathway of suffering. He knew the sufferings; he would have seen it in the saints and known these things in himself. How does he sum it all up? “I reckon that the sufferings of this present time”. You might say the present little time when our lives here are compared with the great scope of what God is doing. Though our lives might be brief, they are important because God is working in them. “I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the coming glory to be revealed to us”: how wonderful that glory is that the sufferings are not even to be compared with it. It is like the sun shining, shining in regard of that glory, so that all else has gone into shade. The ways of God with us in this time are all leading on to the coming glory to be revealed to us.
I trust this will give encouragement to us at this time.
SUNBURY
27th February 2020