the Third Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
John Gossner's Treasury
How unsearchable are God’s judgments, and his ways past finding out! Romans 11:33. I am the Lord and there is none else. I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil. I the Lord do all these things. Isaiah 45:6-7.
Wonderfully, yea, very wonderfully, and yet blessedly and gloriously, the Lord leads His own. No way is like unto the way of the Lord. No matter how full the way may be with thorns that often pierce the soles of the feet to bleeding, and you cry out with pain, yet His way has something attractive about it which you would not trade away for all the happiness and riches in the world. He lets the world walk in its merry way. Those who are His own He throws sometimes into the water, sometimes into the fire; leads and lifts them now above the mountains and again casts them down into the abyss, from which no rescue seems possible. Now He surrounds them with honor and glory as Jesus did on Mount Tabor; then He covers them with disgrace and ridicule, so that even a dog will not look at them, and the worst criminal seems to be more honorable than such a bosom child of God. Their heart is often so filled with Him that heaven seems to have descended to them, but afterward they are forsaken and depressed as if all the spirits of hell had taken up their abode in them. Often they believe themselves to be standing in sunshine. Then again they walk in Egyptian darkness. Now they have Omnipotence in their hands. At another time they are so bound and paralyzed that they are unable to lift a straw, yea, not even able to stand upright. Why? The answer is as above quoted in Isaiah 45:6-7. God be praised! If only He lead you, then care not how it is done; care only by whom it is done. Say with David, "For Thy name’s sake, lead me and guide me" (Psalms 31:3). Let the way lead wherever it may, if only His hand guides us.
So long Thy power has blessed,
Sure it still will lead me on
O’er moor and fen, o’er crag and torrent, till
’The night is gone;
And with morn those angel faces smile,
Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile.
