December 26

God’s hidden purpose

“It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps” (Jer. 10:23).
“His going forth is prepared as the morning” (Hosea 6:3).

The purposes of God seemed hidden to Mrs. Studd when her husband left for Africa, leaving his loved ones behind. Norman Grubb quotes a letter written by Mrs. Studd revealing her struggle and victory:
“As I thought of all that was going to happen to me, I began to weep. I do not often weep, but I wept sore that night. Then I thought, ‘This will never do . . . I shall be ill tomorrow, and unable to help anyone.’ Going up in the train that day to Waterloo, I had been reading a book in which there were two references, one was Psalm 34, and the other Daniel 3:29. . . so I opened my Bible. The very first words seemed almost to knock me down. The first was, ‘I will,’ it means determination, it means grit, courage; ‘I will bless’—I will make the Lord happy—and that was not to be attained by weeping. ‘I will bless the Lord at all times’—now! And before I got to the end of that verse, the tears were gone, and I got to that point where I could say, ‘I will make the Lord happy now.’


“Then I read on, ‘I sought the Lord, and he heard me, and delivered me from all my fears.’ ‘This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles’ and then the last was the most astonishing of all: ‘He keepeth all his bones, not one of them is broken.’. . . I just felt every fear was gone; all my fears, all my troubles, all that ‘left alone’ was going to mean, all the fears of malarial fever and the poisoned arrows of the savages; and I went to bed rejoicing. I just laughed ‘the laugh of faith’ that night. I rose from my knees and wrote the experience to my husband and posted it to Marseilles, though he had not yet left this country.”

God is working out His purpose even tho’ we go alone:
It may take us from our loved ones, lead us far away from home;
It will be the greatest pleasure just to feel His presence near,
And to know that God is working out the purpose to Him dear.

God is working out His purpose; never murmur or repine;
For our future’s in His keeping, gladly to His will resign.
When at last the veil is lifted and the shadows flee away,
We shall understand His purpose thro’ one glad, eternal day. . . .
—Mrs. F. W. Suffield.
(“God is Working Out His Purpose” by Mrs. F. W. Suffield, copyright property of Lillenas Publishing Co., U.S.A. Used by permission).

Read full article...