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January
Divine Denials and Delights
Dear Friends,
On a recent Sunday, we had a heavy snow descend upon us here in Norfolk, Virginia. We, along with almost all other churches in our region, wisely recognized the divine providence that prevented us from having our regular services on that Lord’s Day. We and many other brethren in Christ were confined accordingly not only to our homes, but also to a day of private and family worship, being deprived of the opportunity for regular corporate worship. Our resort to such reduced means of grace gave us but a small taste of the hidden manna that has sustained the Lord’s people in times of their captivity in the past and, in some places, even today. One result was that on the Sunday following, we gathered together with a spiritual relish and deepened sense of gratitude that was manifested through the large attendance at worship, despite a fresh layer of snow covering icy roads and walkways. The preaching was more galvanized, the hearing more attentive, the singing more hearty, and our fellowship more sweet and lovingly prolonged—all due at least to some degree to our having been deprived of the opportunity to gather for worship the previous week.
Our experience fits the pattern of our Lord’s depriving dealings with His people. In His Word, God tells us that there are times when He hides Himself from us, or deprives us of a sense of His approbation and comfort—all with a view to stimulating our love and gratitude so that we seek Him with stronger zeal and the totality of our hearts (Jer. 29:13). Our Westminster Confession of Faith tells us of our Lord sometimes withdrawing the light of His countenance, and suffering even His strongest servants to walk in diminished light (WCF XVIII: IV). Sometimes our heavenly Father does this as a correcting chastisement, and sometimes as a refining reward for our faithfulness in little things that will prepare us for faithfulness in greater things. In any case, the result is always the same: we are more pure in our love, more strong in our faith, and have a deeper gratitude for our God, His salvation, and His means of grace than what we possessed prior to the divine deprivation.
This leads us to a better understanding of our Lord’s sanctifying work in our lives. He ordains our disappointments and failures and frustrations and defeats at the hands of sins we thought we had mastered (when we really should have mortified them) and Satan whom we thought we were resisting with a strong faith. Our God ordains our afflictions, trials, troubles, and losses of things we regarded as precious—all so that we might develop a truly stronger faith in and love for Him and His ordinances and His people and come to a greater apprehension of His love for us and the great wisdom and power He employs to break our lives only to build them up again better. Let us, then, even in these times of deprivations, denials, and deaths, learn to regard the joy that is set before us of new and vastly improved lives and estates and relationships with our God, our brethren in Christ, and our neighbors.
Yours in growing thankfulness,
William Harrell
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Sunday
Morning Worship 10:30 AM
Evening Worship
6:30 PM
Wednesday
Christian Education
7:00 PM
Saturday
Congregational Prayer Meeting
7:00 PM |
