“Oh Let My Troubling Soul Be Still”

Do you find yourself in a difficult place where faith is being tested? Maybe it’s a hard place you’ve been in for days, months, or even years. Or perhaps you’re fighting against God drawing you in to such a place.

We know as Christian sojourners on earth that trials are part of our journey, but when they do come, we can find ourselves surprised by them and wonder, “Why, God?” or “Why now?”

In these times, patience is tested, love is taxed, self-control is challenged, and the list can go on. We wonder how this can be good for us and for those around us.

Yes, pain will unfold, our hearts will hurt, people might observe us being a wreck, and physical, emotional, or mental strength is something we can barely muster up to get through the day.

Take heart! We can trust God in these times. He will bring us to green pastures if we learn to trust him during these times.

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“He led them forth by the right way.”

—Psalm 107:7

Changeful experience often leads the anxious believer to enquire “Why is it thus with me?” I looked for light, but lo, darkness came; for peace, but behold trouble. I said in my heart, my mountain stands firm, I shall never be moved. Lord, you hide your face, and I am troubled. It was but yesterday that I could read my title clear; today my evidences are bedimmed, and my hopes are clouded. Yesterday I could climb to Pisgah’s top, and view the landscape o’er, and rejoice with confidence in my future inheritance; today, my spirit has no hopes, but many fears; no joys, but much distress. Is this part of God’s plan with me? Can this be the way in which God would bring me to heaven? Yes, it is even so. The eclipse of your faith, the darkness of your mind, the fainting of your hope, all these things are but parts of God’s method of making you ripe for the great inheritance upon which you shall soon enter. These trials are for the testing and strengthening of your faith—they are waves that wash you further upon the rock—they are winds which waft your ship the more swiftly towards the desired haven. According to David’s words, so it might be said of you, “so he brings them to their desired haven.” By honor and dishonor, by evil report and by good report, by plenty and by poverty, by joy and by distress, by persecution and by peace, by all these things is the life of your souls maintained, and by each of these are you helped on your way. Oh, think not, believer, that your sorrows are out of God’s plan; they are necessary parts of it. “We must, through much tribulation, enter the kingdom.” Learn, then, even to “count it all joy when you fall into divers temptations.”

“O let my trembling soul be still,

And wait thy wise, thy holy will!

I cannot, Lord, thy purpose see,

Yet all is well since ruled by thee.”

 

Morning, May 24

Spurgeon, C. H. (1896). Morning and evening: Daily readings. London: Passmore & Alabaster.