He is the never-failing Friend

But now it is come unto thee, and thou faintest. Job iv. 5 (R.V.).

IT is much easier to counsel others in their trouble than to bear it ourselves. Full often the soul, which has poured floods of consolation on others, feels sadly in need of a touch, a voice, a sympathizing companion, as the chill waters begin to rise towards the knees, and the shadow of the great eclipse falls around. The fact of our having consoled so many others seems at such a moment to leave us the more solitary and lonesome. People have been so wont to be helped by as that they hardly dare approach us; besides, they suppose that all the fund of comfort from which we have succored others must be now available for us. What can they say that we have not said a hundred times? and if we have said it, of course we must know all about it; but they do not know how wistful the heart is to hear it said to us with the accent of a sympathetic voice and the touch of a ministering hand.

Ah, it will come unto thee at last. The pain and sorrow of life will find thee out. The arrow will at last fix itself quivering in thy heart. How wilt thou do then? Thou wilt faint unless thy words have sprung from a living experience of the love and presence of Jesus. Thou must have a better hope than "the integrity of thy ways," as suggested by Eliphaz. But there awaits thee the personal fellowship of Jesus, a brother born for the hour of trial. He is the never-failing Friend, who sticketh closer than a brother. Put Him and his will and his choice between thee and thy sorrow, whatever it may be. Hide thee in his secret place, and under the shadow of his wings thou shalt enjoy sweet peace.

"Only heaven Is better than a walk
With Christ at midnight over moonlit seas."

- F.B. Meyer, Our Daily Homily Tweet

No pastor, no Sunday-school teacher, no Bible, no hymnbook, no community of believers…

I have never been introduced to Howard Rutledge. I doubt that very few, if any of you, remember him; but he was one of those heroes that suffered as a POW for seven years during the Vietnam war. He was also one of those kids that grew up in Sunday School thinking all those Sunday School lessons, sermons, hymns, and emphasis on memorizing scripture was boring. Little did he know how important every verse will become and how cherished every hymn would become.


In his book he recalls how important those years spent in church and the word became writing:


Now the sights and sounds and smells of death were all around me. My hunger for spiritual food soon outdid my hunger for a steak. Now I wanted to know about that part of me that will never die. Now I wanted to talk about God and Christ and the church. But in Heartbreak solitary confinement there was no pastor, no Sunday-school teacher, no Bible, no hymnbook, no community of believers to guide and sustain me. I had completely neglected the spiritual dimension of my life. It took prison to show me how empty life is without God, and so I had to go back in my memory to those Sunday School days in Tulsa, Oklahoma. If I couldn't have a Bible and hymnbook, I would try to rebuild them in my mind.


I tried desperately to recall snatches of Scripture, sermons, gospel choruses from childhood, and hymns we sang in church. The first three dozen songs were relatively easy. Every day I'd try to recall another verse or a new song. One night there was a huge thunderstorm—it was the season of the monsoon rains—and a bolt of lightning knocked out the lights and plunged the entire prison into darkness. I had been going over hymn tunes in my mind and stopped to lie down and sleep when the rains began to fall. The darkened prison echoed with wave after wave of water. Suddenly, I was humming my thirty-seventh song, one I had entirely forgotten since childhood.

Showers of blessings,

Showers of blessings we need!

Mercy drops round us are falling

But for the showers we plead.

I no sooner had recalled those words than another song popped into my mind, the theme song of a radio program my mother listened to when I was just a kid.

Heavenly sunshine, heavenly sunshine
Flooding my soul with glory divine.
Heavenly sunshine, heavenly sunshine,
Hallelujah! Jesus is mine!

Most of my fellow prisoners were struggling like me to rediscover faith, to reconstruct workable value systems. Harry Jenkins lived in a cell nearby during much of my captivity. Often we would use those priceless seconds of communication in a day to help one another recall Scripture verses and stories.


One day I heard him whistle. When the cell block was clear, I waited for his communication, thinking it to be some important news. "I got a new one," he said. "I don't know where it comes from or why I remember it, but it's a story about Ruth and Naomi." He then went on to tell that ancient story of Ruth following Naomi into a hostile new land and finding God's presence and protection there. Harry's urgent news was two thousand years old. It may not seem important to prison life, but we lived off that story for days, rebuilding it, thinking about what it meant, and applying God's ancient words to our predicament.


Everyone knew the Lord's Prayer and the Twenty-third Psalm, but the camp favorite verse that everyone recalled first and quoted most often is found in the Book of John, third chapter, sixteenth verse. With Harry's help I even reconstructed the seventeenth and eighteenth verses.


How I struggled to recall those Scriptures and hymns! I had spent my first eighteen years in a Southern Baptist Sunday School, and I was amazed at how much I could recall; regrettably, I had not seen then the importance of memorizing verses from the Bible, or learning gospel songs. Now, when I needed them, it was too late. I never dreamed that I would spend almost seven years (five of them in solitary confinement) in a prison in North Vietnam or that thinking about one memorized verse could have made the whole day bearable.


One portion of a verse I did remember was, "Thy word have I hid in my heart." How often I wished I had really worked to hide God's Word in my heart. I put my mind to work. Every day I planned to accomplish certain tasks. I woke early, did my physical exercises, cleaned up as best I could, then began a period of devotional prayer and meditation. I would pray, hum hymns silently, quote Scripture, and think about what the verse meant to me.


Remember, we weren't playing games. The enemy knew that the best way to break a man's resistance was to crush his spirit in a lonely cell. In other words, some of our POWs after solitary confinement lay down in a fetal position and died. All this talk of Scripture and hymns may seem boring to some, but it was the way we conquered our enemy and overcame the power of death around us.


Source: Morgan, Robert J., More Real Stories for the Soul, (Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson Publishers) c2000.

David’s Statement of Faith

I said unto the LORD, Thou art my God: hear the voice of my supplications, O LORD. Psalm 140:6  

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David was no stranger to danger. The plea of David in Psalm 140 reveals he is once again in a place where the odds appear to be against him. He calls on the Lord to intercede in his behalf; and he can do so because his LORD is his God.

Three simple truths are to be discovered in this simple statement of faith.

• David looks to Yahweh [LORD]. The God who is and God who redeems!  Yahweh is the name of God that is often translated LORD in small capital letters. The name Yahweh declares God to be the God that exists and is used to highlight his redemption capabilities.  We too should remember that we can call on the LORD, the redeemer. We can and do look to Him for deliverance.

• David declares God to be his personal God. David had more than simple head knowledge of God. He had a personal relationship with God. In times of troubles, we need to have a personal relationship with our God.

• David did not doubt that God hears his request and will answer his request. Verse six is a statement of his faith. We too must approach our Lord with the confidence that God hears our prayers and answers our prayers. “And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us:  And if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him” (1Jo 5:14). Follow @pastorbarr 

Life-Experience: The Hiccup Curse!

By Pastor Jim Barr Follow @pastorbarr

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For the last six days, I have had the hiccups.  I am not talking about the ordinary and annoying kind. I am talking about the rapid-fire kind that chokes you, makes you sick, and disables you. They have moved in and no doctor, nor hospital, nor high-priced pill, nor shot, nor any of the seventeen different home remedies have been able to convince them to leave me.  Needless, this is a “Life-Experience” I that would rather skip and one that I pray will end shortly.

Like all experiences, good or bad, there can be some powerful lessons taught by the Spirit through the Word in times like these. For example, I learned that you can pray long and hard while holding your breath while seeking immediate relief before you pass out.  The lesson I learned from these breathtaking experiences is that you better put “nevertheless not my will but your will be done” on the end of every prayer.
 

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I also learned that willing something to be so doesn’t make it so. Occasionally, we believe that if we will something hard enough that somehow that translates into super faith and God must act. God does not move according to our will; but rather we move towards his will.  Faith is an important element that is required in every prayer; but we must remember, we are placing our faith in God – the God who holds the perfect will for our life and only gives good gifts to His children. Real faith, super faith, trusts in the only God that knows what is best for you. Our will doesn’t move mountains. God is the mover of mountains and He does so only when it is for the best.  I must and I do place my faith in Him.

The curse of the disabling hiccups has also taught me humility.  Think on this for a moment, you walk into a clinic seeking urgent medical attention and the check-in nurse ask you, “And what seems to be your problem today?” First, you want to knock her in the head because you have been hiccupping all the way to the room; and then she wants you to confess, the reason you are there is because of the hiccups. “I ha—ve—th—hic—hic—ups,” you reply. She then gives you that school nursery look and says with all amazement, “The hiccups???” You replay the same scene at the ER three or four times and get the same you-have-got-to-be-kidding look. You know humbleness.

I would like to finish this little self-indulgent piece with a particular cornerstone of wisdom that I have learned; but since I am up at one o’clock in the morning writing this between hiccups, I can only share this current wisdom lesson in this affair so fat: God can be trusted and He never leaves you.

Maybe someday when the hiccups are but a bad memory, I will write more about this simple truth and all that went on in my mind and my heart. For now it is enough to simple say God can be trusted – even when the thorn remains in your side  ̶  and He never leaves your side.

The Apostle Paul Said:
So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. (2 Corinthians 12:7-9 ESV)