Here are some quotes from what I read today. The first illuminates unbelief as the first enemy we face in times of distress. He shows how unbelief is known by the way it calls God's good will into question and guides us to distrust his providence. Flavel writes:
“Unbelief queries the will of God, and questions whether He will now be gracious, though He has been so formerly. If troubles or dangers grow to a height and we see nothing but ruin and misery in the eye of reason before us, now unbelief becomes importunate and troublesome to the soul. Now where are your prayers, your hopes, yea, where is now your God?” Unbelief maintains the impossibility of relief in deep distresses.
'Can God furnish a table in the wilderness? ... Can he give bread also? Can he provide flesh for his people?' Psalm 78:19-20.
Oh vile and unworthy thoughts of God which proceed from our measuring the immense and boundless power of God by our own line and measure ... because we do not see which way relief should come."
The quotes below are just a few more gems from Flavel's pen that sparked faith, life and trust in my heart.
“All the dark, intricate, puzzling providences at which we were sometimes so offended…we shall [one day] see to be to us, as the difficult passage through the wilderness was to Israel, ‘the right way to the city of habitation’.”
"Whatsoever we have over-loved, idolized, and leaned upon, God has from time to time broken it, and made us to see the vanity of it; so that we find the readiest course to be rid our comforts is to set our hearts inordinately or immoderately upon them."
“[Providences] often puzzle and entangle our thoughts, but bring them to the Word, and your duty will be quickly manifested. “Until I went into the sanctuary of God, then understood I their end” (Ps. 73:17). And not only their end, but his own duty, to be quiet in an afflicted condition and not envy their prosperity.”
“You may look upon some providences once and again, and see little or nothing in them, but look “seven times,” that is, meditate often upon them, and you will see their increasing glory, like that increasing cloud (1 Kings 18:44).”
"When our needs are permitted to grow to an extremity, and all visible hopes fail, then to have relief given wonderfully enhances the price of such a mercy (Isa. 41:17-18)."
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