It is very clear from Scripture that good men do, and evil men do not, turn intuitively to God when confronted with troubles. When, for instance, David’s followers for once turned against him after the sacking of Ziklag and were so upset at the loss of wife and children that they were near to stoning him, we are informed that ‘David encouraged himself in the Lord his God’ [1 Sam. 30:6]. Similarly, when Sennacherib and Rabshakeh laid siege to Jerusalem and all earthly hope of deliverance was cut off, Hezekiah, we are told, ‘spread it before the Lord’ [2 Kings 9:14]. Again, when Nehemiah had betrayed his secret concern for God’s cause to Artaxerxes by an involuntary facial expression and was invited to make plain his request, he tells us that he ‘prayed to the God of heaven’ [Neh. 2:4]. Like a flash of lightning, the souls of good men turn upwards to God when trials and fears confront them.
Whole psalms appear to have been written very largely for the purpose of encouraging believers to think of God when calamity strikes or when perplexity overshadows them. ‘I will not be afraid of ten thousands’ [Ps. 3:6], affirms David, when his enemies are increased. ‘I will call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised: so shall I be saved from mine enemies’ [Ps 18:3]. ‘The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?’ [Ps. 27:1]. ‘I cried unto thee, and thou hast healed me’ [Ps. 30:2]. ‘I sought the Lord, and he heard me, and delivered me from all my fears’ [Ps. 34:4]. ‘He is their strength in the time of trouble’ [Ps. 37:39]. ‘God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble’ [Ps. 46:1]. These and scores of similar passages in the psalms reassure us that godly men are not more ready to raise their minds to God in trouble than he is to hear and help them. Indeed, the whole Bible sets this truth before us.
On the other hand, the unconverted have no spiritual access to God in the time of distress but are commonly swallowed up with despair like Saul and Judas; or else they harden themselves against God, like Pharaoh, till they become reckless. Afflictions, therefore, are a fan in God’s hand to separate between good and evil men. All men are good company in fair weather but the storms of life prove spiritual character. In trouble, where do our thoughts fly to? To ‘curse God and die’ is the essential and inevitable table philosophy of graceless men when they are surprised by sudden calamity. But the child of God instinctively looks at life’s miseries with a theological eye and finds God to be a comfort when all seems as bad as it can be: ‘Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him’ [Job 13:15].
To have God in his mind and thought is the believer’s constant source of strength. The martyr languishes in the flames but his mind flies upward to God his Saviour and looks forward blissfully to the glory that awaits him even as his body sinks to ashes. The imprisoned Christian forgets the harsh regime of the camp, the daily grind and grueling labour, as his mind soars upward on the wings of hope to remember God. The weary missionary, struggling with unfamiliar syllables and convoluted grammar in his appointed sphere of service sees beyond the frustrations of the hour as he remembers God, his ‘exceeding great reward’ [Gen. 15:1]. The faithful pastor of a congregation entombed in his study and confronted with an impossible daily agenda of duties, brightens in his heart and feels his pulse quicken as he remembers his Master above. The thought of God enlivens all action.
The thought of God should be the Christian’s panacea. It should cure all his ills at a stroke. And what an infinity there is in the thought of God! Nothing can approach in beauty to the idea of the true and living God. That there exists a Being who is infinite in power, knowledge and goodness, that that Being cares for me with a perfect love as though I were the only man in existence, that he loved me before I was born and created me to enjoy him eternally and that he sent his Son to suffer the agony of the cross to secure my eternal happiness-that, surely, must be a thought to end all sorrow. It ought to be and often it is.
There is a difference, alas, between things as they are and things as we perceive them. Our perceptions of God suffer more than our perceptions of natural things because we are depraved and do not make it our life’s work daily to enrich our idea of God from the fountainhead of Scripture. It is our folly that we allow ourselves to look at life’s problems as if they were somehow isolated from God. As soon as we see our problems in the light of God’s Being and perfection, we are emancipated from alarm and terror. It therefore remains a principle of universal application that we can cope with our afflictions just as long as we ‘look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen’ [2 Cor. 4:18]. It is this habit of mind which the Scriptures call ‘faith’ and which they praise in Moses when they inform us that ‘he endured as seeing him who is invisible’, that is God [Heb. 11:27].
This eleventh chapter of Hebrews, indeed, has a good deal to teach us about the subject in hand. For, what was it that inspired the patriarchs, heroes and saints in that chapter to do their great exploits, except the mental image which they continually held of God as the God who ‘is and is a rewarded of them that diligently seek him’ [Heb. 11:6]? It might truly be said of them that they laboured and suffered, one and all, for one reason only, that God was ever present to their mind’s eye. To this one explanation may be traced all their voluntary exertions and discomforts, that they had God constantly in the foreground of their thought. And those who think of God as he truly is know that it is a good exchange to lose home and country, family and fortune, health and comfort-yes, and life itself-to gain possession of God himself in the end.
The art of good thinking is to carry thoughts to its logical conclusion. Sir Isaac Newton is said to have claimed no more for his profound theories than that he took the lines of his thought farther than other men did and so perceived the hidden ‘laws’ which he formulated. That is a lesson which Christians can learn from. The mere thought of God should end all anxiety. Then why in my case does it not? Because I fail to carry thought to its proper conclusion.
If God be God, then no insoluble problem exist. And if God be my God, then no problem of mine is without its appropriate solution. There is in God just exactly what is needed to solve every riddle of life. Such a Being is God that he comprehends in himself all that we could ever need to neutralize all evils, veto all temptations, negative all sorrows and compensate for all losses. More still, there is in God such a supply of competence and wisdom that he is able to transform every ill into good as soon as it touches us. God has, so to say, the ‘Midas touch’, by which all the Christian’s problems turn to gold in his hands. To be told that ‘all things work together for good’ [Rom. 8:28] to us is to have more than a cordial. It is to have the elixir of life.
Panic is the sinful failure to apply our knowledge of God to particular problems. Peter looks at the waves and begins to sink. The disciples in the boat are alarmed at the storm. Like them, we also fall into periodic fits of despair at the state of society, the state of the church, the state of the mission-fields where we serve perhaps, or else at the imperfect state of our own souls. Panic is possible only when God is obscured from our thoughts by visible circumstances.
It must follow from what has been said that the degree of a Christian’s peace of mind depends upon his spiritual ability to interpose the thought of God between himself and his anxiety. When the dark cloud of trouble first looms up on the horizon of our thought, then is the time apply our theology in downright earnest. For it is not outward circumstances that can drag us down, but our own reaction of despair to them, when we fail to perceive the hidden hand of God in all events.
There is no situation in life too hard for God. But many situations look too hard at first sight. These are ordained to give us room to wait on God for his deliverance. There is a blessing attached to waiting patiently on God in evil days. The impatient urge to resign and run away when times are trying is unworthy of the sons of God. There is a better way. Let us remember God and take fresh courage. He who believes shall not make haste and, conversely, they shall not be ashamed who wait for God [Isa. 28:16, 49:23].
It is instinctive for the Christian in every time of fear or trouble to turn to thoughts of God. To the unspiritual mind this is contemptible escapism, a mere ‘opium of the people’. But in reality it is an activity of faith and worship and one which is highly pleasing to God. If God indeed were only a mental fiction, there would be nothing more to commend the practice of devout meditation on his excellence and glory than that it was pious optimism, wishful thinking which benefits the mind just so much as ‘positive thinking’ is said to do and no more. Since, however, God exists in reality and is not a spiritual medicine invented by our fears, it must follow that life’s secret very largely consists in holding him in our thoughts as much as possible and especially in times of fear and need.
(Excerpts taken from “The Thought of God” by Maurice Roberts)
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