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Run With Patience

"Let us run with patience" (Heb. 12:1). To run with patience is a very difficult thing. Running is apt to suggest the absence of patience, the eagerness to reach the goal. We commonly associate patience with lying down. We think of it as the angel that guards the couch of the invalid. Yet, I do not think the invalid's patience the hardest to achieve. There is a patience which I believe to be harder--the patience that can run. To lie down in the time of grief, to be quiet under the stroke of adverse fortune, implies a great strength; but I know of something that implies a strength greater still: It is the power to work under a stroke; to have a great weight at your heart and still to run; to have a deep anguish in your spirit and still perform the daily task. It is a Christlike thing! Commenting on this verse, Jack Sequeira gives an illustration: I faintly remember the Olympics in 1984. There was a lady. The race was over but she would not give up. She c...

A Very Present Help in Trouble?

Psalms 10:1 Why standest thou afar off, O LORD? why hidest thou thyself in times of trouble?          These were the words of king David at a time when he was encompassed by his enemies from every side. This is not a far-fetched thought by the man after God's own heart. There comes a time when we feel that the Lord is far from us, no longer "a very present help in trouble," but an inaccessible mountain, into which no man would be able to climb. How then do we reconcile Ps. 10:1 and 46:1?         The presence of God is the joy of his people, but any suspicion of his absence is distracting beyond measure. Let us, then, ever remember that the Lord is nigh us. The refiner is never far from the mouth of the furnace when his gold is in the fire, and the Son of God is always walking in the midst of the flames when his holy children are cast into them. I mean, He literally did this for the three Hebrew boys. He will do the same for us. His love en...