Years ago I was challenged to make God’s Word my first word daily. As I read this morning from DL Moody’s Thoughts for the Quiet Hour, I reflected on:
– having felt “constrained to go” and start Empowering Action almost 4 years ago;
– “feeling assured of a calm voyage”
– and yet learning daily from the Lord that “there is a rest even on the open sea.”
Below is the devotional, which I highly recommend:
June 11th.
Jesus constrained His disciples to get into a ship. Matt. 14:22
“Jesus constrained them to go! One would think that if ever there was the certain promise of success in a mission, it was here. Surely, here, if anywhere, a triumphant issue might have been confidently predicted; and yet here, more than anywhere, there was seeming failure. He sent them out on a voyage, and they met such a storm as they had never yet experienced.
Let me ponder this, for it has been so with me, too. I have sometimes felt myself impelled to act by an influence which seemed above me—constrained to put to sea. The belief that I was constrained gave me confidence, and I was sure of a calm voyage. But the result was outward failure. The calm became a storm; the sea raged, the winds roared, the ship tossed in the midst of the waves, and my enterprise was wrecked ere it could reach the land. Was, then, my divine command a delusion? Nay; nor yet was my mission a failure. He did send me on that voyage, but He did not send me for my purpose. He had one end and I had another. My end was the outward calm; His was my meeting with the storm. My end was to gain the harbor of a material rest; His was to teach me there is a rest even on the open sea.”—George Matheson.
The above insights are made all the more powerful when you know the story of their author:
At age 20 George Matheson (1842-1906) was engaged to be married but began going blind. When he broke the news to his fiancee, she decided she could not go through life with a blind husband, and left. Prior to his loss of sight George had penned two books of theology, and many believe that had George not gone blind he could have been the greatest leader of the church of Scotland in his day. And yet God’s hand was on George and his sister offered to care for him. With her assistance, George left the academic world for pastoral ministry and wound up preaching to 1,500 each week–blind.*
It was on “the open sea of affliction” that George Matheson impacted thousands of lives for Christ. A good reminder when we find ourselves longing for “the harbor of material rest.”