Divine Refuge

For we walk by faith, not by sight.

2 Corinthians 5:7

The nature of faith is to trust in the dark, when all appearances are against it; to trust that a calm will come, though the storm be overhead; to trust that God will appear, though nothing but evil can be felt.  It is tender, child-like, and therefore is an implicit confidence, a yielding submission, a looking unto the Lord.

There is something filial in this; something heavenly and spiritual; not the bold presumption of the daring, nor the despairing fears of the desponding; but something beyond both the one and the other--equally remote from the rashness of presumption, and from the horror of despair.  There is a mingling of holy affection connected with this trust, springing out of a reception of past favours, insuring favours to come; and all linked with a simple hanging and depending of the soul upon the Lord, because He is what He is.  There is a looking to, and relying upon the Lord, because we have felt Him to be the Lord; and because we have no other refuge.

And why have we no other refuge?  Because poverty has driven us out of false refuges.  It is a safe spot, though not a comfortable one, to be where David was, "Refuge failed me; no man cared for my soul" (Psalm 142:4).  And until refuge fails us in man, in self, in the world, in the church, there is no looking to Christ as a divine refuge. 

But when we come to this spot, "Thou art my refuge and my portion in the land of the living" (Psalm 142:5)--"if I perish I will perish at Thy feet--my faith centers in Thee--all I have and all I expect to have, flows from Thy bounty, I have nothing but what Thou freely givest to me, the vilest of the vile"--this is trust.  And where this trust is, there will be a whole army of desires at times pouring themselves into the bosom of the Lord; there will be a whole array of pantings and longings venting themselves into the bosom of "Immanuel, God with us."

~J. C. Philpot, Ears from Harvested Sheaves