Chastening Love from Thoughts
of God by John McDuff 1864 How precious are your thoughts unto
me, O God! As many as I love, I rebuke and
chasten. Revelation chapter 3 verse 19
I have chosen you in the furnace of affliction. Isaiah chapter
48 verse 10 Do the well-known tones of a mother's voice hush
the child asleep that has been startled from its couch by unquiet
dreams? These two thoughts of God above,
the voice of our heavenly parent, may well lull our tossed spirits
to rest and lead us to pillow our heads with confidence in
his holy will. There are times indeed when despite
of better convictions and a truer philosophy, our own thoughts
are mingled with guilty doubts and worthy surmises regarding
the rectitude of the divine dealings. We are led to say or to think
with aged Jacob, all these things are against me. There can be
no kindness or faithfulness surely in such a sorrow as this. Yes,
is the reply of the divine chastener. That trial with all its apparent
severity is a thought of my love, a proof and pledge of my interest
in your well-being. In these fierce furnace fires,
I have chosen you. In these, I will keep you. From these, I will bring you
forth a vessel refined and fitted for the Master's use. That this
affliction is unspeakable love, says one who could write from
the depths of experience. I have no doubt." Because he
who has sent it is no new friend, but a tried and a precious one. The afflictions with which we
are visited, says another, are so many notes in which God says,
I have not forgotten you. He sits as refiner of his own
furnace, tempering the fury of the flames. The human parent
in chastisement may act at times capriciously, guided by wayward
impulse, but God disciplines us for our profit, that we may
be made partakers of His holiness. Rather, surely the acutest discipline,
the hardest strokes of the rod, than to be left unchecked and
unreclaimed in our career of worldliness, forgetfulness, and
sin. God, uttering that severest word,
why should you be stricken any more? You will only revolt more
and more. As if he had said, why should
I any longer think of you or attempt to reclaim you? My warnings
and remonstrances are in vain. I will return to my place. I
will give you up. Oh, most fearful of chastisements,
when God's loving thoughts and patient thoughts and forbearing
thoughts are exhausted, and when our stubborn unbelief brings
him to utter the doom of abandonment. Tried one, recognize henceforth
in your sorest afflictions a father's rod. Hear in them a father's
voice. See in each what will invest
them with a halo of subdued glory. A mysterious it may be, but yet
a precious thought of God, and that thought kindness and mercy. That loss of worldly substance,
it was a thought of God. That withering disappointment,
the blighting of young hope, it was a thought of God. That
protracted sickness, that wasting disease, it was a thought of
God. The smiting of that clay idol,
it was a thought of God. This is surely enough to wake
up the tuneless broken strings of your heart to melody. Whom
the Lord loves, he chastens, and he scourges every son whom
he receives. He is never so near to you as
in a time of trial, never does he so reveal his heart as then. Trial is God's love letter to
his beloved people. I will be glad and rejoice in
your love, for you saw my affliction and knew the anguish of my soul.