you Soul Comfort. Susanna Spurgeon. Words of Cheer and Comfort for
Sick and Sorrowful Souls. 1898. When my anxious thoughts multiply
within me, your comforts delight my soul. Psalm 94, 19. Your comforts delight my soul. Blessed Lord, how sweet is this
text in my mouth! The taste of it is like wafers
made with honey. It is both food and drink to
my heart, for every word has joy and refreshing in it, so
that, like the best wine of the canticles, it goes down sweetly. The first of your comforts, gracious
God, is this, that you have said unto my soul, I am your salvation. He saves us, not because of any
merit in us or any deservings of our own, but because sovereign
grace chose us and divine compassion redeemed us. And when we were
afar off, infinite pity brought us back and made us near by the
precious blood of Christ. This may well comfort our hearts,
coming as it does directly from our Lord Jesus Christ Himself,
and our God and Father, who has loved us and given us eternal
comfort and good hope by grace. A saved and pardoned sinner can
truly say, Your comforts delight my soul. The next thought is
that, having saved us, He keeps us. We are kept by the power
of God through faith unto salvation. Comparatively, few Christians
put God's keeping power fully to the test. If we would trust
Him for the keeping as we do for the saving, our lives would
be far holier and happier than they are. I will keep it every
moment is one of those grandly unlimited promises which most
of us are afraid of, and we store them away in the background because
we dare not believe them and bring them out into the light
of our daily practice. O foolish and unbelieving hearts,
how much of soul-delighting comfort do we thus miss? Then comes another
thought. He cares for us. Dear friends,
if you are His, you know the exceeding comfort of casting
all your care upon Him and being quite sure that He will undertake
for you. Have we not often come to Him,
oppressed and burdened, with an intolerable weight of anxiety
and distress, and been enabled to roll the whole mass of it
on Him, leaving it all at His feet, and returning to our work
with a lightened and restful heart? Some of us have had burdens
and sorrows which would have crushed the very life out of
us if we had not been enabled to look up and say, You, O Lord,
have helped and comforted me. Yes, truly, God's care for us
is one of the sweetest comforts of our mortal life. Closely linked
with this is the thought that he knows all about us. Our enemies, sometimes even our
friends, misunderstand and malign us, they misconstrue our words
and actions, and impute to us motives which never actuated
us. But our God knows the thoughts
and intents of our heart and never makes a mistake in the
judgment He passes on us. The comfort of this knowledge
on the Lord's part to those who are suffering wrongfully is inexpressibly
precious. They can lift up their heads
with joy and say, the Lord is good, He knows those who trust
in Him. I have known this comfort to
so delight my soul, that trials and temptations had no power
to vex or annoy it, for my soul was hidden secretly in a pavilion
from the strife of tongues. Lastly, though there are many,
many more, one of the multitude of thoughts which stand out prominently
from the rest, as a comfort which delights the soul, is that he
loves us. This truth has been running through
the fields of previous thought as a silver streamlet glides
through the meadows. Here it would deepen and expand
to a broad and fathomless ocean. Had I the power to speak of its
height and depth and length and breadth, and to tell of the love
of Christ which surpasses knowledge, but my pen utterly fails here. You who love him, and know that
he loves you, must, each one say to himself, what that comfort
of his love is to your own heart. This will be a better commentary
than any I can offer. And if some poor distressed soul
is mourning the loss of the sweet consolation which Christ's love
alone can give, let him call to remembrance a tenderly precious
promise which the Lord put into the lips of the prophet Isaiah. I have seen His ways, but I will
heal Him, I will guide Him, and restore comfort to Him. – Isaiah
57, 18