This article is taken from Issue 1, Called to Surrender the Will
VARIOUS AUTHORS
Springs in the Desert
Our feelings may be as uncertain as the sea or the shifting sands. God’s facts are as certain as the Rock of Ages, even Christ Himself, who is the same yesterday, today and forever. Let us give ourselves no liberty ever to doubt God or His love and faithfulness to us in everything and forever. We can set our will against doubt just as we do against any other sin; and as we stand firm and refuse to doubt, the Holy Spirit will come to our aid and give us the faith of God and crown us with victory.
Friend, you can trust the Man that died for you. You can trust Him to baffle no plan which is not best to be foiled, and to carry out every one which is for God’s glory and your highest good. You can trust Him to lead you in the path which is the very best in this world for you.
Hannah Whitall Smith
The will is like a wise mother in a nursery; the feelings are like a set of clamouring, crying children. The mother makes up her mind to a certain course of action which she believes to be right and best. The children clamour against it and declare it shall not be. But the mother, knowing that she is mistress and not they, pursues her own course lovingly and calmly in spite of all their clamours; and the result is that the children are sooner or later won over to the mother’s course of action, and fall in with her decisions, and all is harmonious and happy. But if that mother should for a moment let in the thought that the children were the masters instead of herself, confusion would reign unchecked.
Have you thus consented, dear reader, and is your face set as a flint to will what God wills? He wills that you should be entirely surrendered to Him, and that you should trust Him perfectly. Do you will the same?
Amy Carmichael
Dr F. B. Meyer once said that when he was young he was very irritable, and an old man told him that he had found relief from this very thing by looking up the moment he felt it coming, and saying “Thy sweetness, Lord.” By telling this, that old man greatly helped Dr Meyer, and he told it to tens of thousands.
I pass it on to you because I have found it a certain way of escape. Take the opposite; Untruth…Thy truth Lord; Unkindness…Thy kindness Lord; Impatience…Thy patience Lord; Selfishness…Thy unselfishness Lord; Roughness…Thy gentleness Lord; Sharpness…Thy courtesy Lord; Resentment…Thy sweetness Lord; Inward heat…Thy calmness Lord; Fuss…Thy peacefulness.
I think that no one who tries this simple plan will ever give it up. (It takes for granted of course that all is yielded, the “I” dethroned.) Will all to whom it is new try it for a day, a week, a month, and test it?
Taken from Life on the Altar Publications
Issue 1 Summer 2021
LIFE ON THE ALTAR 