Heavenly Springs

Holding Fast The Doctrines of Grace

Of Affliction: Bunyan’s Dying Sayings Via Justification By Grace

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Jon Cardwell, on his blog Justification by Grace, shares an excerpt from his book, “Dying Sayings.”  The book, which can be purchased here, also includes “Prison Meditations,” “Mr. Bunyans’ Last Sermon,” and “Mr. Bunyan’s Martyrdom.”

“Nothing can make affliction as intolerable as the weight of sin: therefore, if you would have yourself prepared for afflictions, be sure to get the burden of your sins laid aside, and then whatever afflictions you may meet with will be very easy for you.

If you can hear this, and bear the rod of affliction which God shall give you, remember this lesson― you are beaten so that you may be better.

The Lord uses His threshing rod of tribulation to separate the chaff from the wheat. The school of the cross is the school of light; it reveals the world’s vanity, baseness, and wickedness, and lets us see more of God’s mind. Out of dark affliction comes a spiritual light.

In times of affliction we commonly meet with the sweetest experiences of the love of God.

Had we heartily renounced the pleasures of this world, we should be very little troubled for our afflictions. That which renders an afflicted state so intolerable to many is because they are too much addicted to the pleasures of this life, and so cannot endure anything that separates them from their pleasures.”

Keep Running!

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“When Lot and his wife were running from cursed Sodom to the mountains, to save their lives, it is said that his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt; and yet you see that neither her practice, nor the judgment of God that fell upon her for the same, would cause Lot to look behind him.

I have sometimes wondered at Lot in this particular; his wife looked behind her, and died immediately, but let what would become of her, Lot would not so much as look behind him to see her. We do not read that he did so much as once look where she was, or what was become of her; his heart was indeed upon his journey, and well it might: there was the mountain before him, and the fire and brimstone behind him; his life lay at stake and he had lost it if he had but looked behind him.

Do thou so run: and in thy race remember Lots wife, and remember her doom; and remember for what that doom did overtake her; and remember that God made her an example for all lazy runners, to the end of the world: and take heed thou fall not after the same example.”

– John Bunyan, The Heavenly Footman

The Eternal Word of God

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“Read God’s Word, and read it again; and do not despair of trying to understand the will and mind of God as revealed in His word, though you think they are fast locked up from you…

Pray and read, read and pray, for a little from God is better than a great deal from men.  Also, what’s from men is uncertain, and is lost and tumbled by men, but what’s from God is fixed as a nail in a sure place.

There’s nothing that so abides with us as what we receive from God, and the reason why the Christians in this day are at such a loss as to some things is that they are contented to what comes from men’s mouths, without searching and kneeling before God to know of Him the truth of eternal things.

Lessons we receive at God’s hands come to us as truth from the minting house, though old in themselves, yet new to us, old truths are always new to us if they come with the shell of Heaven upon them.”

John Bunyan

The Slough of Despond

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In John Bunyan’s, The Pilgrim’s Progress, the main character CHRISTIAN slips into a miry bog called The Slough of Despond.

“It is the low ground where the scum and filth of a guilty conscience, caused by conviction of sin, continually gather and for this reason it is called the Slough of Despond.”

CHRISTIAN struggles in the mire for a little while and then HELP comes.

“But why did you not look for the steps?” HELP asks.

CHRISTIAN answers, “FEAR followed me so hard, that I fled the next way and fell in.”

HELP extends his hand, draws him out, sets him on solid ground, and sends him on his way.

We’ve all passed through the Slough of Despond. Maybe you are passing through now. Poor CHRISTIAN. In his fear and anxiety he could not see right.

Isn’t there a propensity to grow so weary and faint under the weight of our own trials and afflictions that we lose sight of Jesus? Isn’t there a proneness in the best of us to lose the eyes of our faith?

That is the cry of the psalmist in Psalms 13:3 when he pleads with God, “Look on me and answer, O LORD my God. Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death“

That is my prayer today — for all the saints. Let us lift up the trumpet of our prayers toward heaven and utter a cry of faith, “Lord, give light to our eyes.”