July 1 Daily Devotional

Bible Verse

"And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God" (Rom. 8:28 NASB).

Devotional

Notice the unity of operation. All things "work together," not singly and separately, but in collaboration and conjointly. They "work together" as adjunct causes and mutual helps.

This is why we often see a plurality of trials in the calamity that befalls the Christian. Affliction seldom comes solitary and alone. Instead, storm rises upon storm, cloud upon cloud. One messenger of woe is quickly followed by another, burdened with tidings of yet heavier sorrow.

O suffering believer, trace the wisdom—and not just the wisdom, but the love—of your God in ordaining your path to heaven through "many tribulations" (Acts 14:22) and in weaving around you many trials. Single and alone, the good they are charged to convey is only partially accomplished, and the evil they are designed to meet is only imperfectly cured. It is the compounding of the ingredients in the recipe that makes up its curative power. Leave out any one ingredient, and you impair the others and ruin the whole. We may not understand the chemistry of the process. We do not see how one element acts upon the properties of the others. We cannot work out how by the combination of all the cure is effected. Yet, trusting the skill of the doctors and pharmacists, and submitting our reason to our faith, we take the remedy and receive the benefit.

It is the same with God's dispensations. They work, but they "work together." How assuredly the curative process of trial would be impaired, if even one of the several sent were missing! How the adjustment, harmony, and symmetry of God's arrangement would be destroyed, if one dark dispensation were lacking of, perhaps, the many which lower upon our horizon! It is the combination of sound, the harmony of many and often discordant notes, that constitute music.

Oh, how imperfectly are we aware, not of the necessity of trial only, but of a plurality of trials, in order to wake from our lips the sweetest, loftiest anthem of praise and thanksgiving to God! Thus it is that the most deeply tried believers are the most skillful and the most melodious choristers in God's church. They sing the sweetest on earth, and they sing the loudest in heaven, who are passing through, and who have come out of, "great tribulation" (Rev. 7:14).

Then, Christian, count it all joy when you fall into diverse trials. Do not be terrified if wave responds to wave, if cloud follows cloud, if storm rises on storm, if your Joseph has been taken and now your Benjamin is demanded. The greater the accumulation of trial, the richer the cargo it bears. It is then that the intervention, the wisdom, and love of our God appear the most conspicuous and wonderful. Having delivered us out of six troubles, we see him hastening to our rescue in the seventh. It is then that the experience of the sweet singer of Israel awakes an echo in our heart: "He sent from on high, he took me; he drew me out of many waters" (Ps. 18:16).

Never forget that it is a present working. It says not that all things shall work together for good, although that is just as certain. Rather, it says that all things do now work together for good. It is not a past, nor a future, but a present process. They are always working for good. The operation may be as invisible and noiseless as the yeast fomenting in the dough, and yet no less certain and effectual. The kingdom of God does not come into your soul with observation, nor does it grow in your soul with observation.

And whether the good thus borne upon the raven-wing of trial—thus enclosed in the threatening cloud of some crushing providence—is immediate or remote, it matters little. Sooner or later it will accomplish its benevolent and heaven-sent mission. And then trial will expand its dark feathers and fly away; then sorrow will roll up its somber drapery and disappear. The painful and inexplicable dispensations, which at the present moment may be thickening and deepening around your path, are but so many tools that God is causing to work together to their certain, satisfactory, and happy results.

How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord,
is laid for your faith in his excellent Word!
What more can he say than to you he hath said,
you who unto Jesus for refuge have fled?

("K" in Rippon's Selection, 1787)

Be sure to read the Preface by Octavius Winslow and A Note from the Editor by Larry E. Wilson.

Larry Wilson is an ordained minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. In addition to having served as the General Secretary of the Committee on Christian Education of the OPC (2000–2004) and having written a number of articles and booklets (such as God's Words for Worship and Why Does the OPC Baptize Infants) for New Horizons and elsewhere, he has pastored OPC churches in Minnesota, Indiana, and Ohio. We are grateful to him for his editing of Morning Thoughts, the OPC Daily Devotional for 2011.