July 7 Daily Devotional

Bible Verse

"My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness" (2 Cor. 12:9).

Devotional

In the case of a tried believer, the rest that Jesus gives does not always imply his removing the burden that produces this weariness. He permits the burden to remain, and yet rest is experienced.

It would even appear from his procedure that the very existence of the burden is essential to the experience of the rest. He does not withdraw the trouble from you, nor you from the trouble; and still he gives the rest for which you sighed. Wonderful indeed!

But how is it explained? Because that burden takes you to Jesus! It is but the cause of your simply going to him. Except for that sorrow, or that calamity, or that sickness, or that bereavement, you would have stayed away. The pressure compelled you to go.

And how does he meet you? Does he open a way of escape from your difficulty, or does he immediately unbind your burden and set you free? No; better than that, he pours strength into your soul; he pours life into your spirit; he pours love into your heart; and thus you find rest. In this way the precious promises are fulfilled in your experience, "As your days so shall your strength be;" "my grace is sufficient for you" (Deut. 33:25; 2 Cor. 12:9).

The timing of our Lord's promised grace is no small unfolding of his love. No less is it an evidence of the complexity of his person as God-man. How could he so time his supply of strength as to meet the need at its very crisis, did not his Deity make him cognizant of the critical juncture in which his people were placed! Do not forget that this operation is going on in every place and at every moment. And how could he meet that need, and speak a word in season to the weary, but as his humanity was touched with the feeling of the infirmity? It is precisely by this process of experience that you are brought into close views of the glory of your incarnate God.

When he speaks—through the ministry of the Word, or by the Word itself—to the believer, wearied with conflict and with trial, it has been just at the moment that its sustaining and consoling power was most needed. The eye that neither slumbers nor sleeps was upon you. He knew in what furnace you were placed, and he was there to temper the flame when it seemed the most severe. He saw your frail boat struggling through the tempest, and he came to your rescue at the height of the storm.

How he has proved this in seasons of difficulty and doubt! How often at a crisis, the most critical of your life, the Lord has appeared for you! Your need has been supplied, your doubt has been solved, and your perplexity has been guided; He has delivered your soul from death, your eyes from tears, and your feet from falling. A word by Jesus, spoken in due season, how good it is!

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.