Heart religion may be defined as experiential (some­times called “experimental”) Christianity. It reminds us that true religion is inward and feeling. Paul refers to it in 2 Timothy 3:5 as “godliness” in “the power thereof.” Born again through the Holy Spirit, each of us has that Spirit living in us to maintain the life of grace in the soul. We have as much true religion as the Holy Spirit has wrought in our hearts. Given to us by the Father and the Son, He applies to us covenant bless­ings promised before the world began, one of which is to know God and His dealings with us (Jer. 31:34).

Experience⤒🔗

These things belong to the realm of our experience. Therefore, real religion is heart religion: where “the root of the righteous (that) yieldeth fruit” (Prov. 12:12) is planted and nurtured. This article maintains that it is a “missing dimension” these days. We do not allege that 21^st-century religion is not real; we do say that the emphasis on inward piety is not prominent like it used to be. More than fifty years ago, A.W. Pink could write: “Alas, alas, that heart religion is rapidly disappearing from the earth, to the eternal undoing of all who are strangers to it.” We cannot but feel that this has only continued.

Perhaps Pink was comparing his time with the days of the authors whose books he valued: the Reformers, Puritans, leaders of the 18^th-century Awakening, 19^th-and 20^th-century writers in the same mold. In 1736, Jonathan Edwards could say of the Northampton Christians:

Many of them have been noted for religion; and particularly remarkable for their distinct knowl­edge in things that relate to heart religion, and Christ­ian experience, and their great regards thereto.

Recovery←⤒🔗

Recent decades have seen a recovery of the Reformed faith. Evidence for this is that, while Pink’s lifetime saw barely a thousand subscribers to his Studies in the Scriptures, now his writings are among the best-selling Christian literature of our time. This is matched by large sales of both historic and contemporary writers in the same mold. However, a recovery of these things is not the same as the possession of them experimentally. We can have “the doctrines of grace” but not have the grace of the doctrines. We can go through Reformed truth, but does Reformed truth go through us? The tragic cases of ministers committing adultery, office­bearers causing trouble in churches, believers not speaking to each other, Christian men dallying with pornography, and older believers spending hours in front of the TV are just some consequences when heart religion is neglected.

1. Heart Religion can have its Various Substitutes←⤒🔗

We are, I fear, beset with at least three dangerous sub­stitutes for it.

Firstly: Activism←↰⤒🔗

This is the snare of being too concerned about out­ward success and numbers. Ministers and all the Lord’s servants are susceptible to this in our “day of small things.” A heart religion that submits to the biblical pri­ority of church order, purity of worship, a holy and exercised people (Isa. 66:2), etc., while laboring for the extension of Christ’s kingdom, will not be dismayed if things progress slowly. It knows that they progress surely because the work is His (Isa. 43:13; 1 Cor. 15:58; Gal. 6:7).

However, professed adherents to the Reformed faith are restless. The frantic way new methods and devices are resorted to, the full church program, keeping Chris­tians at full stretch, teaching that zealous activity is the benchmark of acceptance with God, the latest tally of church members, etc. — all these betray a priority that is not the religion of the heart. Our Lord’s words to the church at Ephesus remind us that an orthodox, busy, active, prosperous, “successful” church may be in dire need of repentance (Rev. 2:4-5).

In all our activity for the spread of the gospel, let us ensure it is the inevitable outcome of inward godli­ness, and zeal for His glory alone. Such was the piety of Mrs. Elizabeth Prentiss:

Those words ‘daily nearer God’ have an inexpressible charm for me. I long for such nearness to Him that all other objects shall fade into comparative insignificance; so that to have a thought, a wish, a pleasure apart from Him, shall be impossible.

Secondly: Cerebralism←↰⤒🔗

“Cerebral” means “intellectual appreciation, primar­ily intellectual in nature, involving the mental processes rather than the emotions.” While the Bible never sets the understanding against the feelings — they are vir­tually synonymous (Prov. 8:5) — yet we can do this in our relationship to divine truth. We can intellectually revel in the sublime truths of God’s Word and lack the accompanying application of those truths to our spiritual experience and growth. The truth is meant to be “after godliness” (Titus 1:1).

This barrenness is sometimes found in writers and preachers. It is the tendency to handle divine truth in a purely objective way — to couch things in scholarly, almost philosophical terms, rather than in the simple yet profound terms of Holy Scripture. This makes the message much less accessible to ordinary people, and betrays a lack of being exercised in that message one­self. How true some words of Dr. Lloyd-Jones are: “The true hallmark of greatness is simplicity. It is little minds that are complicated and involved.” We might add: and experience little of what they profess to know.

Cerebralism tends to pride: “knowledge puffeth up” (1 Cor. 8:1). When this is so, spiritual understanding of truth will be absent because the Lord has “hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes” (Matt. 11:25). We shall never be granted a feeling-knowledge of divine truth while we bring little more to it than our intellect. A test for us is whether we find good sermons and books just intellec­tually stimulating — or enlightening and enlivening, humbling, searching, directing, transforming, sancti­fying, comforting, etc. Would not half the current debates and wrangles over doctrine disappear if we were exercised in the truth as we should be? (Cf. Eph. 1:17).

Thirdly: Formalism←↰⤒🔗

There is a power in God’s Word that warms the heart (Jer. 23:29). Our experience, and the lifestyle that flows from this, will have a corresponding warmth and attractiveness about it. The principal grace of love will seek to do everything in gratitude to the Lord and in affectionate concern for everybody around us (Rom. 12:9-11). Such are “a band of men whose hearts God (has) touched” (1 Sam. 10:26).

Regrettably, it is possible for us to concentrate instead upon correct behavior to the point of legalism and fetishism. Certain temperaments are perhaps more prone to this than others: naturally serious-minded believers can make a virtue out of an excessive sobri­ety and the things they do not do. It can lead to man­made rules becoming almost a substitute for gratitude-based obedience (Eph. 6:6). Such cold, unat­tractive religion may well earn John Newton’s com­ment about a man who was “more to be admired than to be beloved.”

It is possible to be sidetracked by these three substi­tutes more easily than we realize. Many who were enthusiastic for sovereign-grace truth do not walk with us now. They have turned to other things. Attitudes towards Bible translations, worship, evangelism, preaching, and lifestyle that were shaped by the love of the truth are now affected by different criteria. The spirit of the age, pressures from other Christians, our corrupt desires, even one’s own family, can take their toll if God’s Word does not hold our inmost being.

2. Heart Religion is Our Relationship with God←⤒🔗

“This is life eternal,” says our Lord, “that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent” (John 17:3). In his letter, John invites us to this knowledge: “and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ” (1 John 1:3). Would we have expressed the acme of Christianity in this way? Yet it is what the Lord Himself seeks: “For I desired ... the knowledge of God more than burnt offer­ings” (Hos. 6:6). The marvel is that God in Christ has not just made us safe for eternity but has brought us to Himself. Our persons are justified, adopted to become His children, and, with enthusiasm, God pledges to bless us:

And I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from them, to do them good; but I will put my fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from me. Yea, I will rejoice over them to do them good ... with my whole heart and with my whole soul. Jeremiah 32:40-41

Our gracious God has a work to do that is chiefly in us. Romans 8:29 teaches this: “predestinated ... to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.” The goal of our sal­vation is not primarily service, but likeness to Jesus ­ that He might occupy the place of “firstborn” over a people who have the family likeness. He had in mind not so much what we do, but what we are. Christlike character comes before everything else.

The eruptions of “sin that dwelleth in me” (Rom. 7:20) will militate against it. However, the Lord works upon and in us to counteract this and bring forth the beauty of Christ (John 3:30). This fatherly training is usually through Scripture: the read or preached Word will reveal our sin or neglected duty. Sometimes it has to be through affliction and calamity. And, as surely as heart religion sees the Lord behind the exercising Word (2 Tim. 3:16-17), so it sees Him behind every outward trial. Job did (Job 1:21-22; 2:10), although Satan was the instrument and the Sabeans, Chaldeans, a great wind, and sore boils were the means. “God is the Cause of causes,” wrote Christopher Nesse. There­fore Job’s confidence was “he performeth the thing that is appointed for me: and many such things are with him” (23:14).

However, it is another thing to have the Word and afflictions sanctified to us. We rationalize what the Lord is doing: we “despise ... the chastening” — or feel sorry for ourselves and go down under it: we “faint when ... rebuked of him” (Heb. 12:4). Heart religion, on the other hand, is “exercised thereby” (12:11). This means that if the Lord convicts with His Word, we meet His rebukes with a tender conscience (2 Kings 22:19) and “vehement desire ... to be clear in this matter” (2 Cor. 7:11). We respond with repentance and reformation — which Luther said is the evidence of genuine repentance.

This means we love a chastening God and we kiss the rod that smites: “It is good for me that I have been afflicted; that I might learn thy statutes” (Ps. 119:71). Like Job, we can say, “he knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold” (23:10). And if the Lord should strip us of everything and bring us to nothing, the gracious heart will still not repine but submit, saying with Job, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him” (13:15). This is because we know that, when God seems to bring the worst upon us, it is to bring the best out of us. All this is knowing God and His gracious dealings with us — a religion of the heart.

3. Heart Religion Stresses the Inner Life←⤒🔗

“Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life” says Solomon (Prov. 4:23). The great thing prized here is what is variously called “a soft heart” (Job 23:16), “a gracious spirit” (2 Tim. 4:22), and “a little melting” (Jer. 9:7). What is dreaded is the inward hardness, coldness, and deadness that makes the exercises of religion such a struggle.

Those with heart religion long for the Lord to come to them in an inward way. We are blessed when He is pleased to enlighten (John 14:26), enliven (Isa. 57:15), comfort (Acts 9:31), convict (John 16:8), reveal Christ (John 16:14), sanctify through the truth (2 Thess. 2:13), assure (Rom. 5:5, 15), and strengthen (2 Cor. 12:9). When warmed and melted, all the graces run and we are drawn out to Him and quickened in His way (Ps. 119:25).

To be helped inwardly, we realize that we must dili­gently attend to certain matters. Although all is by grace, yet grace works by our cooperation (Phil. 2:12­ 13). Heart religion manifests itself in a piety that keeps a careful watch over the inner life. “Christ, the Scrip­ture, your own hearts, and Satan’s devices are the four prime things that should be first and most studied and searched,” wrote Thomas Brooks. These are included in the following particulars.

1. A Forgiving Spirit←↰⤒🔗

Not to forgive those who have wronged us is the negation of the gospel. For this proclaims that the Lord has freely forgiven us (Matt. 18:35) — if we do not fol­low suit, we forfeit the daily forgiveness we need (Matt. 6:15). It is significant that when Paul appeals to the gospel as the ground of our forgiving others, he writes: “Be ye ... tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.” Forgiving grace toward others is the essence of heart-religion (Matt. 18:35). David’s forgiveness of Shimei (2 Sam. 16:10-12) came from a broken heart as he realized this slinger of insults was the instrument of the Lord’s chastening. The more contrite we feel, the more we will cover the sins of others with a feeling forgiveness we ourselves have known, and the less we will be dis­posed to criticize others.

2. Godly Fear←↰⤒🔗

The fear of the Lord has been defined as deeming “the smile of God our greatest delight, and the frown of God our greatest dread.” This is a gracious, heart-disposition that consciously lives under the eye of the Lord (Gen. 16:13; 1 Pet. 3:12). It transforms everything. It sanctifies our conduct as much as it preserves us from sinning. As one of the Puritans said, “The best way never to fall is ever to fear.” It is the sacred joy of a child to his Father (Mal. 1:6; 3:17), it makes things clear (Prov. 9:10), and it expresses itself in simple prayer (Matt. 6:9).

3. “A Conscience Void of Offence.” ←↰⤒🔗

This tenderness toward sin was something Robert Murray M’Cheyne was particularly concerned for:

I am persuaded that I ought to confess sin more. I think I ought to confess sin the moment I see it to be sin; whether I am in company, or in study, or even preaching, the soul ought to cast a glance of abhorrence at the sin. If I go on with the duty, leaving the sin unconfessed, I go on with a bur­dened conscience, and add sin to sin. I think I ought at certain times of the day — my best times — say, after breakfast and after tea — to confess solemnly the sins of the previous hours, and seek their com­plete remission. Memoir and Remains, p. 150

This “keeping short accounts with God” means that “debts” never accumulate but accounts are kept clear. It is surely the essence of heart religion. Such a close walk with the Lord permits nothing to come between Him and us to spoil that sweet fellowship.

4. Avoidance of Inward Idolatry←↰⤒🔗

Like the children of Israel, we are habitual idolaters. Although they came out of Egypt, Egypt did not so easily come out of them. The golden calf showed this, and much later they even “set up their idols in their heart” (Ezek. 14:3). This proclivity toward inward idol­atry is a matter of deep exercise for us. How easily we can inwardly entertain earthly objects! Immoderate love for things, constantly thinking and daydreaming about them, constitutes mental idols that provoke the eyes of His glory. Heart religion jealously watches over the heart because we know we love a jealous God. Those who love God most and would do most for Him have always struggled with such inward rivals.

And they who fain would serve Thee best,
Are conscious most of wrong within.

They have for that reason ensured that King Jesus sits unrivalled upon the throne of the heart.

5. Recognizing Providence in All Things←↰⤒🔗

Real religion sees the Lord in everything, according to Proverbs 3:6: “In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.” Not one area or item of life is excluded: “in all thy ways acknowledge him.” It is not being overly pious to pray about the needed parking space, to submit to the Lord over the household accident, to be patient when others annoy, etc. Heart religion believes that “of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen” (Rom. 11:36). Things do not happen of themselves, nor are they just “allowed” by God — rather, they are all appointed by Him for our good and His glory.

6. Maintaining a Right Spirit←↰⤒🔗

Scripture mentions the inward spirit of believers (Job 7:11; Eccl. 7:9; 1 Cor. 16:18). Although equivalent to “the heart,” it perhaps highlights the disposition or attitude side of our nature — our reactions to things. How we feel and respond to situations and people is an important part of heart religion. Therefore, we will want to watch this carefully. We need to pray con­stantly against at least three kinds of spirit: a heavy spirit (1 Kings 20:43), a hard spirit (Mark 16:14), and a hasty spirit (Ps. 31:22). The ultimate preventive, of course, is to know the apostolic benediction: “The Lord Jesus Christ be with thy spirit” (2 Tim. 4:22).

This will also have consequences for our relationship to God’s Word — the chief medium of knowing Him. By nature, we find a strange disposition to rebel against His right to mold our beliefs and direct our steps. We strug­gle with the self-will that seeks its own way (Prov. 14:14) or the presumption that runs ahead of the Lord (Num. 14:44). Is not the genius of heart religion seen here — in that it will recognize this propensity and be exercised about it? Its constant prayer will be for a soft heart, teachable spirit, submissive will. Maintaining this right spirit maintains a religion that is real, prac­tical, and a blessing to others.

Heart religion is known by its fruits. It results in God being glorified and our being humbled. God is on the throne, we are in our place — and at our happiest, because God’s glory and our good are forever joined in His purposes. May the Lord grant us a revival and restoration of this. If we are favored to see it, it is not too much to say that estranged believers will be rec­onciled, churches healed, false ways forsaken, holiness promoted and distinguished, worship reformed, preaching anointed, and sinners converted. These will be days when there will be religion, as John Owen describes, in “the profession of its truth and the prac­tice or exercise of its power.”

We considered heart religion in an overall way. We said that it was a missing dimension today, even among heirs of the Reformation. A love for Reformed truth is not necessarily an experimental knowledge of what was recovered those centuries ago. Church history shows that doctrinal orthodoxy can outlast inward piety. Even in John Knox’s Scotland two hundred and fifty years later, Thomas Boston could lament:

An unfelt religion, is the religion of them ... whose sound principles are like fire painted on a wall; as far from any sanctifying efficacy on their lives, or from burning up their corruptions, as that painted fire is from burning the house on which it is. But the religion of the saints is a felt, experimental religion. They feel the power of its mysteries upon their own souls.Works, 4:166

Submission←⤒🔗

The same author maintained, “The heart must be a temple consecrated to God, wherein love, fear, delight in God, submission, patience, and all other parts of unseen religion, are exercised” (ibid., 2:12). In this quo­tation appears the important word “submission.” It is a scriptural word, for James exhorts us to “submit yourselves therefore to God” (James 4:7). Boston says that submission is an integral part of heart religion and one vital evidence of it. How true this is!

In concluding our subject I want to consider this aspect of it: the submission that God requires and is graciously pleased to work in us. Its importance is such that there can be no heart religion without it.

Seen←⤒🔗

There is a time when we see submission to God at its clearest and loveliest: in the afflictions and sufferings that come to us in life. These exercise us deeply and our reaction to adversity is the index of our religion. This is why Scripture calls such seasons “trials” (2 Cor. 8:2; 1 Pet. 1:7). Heart religion acknowledges God in adversity with a sweet submission that justifies Him and in so doing makes a conduit that brings blessing into the soul.

1. Submission to God in Trials is never a Natural Reaction←↰⤒🔗

Left to ourselves, such divine dealings will have one of three effects:

1. They can prove we have no religion at all←↰⤒🔗

In the parable of the sower, the “stony ground” hearers “have no root in themselves, and so endure but for a time: afterward, when affliction or persecu­tion ariseth for the word’s sake, immediately they are offended” (Mark 4:17). A “fair weather” religion is not heart religion.

2. They will discover in us much unbelief, rebellion, pride, and self←↰⤒🔗

The children of Israel illustrate the immense diffi­culty of coming to this godly submission. The Lord sent each emergency on their pilgrimage as a call to trust Him who went before them in the cloudy and fiery pillar. Their repeated “murmurings” only revealed what was in their hearts (Deut. 8:2, 16). These things were “ensamples” or types, for they accurately mirror our hearts also (1 Cor. 10:10, 11).

Every Calvinist will acknowledge that God is in con­trol of all events — but rightly reacting to what hap­pens can be another matter. The Lord will test our confident adherence to truth. How often we have pro­fessed a certain doctrine, only to find that Providence required us to apply to our situation what we believed. And how often we have failed. John Newton used to say that many a man is a good Calvinist until some­one accidentally spills coffee on his new coat! The Lord tries and proves us so that what we believe is never a superficial claim. This is especially true for ministers of the gospel, who must help others with these things. The Lord will teach us all to work out and walk out what we believe so that it becomes “the doctrine which is according to godliness” (1 Tim. 6:3).

3. They will reveal that grace has taught us to acknowl­edge God and bow to His fatherly hand←↰⤒🔗

Meek patience under afflictions is a rare jewel in the religion of our day. Yet it shines in the examples of Scripture. When Aaron’s two sons died together, he “held his peace” (Lev. 10:3). Samuel brought a heavy message of judgment to Eli, and the old priest said: “It is the LORD: let him do what seemeth him good” (1 Sam. 3:18). Job, stripped of everything but his life, responded by saying: “The LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD...” “What? shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil? In all this Job did not sin with his lips” (Job 1:21; 2:10). David, in Absalom’s rebel­lion, referred to the Lord’s dealings like this: “But if he thus say, I have no delight in thee; behold, here am I, let him do to me as seemeth good unto him” (2 Sam. 15:26). The disciples, concerned for what might hap­pen to Paul if he went to Jerusalem, “ceased, saying, the will of the Lord be done” (Acts 21:14).

Nearer our time is the compelling example of Gen­eral Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson. Wounded by “friendly fire,” his left arm had to be amputated. His chaplain exclaimed, “Oh, General, what a calamity!” Jackson thanked him for his sympathy, but replied,

You see me wounded, but not depressed, not unhappy. I believe it has been according to God’s holy will, and I acquiesce entirely in it. You may think it strange, but you never saw me more perfectly con­tented than I am today, for I am sure my heavenly Father designs this afflictions for my good. I am per­fectly satisfied that either in this life or in that which is to come, I shall discover that what is now regarded as calamity is a blessing.

He died of pneumonia eight days later, on May 10, 1863.

Such examples, and there are countless others, are evidence of great grace in the heart, and the path to even more grace (1 Pet. 5:5). And it is to the glory of “him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us” (Eph. 3:20).

2. Submission to God is knowing, in Our Hearts, the Truth of His Sovereignty←↰⤒🔗

What is God’s role in our troubles and sorrows? Does He allow them — or does He appoint them? The Bible’s answer is that God appoints all our trials and troubles. A graciously exercised heart, receiving this truth, will submit to God in all that He sends. This is the essence of heart religion. Such doctrine, however, is offensive to human pride, and many believers have never had that pride mortified.

I remember, some years ago, relating a true story in a sermon about an elderly believer who never for­got his godly, exercised mother’s reaction to a family tragedy. In the early 1900s, he and his brothers and sisters were playing beside a road. A car came by (an unusual event in those days) and they ran across the road. However, his little sister, only three years old, was knocked down and killed. When their mother received the news, she said, “God never makes a mis­take.” After the meeting a believer rebuked me for say­ing that God would do such a thing — and this was at a Reformed Bible conference!

However, we can easily see this truth to be scrip­tural if we consider some key verses. In Exodus 14 the Israelites find themselves trapped and likely to be recaptured or killed by the advancing Egyptians. How did they arrive in this fatal cul-de-sac? Verses 2, 3, and 9 tell us that the Lord led them that way. So it was not the Israelites, not the Egyptians, not the devil but God who raised up those dire straits. He did it so that He might be glorified in their trusting Him, going for­ward at His command, and having the Red Sea opened for their deliverance. God originated their crisis, and then brought them out.

The case of Job is clear also. In the verses already quoted, he declares, “the LORD hath taken away” (Job 1:21). Although the devil used the particular agents of his sufferings, he was not their author, as Augustine wrote: “He does not say, ‘The LORD gave, and the devil took away,’ but ‘The LORD hath taken away.’” Also in chapter 2:10 he actually attributes the “evil” (i.e., calamity) to “the hand of God.”

Godly Naomi echoed these sentiments when, reviewing her trials in Moab, she says, “the Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me ... the LORD hath brought me home again empty: why then call ye me Naomi, seeing the LORD hath testified against me, and the Almighty hath afflicted me?” (Ruth 1:20, 21). There is no doubt in her enlightened mind who the Author of her troubles is, and she says so in meekness of wisdom.

In Psalm 55:22, David says, “Cast thy burden upon the LORD, and he shall sustain thee: he shall never suf­fer the righteous to be moved.” The word “burden” can be rendered “gift,” as it appears in the margin. The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew Lexicon has it: “thy lot (the care, anxiety, etc. which are thy portion).” David evidently knew where his burden came from, and where he could take it. So it is with every one of life’s burdens.

If any object that Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” was “a messenger of Satan to buffet me” (2 Cor. 12:7), the answer is in his earlier words “there was given to me” — the Lord was the first cause of Paul’s thorn. As Thomas Watson confirms:

Instruments can no more stir till God gives them a commission, than the axe can cut of itself without a hand ... whoever brings an affliction, it is God that sends it.

The uniform testimony of Scripture is that God appoints and sends our trials.

Not His “permissive will” but His prescriptive will is the joy of saints: “This also cometh forth from the LORD of hosts, which is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in working” (Isa. 28:29). If God only allows our adversity, who is really in charge? This makes Him little more than a bystander, responding to circum­stances, engaged in damage-limitation, overruling it for Him and for us. Is this the God of the Bible? Does this honor Him or comfort us? Only as we trace our trials back to God are we then brought to see a divine purpose in them and can come to the Source of our comfort and help. To quote Watson again: “It is one heart-quieting consideration in all the affliction that befall us, that God has a special hand in them.” Noth­ing, therefore, is arbitrary because God does every­thing according to His set purpose: “For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen” (Rom. 11:36).

If someone asks how God can deliberately afflict His children, then think of what He did to His own Son: “Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he hath put him to grief” (Isa. 53:10). It was not His Son’s suffer­ing that pleased Him, as we know, but the pleasure of His holy purpose being fulfilled: “the good pleasure of his will” (Eph. 1:6). Thus God our Father is pleased to afflict us (which is never penal but fatherly, and with accompanying support) for the glory of His name, and the good it will work in us. Heart religion, then, is as ready to bow to affliction as it is to receive mercies.

3. Submission is Acknowledging, Loving, and Trusting the God of Hope←↰⤒🔗

1. The first step is to have confidence in His revealed character←↰⤒🔗

Because the Lord Himself appoints and sends our trials, we are in danger of viewing Him as against us. Or at least of seriously questioning His wisdom, kind­ness, and power. Such a caricature the devil would present to our minds, and our unbelief would readily accept. It is God’s Word that keeps our thinking right and assures us that we are not to interpret His heart from His hand. “The LORD was with Joseph” although he was exiled from home, and afterwards unjustly imprisoned (Gen. 39:2, 21). His love is “perfect (and) casts out fear” (1 John 4:18); “his way is perfect ... he maketh my way perfect” (Ps. 18:30, 32). We can say with Medley,

In all His holy, sovereign will,
He is, I daily find,
Too wise to be mistaken, still
Too good to be unkind.

Someone asked Edward Payson, when in great bod­ily affliction, whether he could see any particular rea­son for this trial. “No,” he replied, “but I am as well satisfied as if I could see ten thousand; God’s will is the very perfection of all reason.” Let us beware of hard thoughts of God, and only entertain biblical views of Him: “transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God” (Rom. 12:2).

2. Then, to realize that each trial is sent to accomplish something specific in us←↰⤒🔗

The Lord tailor-makes each trial to suit our particular need. Whatever grace to be developed, weakness to be strengthened, sin to be subdued, waywardness to be corrected, lesson to be learned — God will fit the affliction to us exactly. “Chastening ... afterward yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby” (Heb. 12:11). John Flavel in his Mystery of Providence wrote:

The wisdom of God is much seen in the choice of His rods. It is not any kind of trouble that will work upon and purge every sin; but when God chooses for us such afflictions as, like med­icine, are suited to the disease the soul labours under, this speaks of divine care and love.

Submission is when we realize this, bow to His deal­ings, and ask Him to have His way. As Richard Green-ham said,

Whatsoever is upon you is from the Lord, and whatsoever is from the Lord, to you it is in mercy; and whatsoever comes in mercy ought not to be grievous to you. What loss is it when the losing of earthly things is the gaining of spiritual things? All shall be for your good, if you make your use of all.

3. We then gladly accept the divine discipline, and pray to have it sanctified to our spiritual profit and God’s glory←↰⤒🔗

The New Testament word “submission” means to put ourselves under another. Although a military term, it is used in more ways than that. Jesus submitted Himself to Joseph and Mary (Luke 2:51), wives are to submit to husbands (Col. 3:18), and Christians are humbly to submit themselves to each other (1 Pet. 5:5). To submit to God, therefore, is to recognize His loving right to deal with us how He pleases and for our best.

Negatively, it means we do not struggle nor try to escape what the Lord is doing. The psalmist says, “Thou broughtest us into the net; thou laidst affliction upon our loins” (Ps. 66:11). How natural to want to break free! When we struggle and fret it becomes worse than the affliction itself. God in kind wisdom has a work to do upon and in us: submission is our surren­der to that. Only then, “as a weaned child” (Ps. 131:2) are we free spiritually to profit from our afflictions.

Positively, it means we examine ourselves, seek the Lord, and pray to Him to show us what this discipline is for. It might be for correction, to humble and make us more dependent upon Him, to bring some secret sin to light, to wean us from the world, to deepen our experience of God, to prize prayer and the Word, to qualify us to sympathize with others, or to prepare us for some future work. We should make Job’s prayer our own: “Shew me wherefore thou contendest with me” and “That which I see not teach thou me” (Job 10:2; 34:32).

Actively, it means we shall repent of any sin dis­covered, make restitution if necessary, take up neg­lected duty, give ourselves afresh to things with renewed zeal, put into practice the lessons the Lord has taught us — and anything else the Lord would call us to do. Our actions in these things will show how much trials have bettered us:

'Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit'; 'It is good for me that I have been afflicted; that I might learn thy statutes'.John 15:2; Ps. 119:71

4. This leads to contentment←↰⤒🔗

A.W. Pink put it like this:

Contentment, then, is the product of a heart resting in God. It is the soul’s enjoyment of that peace which passeth all under­standing. It is the outcome of my will being brought into subjection to the divine will. It is the blessed assurance that God doeth all things well, and is, even now, making all things work together for my ultimate good ... Contentment is possible only as we cultivate and maintain that attitude of accepting everything which enters our lives as coming from the hand of Him who is too wise to err, and too loving to cause one of His children a needless tear,from Comfort for Christians, Chapter 16

5. We then have hope that the present trial will lead to a fruitful and joyful end←↰⤒🔗

Such experiences are only “for a season” and “if need be” (1 Pet. 1:6). The “day of prosperity” replaces “the day of adversity” (Eccl. 7:14) in God’s good time. “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning” (Ps. 30:5). The divine Refiner “sit(s) as a refiner and purifier of silver” (Mal. 3:3), meaning that He is there carefully overseeing the fiery trial, so that it is never too much to spoil the process, and when the dross is gone and the precious metal purified, the fur­nace is no more. Let us look up and be sure the Lord does all things well. Let us wait upon Him, and say with Job, “He knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold” (23:10).

May the Lord grant us hearts to know these things by experience, and restore to us in these days the exer­cised religion of our forefathers, which is surely the religion of their Bible and ours.