2020: Sunbeams and Tucked Away Cottages

A sunbeam may shine into a hovel, but it can never be soiled. Let God engineer your circumstances where He likes, and you will be kept as the light.

With the great towering world all around them God’s children are as cottages tucked away in safety, and the word of Our Lord comes, “Be of good cheer; I have overcome the world."

For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord. Jeremiah 29:11

It is the relationship on the inside that produces goodness, not external surroundings. God never safeguards from without, He garrisons from within. Unless this principle is understood, we shall build on a wrong foundation.

. . . whom I have caused to be carried away captive from Jerusalem unto Babylon Jeremiah 29:4

Evil and tyranny are there by the permissive will of God, there is never any room for thinking that these things happen by chance.

and to wait for His Son from heaven.

Some people are so impatient and full of criticism of the present order of things that they tell us Jesus Christ is coming again at once; others are cynical and say, “Where is the promise of His coming?” 

We have no control whatever over external history; God has, and as saints we have to wait in patience wherever we are placed in the providential order of tyranny.

Build ye houses, and dwell in them; . . . And seek the peace of the city whither I have caused you to be carried away captive.      Jeremiah 29:5-7 

Obey God’s order in the dust and dirt of captivity. When we become rightly related to God we are loosened from everything around us, and the danger is to imagine we have to get out of the world.

External surroundings make no difference to our inner life, but our inner life makes a telling difference on our surroundings. 

Our problem is not one of proportion: how much worldliness can I live in? but of spiritual insight which will enable me to live a holy life in the midst of worldliness, looking for the fulfilment of God’s promises. 

The great craze to-day is work: God’s word is “wait.” Patience means standing under and enduring until the strain is past. 

The Spirit of God never adopts the tactics of the world. Remain uncrushably true to Jesus Christ wherever the providential order of God places you.

- Adapted from Oswald Chambers