Christianity Oasis Forum

[Netchaplain]

The longer you are in the wilderness as a Caleb, with an actual acquaintance with Hebron, the more truly and really does your heart make ready for possession, as well as being enriched with the durable nature of the Father’s mercies to you here. “Thy raiment waxed not old upon thee, neither did thy foot swell” (Deut 8:4). Hence, the longer one is on the journey, the more marvelous the unchanging character of His care and ways with us.

The wilderness was immensely different to Caleb and the rest of Israel. He was not in the land, he was traveling on to take possession, but of a country known, not only by report, but where he had been; and as he travelled on, he was learning that the very same care of provision made for him at the first, remained fresh and unworn up to the last.

Each year your heart is deepened in the care of the Father in the wilderness, and has a brightened consciousness of your heavenly possession, which becomes more enjoyable to you, while heaven is more and more within your reach. You can say, “Those that be planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God” (Ps 92:13). You are blessed with the upper springs and the nether springs, and they increase simultaneously. It is as I enjoy the upper springs that I am conscious of the nether; as I eat of the corn of the land, so do I practically partake of the manna; as my heart is occupied with the glorified Lord Jesus, so are my steps here in His life and grace on earth.

The less you have from earth and the world, the more you are in the wilderness; and it is in the wilderness, and in the absence of natural supplies, that you know the Father’s care, and that the knowledge of heaven brightens. If you lose naturally, you gain spiritually as to both. The more the wilderness is the wilderness, the more the Father’s resources are made known to you. The moment we gain from the earth or man, we are losing the wilderness, and with it the divine comforts of it.

If I have nothing but my Father, I am in the wilderness, and I am supremely happy. It is the admixture of the old and new wine which occasions our ups and downs here. The wilderness is having all our resources in the Father on earth, and without any check in heaven. I might retire from the world politically and positionally, and yet enjoy the things that are in it; and inasmuch as I do so, I am not in the wilderness in the true sense of the word, nor enjoying the Father’s provisions for me when in it.

The Father will take care that my needed comfort shall not be impaired, nor my natural force abated. The more all my springs are in Him, the more I really enjoy heaven, where all my springs shall be in Him, with everything to cooperate and nothing to distract or hinder. It is only as you are thus truly in the wilderness that you are in the joys of the Father, or are able to discern what is of Him all round you.

If I am in the light I know what light is, for it aids me; and I know darkness, for it opposes me. “He that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man” (1Co 2:15). It is not that you have spiritual knowledge, but that you are spiritual, living on divine springs; and then you can determine like test-paper the reality of each, and you seek it too. You know nothing but as you have been in it; you cannot know the heavenly but as you have been in it; and you cannot discern in another what you have not known in yourself. You may see what you have not known yourself. You may see more in another than in yourself, but you could not see it at all if it were not, in some measure, in yourself.

- J B Stoney