Daily Devotionals

Music For the Soul

Devotional: July 5th

A SHELTER FROM THE STORM

A man shall be as a hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. - Isaiah 32:2

"Under His wings shalt thou flee to a refuge." Is not that a vivid, intense, picturesque, but most illuminative, way of telling us what is the very essence, and what is the urgency, and what is the worth of what we call faith? The Old Testament is full of the teaching - which is masked to ordinary readers; the same teaching as the New Testament is confessedly full of- of the necessity of faith as the one bond that binds men to God. If only our translators had wisely determined upon a uniform rendering in Old and New Testament of words that are synonymous, the reader would have seen what is often now reserved for the student, that all these sayings in the Old Testament Book about "trusting in God" run on all fours with " believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved."

But just mark, the faith which unites with God, and brings a man beneath the shadow of His wings, is nothing more nor less than the flying into the refuge that is provided for us. Does that not speak to us of the urgency of the case? Does that not speak to us eloquently of the perils which environ us? Does it not speak to us of the necessity of flight, swift, with all the powers of our will? Is the faith which is a flying into a refuge fairly described as an intellectual act of believing in a testimony? Surely it is something a great deal more than that! A man out in the plain, with the avenger of blood, hot-breathed and bloody-minded, at his back, might believe, as much as he liked, that there would be safety within the walls of the City of Refuge, but unless he took to his heels without loss of time, the spear would be in his back before he knew where he was. There are plenty of men that know all about the security of the Refuge, and believe it utterly, but never run for it; and so never get into it. Faith is the gathering up of the whole powers of the nature to fling myself into an Asylum, to cast myself into God’s arms, to take shelter beneath the shadow of His wings. And unless a man does that, and swiftly, he is exposed to every bird of prey in the sky, and to every beast of prey lurking in wait for him. A man is not saved because he believes that he is saved, but because by believing he lays hold of the salvation. It is not the flight that is impregnable, and makes those behind its strong bulwarks secure. Not my outstretched hand, but a Hand that my hand grasps, is what holds me up. The power of faith is but that it brings me into contact with God, and sets me behind the seven-fold bastions of the Almighty protection,