{"id":2881,"date":"2014-05-31T09:13:26","date_gmt":"2014-05-31T09:13:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/?p=2881"},"modified":"2014-05-31T09:13:26","modified_gmt":"2014-05-31T09:13:26","slug":"coming-up-from-the-wilderness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/?p=2881","title":{"rendered":"Coming up from the wilderness"},"content":{"rendered":"

Coming up from the wilderness<\/strong><\/p>\n

(J. C. Philpot, \u201cComing up from the Wilderness\u201d 1857)<\/p>\n

\u201cWho is this coming up from the wilderness,
\nleaning upon her Beloved?<\/strong>\u201d\u00a0Song of Solomon 8:5<\/p>\n

To come up from the wilderness, is to come up out
\nof OURSELVES; for we are ourselves the wilderness.
\nIt is\u00a0our wilderness heart<\/strong> that makes the world
\nwhat it is to us . . .
\nour own barren frames;
\nour own bewildered minds;
\nour own worthlessness and inability;
\nour own lack of spiritual fruitfulness;
\nour own trials, temptations, and exercises;
\nour own hungering and thirsting after righteousness.<\/p>\n

In a word,\u00a0it is what passes in our own bosom
\nthat makes the world to us a dreary desert.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Carnal people find the world no wilderness. It is an
\nEden to them! Or at least they try hard to make it so.
\nThey seek all their pleasure from, and build all their
\nhappiness upon it. Nor do they dream of any other
\nharvest of joy and delight, but what may be repaid
\nin this \u2018happy valley\u2019, where youth, health, and good
\nspirits are ever imagining new scenes of gratification.<\/p>\n

But the child of grace, exercised with a thousand
\ndifficulties, passing through many temporal and
\nspiritual sorrows, and inwardly grieved with his own
\nlack of heavenly fruitfulness, finds the wilderness
\nwithin.<\/p>\n

But he still comes up out of it, and this he does
\nby looking upward with believing eyes to Him who
\nalone can bring him out.<\/p>\n

He comes up out of his own\u00a0righteousness<\/strong>, and
\nshelters himself under Christ\u2019s righteousness.<\/p>\n

He comes up out of his own\u00a0strength<\/strong>,
\nand trusts to Christ\u2019s strength.<\/p>\n

He comes up out of his own\u00a0wisdom<\/strong>,
\nand hangs upon Jesus\u2019 wisdom.<\/p>\n

He comes up out of his own tempted, tried,
\nbewildered, and perplexed condition, to find rest
\nand peace in the finished work of the Son of God.<\/p>\n

And thus he comes up out of\u00a0the wilderness of
\nself<\/strong>, not actually, but experimentally. Every desire
\nof his soul to be delivered from his \u2018wilderness
\nsickening sight\u2019 that he has of sin and of himself
\nas a sinner. Every aspiration after Jesus, every
\nlonging look, earnest sigh, piteous cry, or laboring
\ngroan, all are a\u00a0coming up from the wilderness<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

His turning his back upon an ungodly world; renouncing
\nits pleasures, its honors, its pride, and its ambition;
\nseeking communion with Jesus as his chief delight;
\nand accounting all things but loss and rubbish for
\nthe excellency of the knowledge of Jesus his Lord
\nas revealed to his soul by the power of God; this,
\nalso, is\u00a0coming up from the wilderness<\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Coming up from the wilderness (J. C. Philpot, \u201cComing up from the Wilderness\u201d 1857) \u201cWho is this coming up from the wilderness, leaning upon her Beloved?\u201d\u00a0Song of Solomon 8:5 To come up from the wilderness, is to come up out of OURSELVES; for we are ourselves the wilderness. It is\u00a0our wilderness heart that makes the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-author-j-c-philpot"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2881"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2881\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2882,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2881\/revisions\/2882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}