{"id":5982,"date":"2021-03-22T09:48:05","date_gmt":"2021-03-22T09:48:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/?p=5982"},"modified":"2021-03-22T09:48:05","modified_gmt":"2021-03-22T09:48:05","slug":"bulletin-edition-march-2021-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/?p=5982","title":{"rendered":"Bulletin Edition March 2021"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Omnipresence of God<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

John MacDuff,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Where shall I go from Your Spirit? Where shall I flee from\nYour presence?” Psalm 139:7<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The omnipresence of God! How baffling to any finite\ncomprehension! To think that above us, and around us, and within us\u2014there is\nDeity\u2014the invisible footprints of an Omniscient, Omnipresent One!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“His Eyes are in every place!” On rolling planets\u2014and\ntiny atoms; on the bright seraph\u2014and the lowly worm; roaming in searching\nscrutiny through the tracks of immensity\u2014and reading the dark and hidden page\nof my heart! “All things are naked and opened unto the eyes of Him with\nwhom we have to do!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

O God! shall this Your Omnipresence appall me? No! In my seasons\nof sadness and sorrow and loneliness\u2014when other comforts and comforters have\nfailed\u2014when, it may be, in the darkness and silence of some midnight hour, in\nvain I have sought repose\u2014how sweet to think, “My God is here! I am not\nalone. The Omniscient One, to whom the darkness and the light are both alike\u2014is\nhovering over my sleepless pillow!” O my Unsetting Sun, it cannot be\ndarkness or loneliness or sadness\u2014where You are. There can be no night to the\nsoul which has been cheered with Your glorious radiance!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Surely, I am with you always!” How precious, blessed\nJesus, is this, Your legacy of parting love! Present with each of Your people\nuntil the end of time\u2014ever present, omnipresent. The true “Pillar of\ncloud” by day\u2014and “Pillar of fire” by night, preceding and\nencamping by us in every step of our wilderness journey. My soul! think of Him\nat this moment\u2014as present with every member of the family that He has redeemed\nwith His blood! Yes, and as much present with every individual soul, as if He\nhad none other to care for\u2014but as if that one engrossed all His affection and\nlove!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Great Builder\u2014surveying every stone and pillar of His\nspiritual temple;<\/p>\n\n\n\n

the Great Shepherd\u2014with His eye on every sheep of His fold;<\/p>\n\n\n\n

the Great High Priest\u2014marking every tear-drop; noting every\nsorrow; listening to every prayer; knowing the peculiarities of every case: no\nnumber perplexing Him\u2014no variety bewildering Him; able to attend to all, and\nsatisfy all, and answer all\u2014myriads drawing hourly from His Treasury\u2014and yet no\ndiminution of that Treasury\u2014ever emptying, and yet ever filling, and always\nfull!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jesus! Your perpetual and all-pervading presence turns darkness\ninto day! I am not left un-befriended to weather the storms of life\u2014Your hand\nis from hour to hour piloting my frail vessel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The omnipresence of God\u2014gracious antidote to every earthly\nsorrow!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I have set the Lord always before me!” Even now, as\nnight is drawing its curtains around me, be this my closing prayer:\n“Blessed Savior! abide with me, for it is toward evening, and the day is\nfar spent! Under the shadowing wings of Your presence and love, I will both lie\ndown and sleep in peace, for You alone, O Lord, make me live in safety!”\nPsalm 4:8<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blundering & stumbling on in darkness<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

J.C.Philpot<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the Lord has quickened our souls, for a time we often go\nblundering on, not knowing there is a Jesus. We think that the way of life is\nto keep God’s commandments\u2014obey the law\u2014cleanse ourselves from sin\u2014reform our\nlives\u2014cultivate universal holiness in thought, word, and action\u2014and so we\ngo\u2014blundering and stumbling on in darkness\u2014and all the while never get a single\nstep forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But when the Lord has allowed us to weary ourselves to find the\ndoor, and let us sink lower and lower into the pit of guilt and ruin, from\nfeeling that all our attempts to extricate ourselves have only plunged us\ndeeper and deeper\u2014and when the Spirit of God opens up to the understanding and\nbrings into the soul some spiritual discovery of Jesus, and thus makes known\nthat there is a Savior, a Mediator, and a way of escape\u2014this is the grand\nturning point in our lives, the first opening in the valley of Achor (trouble),\nof the door of hope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the Lord\nsitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple.\nAbove it stood the Seraphim: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his\nface, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. And one\ncried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts; the whole\nearth is full of his glory. And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him\nthat cried, and the house was filled with smoke. Then said I, Woe is me! for I\nam undone; because I am a man of unclean lips; and I dwell in the midst of a\npeople of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of\nhosts.” Isaiah 6:1-5<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Octavius Winslow<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What an august revelation of the glory of Christ’s Godhead was\nthis which broke upon the view of the lowly prophet! How instructive is each\nparticular of His beatific vision! Mark the profound humility of the\nseraphim\u2014they veiled with their wings their faces and their feet. They were in\nthe presence of Jesus. They saw the King in His beauty, and covered themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the effect of this view of our Lord’s divine glory upon the\nmind of the prophet is still more impressive: “Then said I, Woe is me! for\nI am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips\u2026for mine eyes have seen the\nKing, the Lord of hosts.” What prostrated his soul thus low in the dust?\nWhat filled him with this self-abasement? What overwhelmed him with this keen\nsense of his vileness? Oh, it was the unclouded view he had of the essential\nglory of the Son of God! And thus will it ever be. The beaming forth of\nChrist’s glory in the soul reveals its hidden evil; the knowledge of this evil\nlays the believer low before God with the confession, “I abhor myself. Woe\nis me! for I am undone.” Beloved, let this truth be ever present to your\nmind, that as we increasingly see glory in Christ, we shall increasingly see\nthat there is no glory in ourselves. Jesus is the Sun which reveals the\npollutions and defilements which are within. The chambers of abomination are all\nclosed until Christ shines in upon the soul. Oh, then it is these deep-seated\nand long-veiled deformities are revealed; and we, no longer gazing with a\ncomplacent eye upon self, sink in the dust before God, overwhelmed with shame,\nand covered with confusion of face. Holy posture! Blessed spectacle!\u2014a soul\nprostrate before the glory of the incarnate God! All high and lofty views of\nits own false glory annihilated by clear and close views of the true glory of\nJesus. As when the sun appears, all the lesser lights vanish into darkness, so\nwhen Jesus rises in noontide glory upon the soul, all other glory retires, and\nHe alone fixes the eye and fills the mind. “With twain they covered their\nfaces, and with twain they covered their feet.” Their own perfections and\nbeauty were not to be seen in the presence of the glory of the Lord. How much\nmore profound should be the humility and self-abasement of man! Have we covered\nourselves\u2014not with the pure wings of the holy cherubim, but with sackcloth and\nashes before the Lord? Have we sought to veil\u2014not our beauties, for beauty we\nhave none\u2014but our innumerable and flagrant deformities, even the “spots\nupon our feasts of charity,” the sins of our best and holiest things; and,\nrenouncing all self-glory, have we sunk, as into nothing before God? Oh, we are\nyet strangers to the vision of Christ’s glory, if we have not. If the\nconstellation of human gifts and attainments, distinctions and usefulness, on\nwhich unsanctified and unmortified self so delights to gaze, have not retired\ninto oblivion, the Sun of Righteousness has yet to rise upon our souls with\nhealing in His wings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I will make darkness light before them, and crooked things\nstraight.” Isaiah 42:16<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

J.C.Philpot<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is the mind of man–of any man–of your mind, my mind,\nunder affliction? Let him be tried with pain of body, poverty of circumstances,\nsickness in his family, guilt of conscience, hard bondage in his own soul,\nwithout any beam of divine light upon his path, and what is he? A murmuring,\nrebellious wretch, without a grain of resignation, without a particle of\ncontentment or submission to the will of God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But let the glory of the Lord be revealed; let him have a view\nby faith of a suffering Jesus; let some ray of light shine upon his path; let\nthere be some breaking in of the exceeding weight of glory that is to be\nmanifested at Christ’s appearing; where are all his crooked things now? All\nmade straight. But how? By his crooked will–crooked because it did not lie\nlevel with the Lord’s–being made to harmonize with the promise and precept,\nthe footsteps and example of the blessed Jesus. The crook is not taken out of\nthe lot, but straightened in the lot; the cross is not removed from the\nshoulder, but strength–that strength which is “made perfect in\nweakness”–is given to bear it. So it was with Christ himself in the\ngarden and on the cross; so it is with the believing followers of the crucified\nOne.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Such as sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.”\nPsalm 107:10<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

J.C.OPhilpot<\/p>\n\n\n\n

God’s people are here represented not as sitting in death; were\nthey sitting there, they would be dead altogether; but they are sitting in the\nshadow of death. Observe, death has lost its reality to them; it now can only\ncast a shadow, often a gloomy shadow, over their souls; but there is no\nsubstance in it. The quickening of the Spirit of God in them has destroyed the\nsubstance of death spiritually; and the death and resurrection of Jesus have\ndestroyed the substance of death physically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet, though the gloomy monster–deadness of soul; and that\nghastly king of terrors–the death of the body; have been disarmed and\ndestroyed by “Immanuel, God with us;” yet each of them casts at times\na gloomy, darkling shadow over the souls of those who fear God. Is not your\nsoul, poor child of God, exercised from time to time with this inward death?\nDeadness in prayer, deadness in reading the word, deadness in hearing the\ntruth, deadness in desires after the Lord, deadness to everything holy,\nspiritual, heavenly, and divine? How it benumbs and paralyzes every breathing\nof our soul Godwards! Yet it is but a shadow. Write not bitter things against\nyourself, poor, tempted, exercised child of God, because you feel such\ndeathliness and coldness from time to time in your heart. It will not destroy\nyou; no, it is life in your soul that makes it felt; and the more the life of\nGod has been felt in your conscience, the more painfully the deathliness of\nyour carnal mind is experienced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you expect that your ‘carnal mind’ will ever be lively in the\nthings of God? What is it but a lump of death, a huge mass of ungodliness,\nwhich, like some Behemoth, upheaves its broad flanks continually in the heart?\nYet the people of God are very often troubled in their minds by the gloomy shadow\nthat this death casts over their souls. But this trouble is a mark of life. If\nI were dead, could I feel it? The worst symptom of those dead in sin is, that\nthey do not feel it. But, while we feel it, while we sigh on account of it,\nwhile we hate it, and hate ourselves on account of it, though it may pain and\ngrieve, it never can destroy. It has lost its substance, though it casts its\ngloomy shadow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Omnipresence of God John MacDuff, “Where shall I go from Your Spirit? Where shall I flee from Your presence?” Psalm 139:7 The omnipresence of God! How baffling to any finite comprehension! To think that above us, and around us, and within us\u2014there is Deity\u2014the invisible footprints of an Omniscient, Omnipresent One! “His Eyes are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bulletin-editions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5982","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=5982"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5982\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5983,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5982\/revisions\/5983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}