God’s Tenderness with a Doubting Truster

It does not follow that one who has had most reason to trust God trusts him most confidently. This has been true from the beginning, and man’s hesitancy in trusting God’s promised love and loving care is still manifest on every side among the children of men.

Abraham, father of the faithful, when pleading for Sodom, seemed to tire of interceding with God before God tired of granting his requests. Gideon, “mighty man of valor” that he was, when specially called of God to the deliverance of his people from the Midianites, and assured that he should have success, asked sign after sign from God in testimony that God meant what he said. He asked, as he left overnight a fleece of wool on the threshingfleece, while there should be no dew on

would try it the other way, and send dew on the ground around the fleece, while the

fleece was kept dry. This was like God in — his loving tenderness with one who had

doubt even while he trusted. And Gideon

evidently had a good deal of human nature

in him, in his hesitancy in his faith, even while he was a man of uncommon faith and of uncommon valor. It is easier to doubt when one has no reason to doubt, than to have faith where one has every reason to

have faith.

A young Christian worker, whose experiences of God’s loving tenderness I had occasion to know not a little about, was a striking illustration of this truth in God’s dealings with his children, even with those for whom he seems to be doing most, year by year. He began his Christian life while

a poor boy near the border line between 90

ground about it. When this was done, Gideon s was not quite satisfied. He asked that God — Massachusetts and New Hampshire. When brought to consecrate his life to Christ’s service, he gave himself unreservedly to that service. He had neither education nor the means to secure it, nor had he friends to help him along in his studies; but with all that he was, and with all his lack, he put himself at God’s disposal, to be used as God should direct.

He had the idea that serving God wholly meant being in the work of the Christian ministry, at home or abroad. Yet how he could prepare himself for the ministry he had no idea. In his uncertainty, therefore, he went on his knees before God, and asked for guidance. He told God that he would start out at once on a course of preparation for the ministry. If this was. right, God would continue to help him. If he had erred in judgment in counting this his proper course, God would cease to open the way for a farther advance, and he would, when thus stopped, know that he must seek some other line of service.

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GUllustrative Answers to Prayer

When I first met him he was near the close of his course in the theological seminary. He told me how God had led him along step by step, giving him repeated evidences of his approval when he had special need of help. Yet, he said, he had found himself doubting, or questioning, at each temporary obstacle or hindrance, as if God had not yet fully proved himself as his guide and helper.

For instance, after he had worked his way along through his preparatory studies, he came to a point where he could not pass beyond the Greek Reader without a Greek lexicon; and yet he had no money for the purchase of such a work. He seemed at a standstill. It looked as if God’s hindrance had come. He laid the matter before the Lord, and then waited. For a day or two he studied out his lessons by the aid of the glossary at the back of the Reader, but he knew that he could not go on in that way much longer.

One day he was sent for to the hotel to God’s Tenderness with a Doubting Truster

see a stranger who had inquired for him, Going there, he was told that the stranger was closing up the estate of a clergyman who had died in another town. Some of that clergyman’s books were to be given by his executor where they could do good to others. The stranger having heard of this student as working his way along to the ministry, had brought these books for him to choose from. As the student was shown the books on the stranger’s table, he saw there the Greek lexicon of which he was in need. He took it, and thanked the stranger. Then he thanked God, and took courage.

He confessed, as he told me his experiences, that he was frequently troubled with doubts as to whether he was really being led of God; yet God was evidently dealing tenderly with the doubting truster. On one occasion, after he reached the theological seminary in his course, he was so distressed on this point that he prayed earnestly about it one forenoon. He even his faith. He had need just now of five dollars, to enable him to take his next step in this path of duty, and he knew not

where to turn for it. If, indeed, he were to.

receive five dollars in a letter by mail just at this time, he would know that the Lord had sent it to encourage his faith. He had never had a gift of money sent him in this way. So, Gideon-like, he asked this new sign from the Lord.

After this season of prayer he lay down on the outside of his bed and slept a tired sleep. He awaked refreshed at noon, and went to his dinner without a thought of his doubt or his prayer. After dinner he went with some of his fellow-students to the city post-office at the hour of the principal mail distribution.. To his surprise, a letter addressed to him was handed out with the seminary mail. On opening it, he found it was from an uncle of his in New York State, who had never before given him any assistance, but who now enclosed five dollars, having heard that he was working his way to the ministry, and might be glad of a little help. It would seem as if such a child of God ought to be ready to trust such a Father in heaven. He might have been, if he had not had so much human nature in him, Gideon-like.

It was quite a number of years, from the time when he determined to enter upon a course of study with a view to the Christian ministry, before he completed that course in his graduation from the theological seminary. He had only a few dollars when he began his studies in the village academy. He had toiled hard to secure his support in working his way up by slow degrees. During his last year in the seminary he had occasionally supplied a pulpit in the country, and received compensation for that service. On receiving his pay for such a ministry on the Sunday before his graduation, as he told me soon afterwards, he found that he -had a few dollars more than Ullustrative Answers to Prayer

he started out with on his consecrated course. As he then looked back to that beginning, he realized how good God had been to him in all these years, and he wondered that he could have ever doubted God.

I had the privilege of helping that child of God into his needy home-missionary field in California, and to hear from him after he was there; and I was privileged to be used of God in answering, as it were, another of his prayers in an hour of his need in his mission field. My friend, Hon. Henry P. Haven of New London, in writing to me one day, asked, in a way that was his frequent method, at the close of his letter on some business matter:

“Do you know of any one of God’s children to whom I ought to send twenty dollars? If you do, I’ll send that sum to you.” IT -replied that I knew such a man, and I told him of this home missionary, who, as I was well aware, had difficulty in

getting along in his new field, 96 Learning that the young man was in California, Mr. Haven sent a check, payable in gold, as that was the standard there, while specie payments were suspended throughout the country. In acknowledging the gift, my home-missionary friend told me that I could not know how timely its receipt was. He had found his scattered parish, or local field, more than twenty miles long, and he had to do all his visiting on foot. One day, one of his parishioners told the new pastor that he must get a horse, and that a man who was interested in the work, and with whom he had been talking on the subject, would let him have a little pony suitable for his purpose for twenty dollars in gold, which was much less than its worth.

My friend said that his parishioner little thought that, with his starvation pittance of support, twenty dollars was as hopelessly beyond his means as two hundred; so he merely thanked him, and told him that he would think it over. And, just Haven’ ’s ae coee sionary pony was Scchca i, With the frequent repetition: of suc

evidences of God’s guidance given to us, or Se 7 to those whom we know or know of, it ee: indeed strange that we are not readier in 1 -our need to pray and to trust, nothing; doubting. Yet God does not get dis- — couraged with us, nor lack in his loving tenderness. This is because He is what he is, and because he knows that we are what we are.