Octavius Winslow | Bonnie's Prayer Affair

ABIDE IN CHRIST

“It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn [God’s] statutes” (Ps 119:71 ESV).

“When things are going ‘bad’ that does not mean God has stopped doing good. It means he is shifting things around to get them in place for more good, if you will go on loving him” John Piper (ref#220, p181).

“[B]eliever, most specially in times of trial, abide in Christ. Abide in Christ! This is indeed the Father’s object in sending the trial” Andrew Murray (ref#266, p124).

“[O]ne of the purposes of trials—to revive in us the spirit of devotion and communion with God. And when mercy comes on the back of great trouble, it leads us sweetly to prayer” Charles Spurgeon (ref#310, p165).

“You and I place much more importance on things than they truly possess, and when we do so, these things begin to claim our heart allegiance. So God ordains for us to experience that physical things get old and break. The people in our lives fail us. Relationships sour and become painful. Our physical bodies weaken. Flowers die and food spoils. All of this is meant to teach us that these things are beautiful and enjoyable, but they cannot give us what we all long for—life” Paul David Tripp (ref#190, March 29^th).

“In this world that is groaning, God is protecting our hearts. He is protecting us from us. Our hearts can be so fickle. We can worship God one day, only to turn and give the worship of our hearts to something else the next. So, in love, God lets pieces of the creation die in our hands so that increasingly we are freed from asking earth to give us what only he can give.” Paul David Tripp (ref#190, March 29^th).

“The furnace works wonders for a believer. He should never wish to be exempt from it! [R]eal grace is inseparable from a state of trial. Where there is real faith, the Lord will try it. Real grace, then, is tried grace. The hour of affliction is the hour of softening. The hardness of the heart yields, the callousness of the spirit gives way, the affections become tender, and conscience is more susceptible. It is the season of holy abstraction, meditation, and prayer, of withdrawal from the world and from creature delights, while the soul is more closely shut in with God. Emptied, humbled, and softened, the heart is prepared for the seal of the Spirit” Octavius Winslow (ref#135, May 8^th).

“Your Lord knows that even as his child your heart is still prone to wander, so in tender, patient grace he keeps you in a world that teaches you that he alone is worthy of the deepest, most worshipful allegiance of your heart” Paul David Tripp (ref#190, March 29^th).

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LOOK NOT TO YOURSELF

“The divine life in the soul of man is indestructible; it cannot perish. The seed that grace has implanted in the heart is incorruptible; it cannot be corrupted. Trials, conflicts, storms, and tempests are far from impairing the principle of holiness in the soul. They only deepen and strengthen it, and tend to its growth” Octavius Winslow (ref#135, July 11^th).

“Sure, you’ll face difficulty, God is prying open your fingers so you’ll let go of your dreams, rest in his comforts, and take up his call” Paul David Tripp (ref#190, Feb 1^st).

“[T]he only thing which made it necessary for our Lord to undertake to bear the cross, was to testify and prove his obedience to the Father; whereas there are many reasons which make it necessary for us to live constantly under the cross. Feeble as we are by nature, and prone to ascribe all perfection to our flesh we readily estimate our virtue above its proper worth, and doubt not that, whatever happens, it will stand unimpaired and invincible against all difficulties. Hence we indulge a stupid and empty confidence in the flesh, and then trusting to it wax proud against the Lord himself; as if our own faculties were sufficient without his grace. This arrogance cannot be better repressed than when He proves to us by experience, not only how great our weakness, but also our frailty is. Therefore, he visits us with disgrace, or poverty, or bereavement, or disease, or other afflictions. We thus learn to invoke his strength” John Calvin (ref#113, p458).

“It is so easy to groan about the difficulties of life. It is so easy to be dissatisfied. Why are these things so easy? Well, they’re easy because sin still causes us to make it all about us. Because sin really is selfishness at its core, we all still tend to shrink our worlds down to the small confines of our wants, our needs, and our feelings. If you put yourself in the center of your world, you will find plenty of things to complain about. Combine the hardships of life in this fallen world with the self-centeredness of sin and you have a recipe for disaster, or at least a miserable life of discontent. [A]ll your grumbling is ultimately grumbling against [God]” Paul David Tripp (ref#190, Apr 25^th).

“[T]he Lord dealt with me, I was rich, and He impoverished me. I was exalted, and He laid me low. He did not drain only one cup and dash solely one vessel, but many. He emptied me ‘from vessel to vessel.’ Happy will you be if the result of all this empting and humbling is the filling and enrichment of your soul with larger communications of grace and truth from Jesus” Octavius Winslow (ref#135, Apr 18^th).

“In grace, he leads you where you didn’t plan to go in order to produce in you what you couldn’t achieve on your own. He isn’t so much working to transform our circumstances as he is working through hard circumstances to transform you. [You are] blessed with the heart-transforming grace of difficulty” Paul David Tripp (ref#190, Feb 1^st).

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GOD’S CONTROL IN ALL CIRCUMSTANCES

“[C]onsider those who patiently remain under their trials spiritually prosperous and fortunate. You heard of the patience of Job, how he patiently remained under the trials to which he was subjected, and you saw the consummation [of those trials] brought about by the Lord, that the Lord is compassionate and merciful” (James 5:11 Wuest).

[M]y salvation will be forever, and my righteousness will never be dismayed. Listen to me, you who know righteousness, the people in whose heart is my law; fear not the reproach of man, nor be dismayed at their reviling” (Isa 51:6-7 ESV).

“O let my trembling soul be still,

And wait Thy wise, Thy holy will!

I cannot, Lord, Thy purpose see,

Yet all is well since ruled by Thee” Charles Spurgeon (ref#34, May 22^nd AM).

“[A]lways pray and not lose heart” (Luke 18:1 ESV). “And will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night” (Luke 18:7 ESV).

“[W]hatever God does endures forever, nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it. God has done it, so that people fear before him. God is testing them that they may see that they themselves are but beasts” (Ecc 3:14,18 ESV).

“He gave us friends; in love He has removed them. In goodness He blessed us with health; in goodness He has taken it away. Yet this is the way along which He is conducting us to glory” Octavius Winslow (ref#135, Jan 31^st).

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AFFLICTION – TO CHASTEN THE SOUL

“[T]he whole soul, wrapped up in carnal delights, seeks its happiness on this earth. To counteract this, the Lord by various and severe lessons of misery, teaches his children the vanity of the present life” John Calvin (ref#313, p68).

“Virtue is like precious odours, most fragrant when they are incensed or crushed; for prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue” Lord Francis Bacon (ref#333, p123).

“We suffer a serious loss when we dwell so much in the region of present clouds, and so little in the meridian of future glory. We look too faintly beyond the midnight of time, into the daylight of eternity. We are slow of heart to believe all that is revealed of the bliss that awaits us, and do not sufficiently realize that in a little while—oh, how soon!—the day will break, the shadow will flee away, and we shall bathe our souls in heaven’s full, unclouded, endless light” Octavius Winslow (ref#135, Feb 2^nd).

“Afflictions quicken us to prayer. They are useful, and in a degree necessary, to keep alive in us a conviction of the vanity and unsatisfying nature of the present world” John Newton (ref#322, p173).

“Trial is part of the education given in the school of Christ, to purify God’s children from the dross of earthliness. It is because God is leading His children that trying experiences come to them. Trials and obstacles are His chosen methods of discipline, and He is appointed conditions of success” Ellen G. White (ref#331, p524).

“All your heaven-blessed trials, all your sanctified temptations, all the covenant transactions of God with you in the way of afflictive providences, are designed only to fit you more perfectly for your inheritance” Octavius Winslow (ref#135, Feb 28^th).

“[H]e does not afflict to destroy or ruin us, but rather to deliver us from the condemnation of the world” John Calvin (ref#313, p54).

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PURIFY THE HEART

“God left him to himself, in order to test him and to know all that was in his heart” (2 Chron 32:31 ESV).

“[T]he fruitful branch ‘he purgeth,’ or pruneth—stripping it of what is rank and luxuriant, freeing it from those barren shoots that absorb the sap, and hinder real fruitfulness. [T]he ways in which he does it [is] by afflictions and chastisements and above all, by the effectual operation of his Spirit” Charles Ross (ref#241, p121).

“It is for discipline that you have to endure” (Heb 12:7 ESV).

“The LORD is testing you, to know whether you love the LORD with all your heart and with all your soul. You shall walk after the LORD and fear him and keep his commandments and obey his voice, and you shall serve him and hold fast to him” (Deut 13:3 ESV).

“[G]reat fruitfulness sprang from [the believers] great afflictions. In the very act of going to Christ, just as he is, the believer brings forth fruit. For what marks the frame of the soul traveling to the cross, but self-distrust, self-abasement, deep conceptions of its own nothingness, and high views of Christ’s sufficiency? Is this not precious and costly fruit? I know of none more so” Octavius Winslow (ref#135, Aug 21^s^t).

“To prepare us for Glory, God first of all fills in the valleys of our lives. This refers to the low places in our hearts that need to be filled with confidence in God” Bob Sorge (ref#197, p16).

“You have tried my heart, you have visited me by night, you have tested me” (Ps 17:3 ESV).

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PARTAKER OF HOLINESS

“Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but he who hates reproof is stupid” (Prov 12:1 ESV).

“Out of heaven [God] let you hear his voice, that he might discipline you” (Deut 4:36 ESV).

“If God has brought you into the desert, His heart intention for your desert is that a highway of holiness might be built in your heart upon which He can ride as He comes to you with deliverance power” Bob Sorge (ref#197, p16).

“God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? [God] disciplines us for our own good, that we may share his holiness” (Heb 12:7,10 ESV).

“[B]ecoming more deeply schooled in the lesson of God’s holiness is worth all the discipline you have ever passed through. One very common cause of all our declensions from the Lord will be found wrapped up in the crude and superficial views that we entertain of the character of God as a God of infinite purity. He wants His people to study and to learn this truth, not by sermons, books, hearsay nor theory but in the school of loving chastisement—personally and experimentally. Thus, seeing this divine perfection more closely and through a clearer medium, the believer is changed more perfectly into the same moral image. ‘He for our profit that we might be partakers of his holiness’ (Heb 12:10)” Octavius Winslow (ref#135, June 1^st).

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REASONS FOR CONFLICT

“In every age and in every land, God’s messengers have been called upon to meet bitter opposition from those who deliberately chose to reject the light of heaven” Ellen G. White (ref#331, p179).

“So great is the insensibility of men that they cannot be aroused unless they are chastised and made to feel the blows” John Calvin (ref#164, April 9^th).

“The furnace is a necessary process of sanctification. If not, why has God ordered it? It is necessary to purify the heart, to refine the affections, to chasten the soul, to wean it from an empty world, to draw it from the creature, and to center it in God. Blessed indeed is anything that makes sin more exceedingly sinful; that weans and draws away from earth; that endears Jesus and that makes the soul a partaker of His holiness” Octavius Winslow (ref#135, Dec 7^th).

“You are not sick, lonely, or sorrowing because there is wrath in God, for all that wrath was borne by your redeeming Savior. You are in your situation because God is love. Jesus bore away the curse and the sin so that God now brims the cup He emptied with a love that passes knowledge” Octavius Winslow (ref#135, Sept 3^rd).

“He has appointed that sanctification should be effected, and sin mortified, not at once completely, but by little and little; and doubtless he has wise reasons for it. Therefore, though we are to desire a growth in grace, we should, at the same time not be discouraged or despond, because we feel that conflict” John Newton (ref#322, p181).

“[T]he Lord tries us by adversities so that our salvation may thereby gradually advance. Those evils that do in a manner promote our happiness then cannot render us miserable. [W]e are pressed and seem to be nearly consumed, we do not yet cease to feel God’s favor toward us. Grace that can teach us patience in tribulation is certainly amazing” John Calvin (ref#164, July 30^th).

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SUFFERING THAT GLORIFIES GOD

“We need to learn that chastisement is a part of His great plan and that under the rod of affliction the Christian may sometimes do more for the Master than when engaged in active service” Ellen G. White (ref#331, p481).

[A] person who suffers but remains unswervingly true to God brings glory to God in such a grand way that the suffering is not only permissible but also justifiable” Doug Newton (ref#166, p79).

“’My grace is sufficient for thee’ (2 Cor 12:9). The tried believer must always remember that supporting grace, during trial, is a greater mercy that the removal of the trial itself. The Lord Jesus did seem to say to His servant Paul, ‘I do not see that it would be for your good to grant your prayer, but I will enable you to bear the infirmity without complaining: I will so support you and so manifest my strength in your weakness and my all-sufficiency in your nothingness, that you will not desire its removal’” Octavius Winslow (ref#135, Aug 24^th).

“God’s love is more seen in comforting and strengthening under trouble, than in delivering from it” James Fraser of Brea (ref#333, p236).

“It is God’s recognition of the saint’s inner conflict as an indispensable process of discipline, as a development of the contrast between light and darkness, as an exhibition of the way in which God is glorified in the infirmities of His saints, and in their contests with the powers of evil” Horatius Bonar (ref#326, p69).

“[I]t is in their tribulations that the saints give forth their excellencies” Gregory the Great (ref#333, p37).

“Jesus did not pray that you would be taken out of the world. It is far better to meet the difficulty in the Lord’s strength and to glorify Him in it. The enemy is always on watch to detect inconsistency in your conduct; therefore, be very holy. Remember that the eyes of all are on you, and that more is expected from you than from other men” Charles Spurgeon (ref#34, Sept 5^th AM).

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TRANSFORMED INTO HOLINESS

“To be holy is to be morally blameless. It is to be separated from sin and, therefore, consecrated to God. The word signifies ‘separation to God, and the conduct befitting those so separated’” Jerry Bridges (ref#244, p16).

The LORD encourages—He does not say I will not leave you but ‘I will smelt away your dross’ (Isa 1:25).

“It is the natural tendency of divine truth, when received into the heart, to produce holiness. The design of the whole plan of redemption was to secure the highest holiness and happiness of the creature; and when the gospel comes with the power of God unto the salvation of the soul, this end is preeminently secured. The renewed man is a pardoned man; the pardoned man becomes a holy man; and the holy man is a happy man. He who receives the doctrine of electing love in his heart by the power of the Spirit bears about with him the material of a holy walk; its tendency is to humble, abase, and sanctify the man. God alone has made him to differ from another. [H]e has received the free, distinguishing grace of God” Octavius Winslow (ref#135, Oct 22^nd).

“[Y]ou yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1 Pet 2:5 ESV).

“[H]oliness is obedience to the will of God in whatever God directs. The holiness described in the Bible calls us to do more than separate ourselves from the moral pollution of the world around us. It calls us to obey God” Jerry Bridges (ref#244, p138). I can pretend I’m separating myself by obeying self-selected commands but that is much different than obeying GOD.

“[T]he grace of God is a seed that, however it lies hidden, will certainly in due time spring up, put forth itself, will bud and blossom and will bring forth rich fruit” Jonathan Edwards (ref#229, p115).

“Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2 ESV).

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WORK OUT YOUR OWN SALVATION

“’Work out your own salvation’ and ‘It is God which worketh in you’ (Phil 2:12-13)—are words which at once link human accountability and individual responsibility with divine power and accomplishment” Octavius Winslow (ref#135, Jan 19^th).

“The killing of your flesh is your duty, but his work” Kris Lundgaard (ref#383).

“I daily need God’s work of mercy in order to do his work of mercy” Paul David Tripp (ref#190, Jan 26^th).

“We are called. We are invited. But the responsibility to answer, the responsibility to follow, lies solely on us. T]he responsibility of yes—the choice of faith—lies completely in our hands. [W]e will never understand something until we live it out” Jarrad Gibler (ref#259).

“[B]ecome partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet 1:4 ESV).

“A lifelong pattern of growth in Christlike character is expected of Christians. [T]hey share in [Christ’s] nature as they become increasingly like him” The ESV Study Bible (ref#125, p2418).

“I will go before you
    and level the exalted places,
I will break in pieces the doors of bronze
    and cut through the bars of iron,
I will give you the treasures of darkness
    and the hoards in secret places,
that you may know that it is I, the LORD,
    the God of Israel, who call you by your name.
I call you by your name,
    I name you, though you do not know me.
I am the LORD, and there is no other,
    besides me there is no God;
    I equip you, though you do not know me,
that people may know, from the rising of the sun
    and from the west, that there is none besides me;
    I am the LORD, and there is no other.
I form light and create darkness;
    I make well-being and create calamity,
    I am the LORD, who does all these things” (Isa 45:2-7 ESV).