Dependence is a good thing!

I have been greatly encouraged recently through the following passage by C.H. McIntosh:

"Now nothing can be more fully blessed than the position of hanging in childlike dependence upon God, and being entirely content to wait for His time. True it will involve trial; but the renewed mind learns some of its deepest lessons, and enjoys some of its sweetest experiences, while waiting on the Lord; and the more pressing the temptation to take ourselves out ofHis hands, the richer will be the blessing of leaving ourselves whollydependent upon One who finds infinite joy in blessing us.

"How little Jacob knew, in the opening of his history, of this blessed mind!How little was he prepared to wait for God's time and God's way! ---he much preferred Jacob's time and Jacob's way He thought it much better to arrive at the blessing and the inheritance by all sorts of cunning and deception than by simple dependence upon and subjection to God, whose electing grace had promised, and whose almighty power and wisdom would assuredly accomplish all for him.

"But oh, how well one knows the opposition of the human heart to all this! Any attitude for it save that of patient waiting upon God. It is almost enough to drive nature to distraction to find itself bereft of all resources but God. This tells us in language not to be misunderstood, the true character of human nature. In order to know what nature is, I need not to travel into those scenes of vice and crime which justly shock all refined moral sense. No; all that is needful is just to try for a moment in the place of dependence, and see how it will carry itself there. It really knows nothing of God, and therefore cannot trust Him; and herein lies the secret of all misery and moral degeneration. It is truly ignorant of the true God,and can therefore be naught else but a ruined and worthless thing. The knowledge of God is the source of life---yea is itself life; and until a man has life, what is he? or what can he be?

"This is a true picture, so far as Jacob was concerned; but it only gives us one side, and that the gloomy side. Blessed be God, there is a bright side likewise, for God had to do with Jacob; and in every scene of his life, when Jacob was called to reap the fruits of his own plotting and crookedness, theGod of Jacob brought good out of evil, and caused His grace to abound over all the sin and folly of His poor servant.

"When Jacob had made all his prudent arrangements, we read, "And Jacob was left alone, and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day." This is a turning point in the history of this very remarkable man. To be left alone with God is the only true way of arriving at a just knowledge of ourselves and our ways. We can never get a true estimate of nature and all its actings until we have weighed them in the balance of the sanctuary, and there we ascertain their real worth. No matter what we might think of ourselves, nor yet what man may think about us; the great question is, What does God think about us? and the answer to this question can only be heard when we are "left alone with God."

"Hence, though Jacob is called to tell out his name,--to own that his nameis "Jacob," or a supplanter, he received for himself the name of "Israel,"or "prince," which was a great step in advance."

And I serve the same God Jacob served!