「關上門,你和你兒子在裡面。」(聖經列王記下四章 4 節)
他們必須關上門,與世隔別,專一親近神;因為他們不是靠自然的定律,不是靠世人的方法,不是靠教會的幫助,不是靠先知的神蹟;他們必須從可借助的人們、從可靠的環境、從可信的理由中出來,專一到密室中去親近神。
這裡就是神課程中的一段,每一個信徒在隔離的密室中操練禱告和信心是非常有效果的。
很多時侯、很多地方,神特地在我們四周圍一層神祕的牆來環繞我們,不讓我們和人的計謀辦法接觸;在那裡神要我們依靠一個新而出乎常情的辦法;在那裡神替我們裁一件新式的服裝,叫我們穿了像祂自己。
多數的信徒都過著刻板文章一般的生活,他們知道什麼事情在什麼時侯發生,該用什麼方法對付;但是上帝抱有特別盼望的信徒,常被上帝圈在一個隔離的處境中,和一切常情向例斷絕,專受上帝的反常的訓練。
讓我們像這寡婦一樣:外面與世隔離,裡面與神親近;這樣,我們就會看見神的神蹟了。── 譯自靈糧(Soul Food)
在最痛的試煉中,上帝常給你祂的最甜。── 選
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"Thou shalt shut the door upon thee and upon thy sons."(2 Kings 4:4.)
THEY were to be alone with God, for they were not dealing with the laws of nature, nor human government, nor the church, nor the priesthood, nor even with the great prophet of God, but they must needs be isolated from all creatures, from all leaning circumstances, from all props of human reason, and swung off, as it were, into the vast blue inter-stellar space, hanging on God alone, in touch with the fountain of miracles.
Here is a part in the programme of God's dealings, a secret chamber of isolation in prayer and faith which every soul must enter that is very fruitful.
There are times and places where God will form a mysterious wall around us, and cut away all props, and all the ordinary ways of doing things, and shut us up to something Divine, which is utterly new and unexpected, something that old circumstances do not fit into, where we do not know just what will happen, where God is cutting the cloth of our lives on a new pattern, where He makes us look to Himself.
Most religious people live in a sort of treadmill life, where they can calculate almost everything that will happen, but the souls that God leads out into immediate and special dealings, He shuts in where all they know is that God has hold of them, and is dealing with them, and their expectation is from Him alone.
Like this Widow, we must be detached from outward things and attached inwardly to the Lord alone in order to see His wonders. --- Soul Food.
In the sorest trials God often makes the sweetest discoveries of himself. --- Gems.
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