http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15626508/feed-other-souls

http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15626509/feed-your-family

Outline:

The Grace of God
The Means of Grace
The Habits of Grace

1. The Grace of God

Grace Justifies

Romans 3:23–28

All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith. For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.

Romans 4:4–5

Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.

Titus 3:4–7

When the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

Matthew 11:28–30

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

Grace Sanctifies

Titus 2:11–12

The grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age.

1 Corinthians 15:10

By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.

Philippians 2:12–13

My beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

Grace Glorifies

2 Thessalonians 1:11–12

May [God] fulfill [your] every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Ephesians 2:4–7

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been saved — and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

2. The Means of Grace

How do we put ourselves on the path of God’s grace? The three crucial power sources for the Christian life:

hear his voice (in his word)
have his ear (in prayer)
belong to his body (in the fellowship of the local church)

Acts 2:42–47

They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.

Hear His Voice

Hebrews 3:7–8

As the Holy Spirit says, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion . . .”

Hebrews 4:12–13

The word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.

Hebrews 12:25

See that you do not refuse him who is speaking.

Have His Ear

Hebrews 4:14–16

Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

Hebrews 10:19–22

Brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.

Belong to His Body

Hebrews 10:23–25

Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.

Hebrews 3:12–13

Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

3. Habits of Grace

Hear his voice.

the Word: incarnate, Scripture, the gospel, written
read, study, meditate
begin with the Bible, move to meditation, polish with prayer

Have his ear.

private prayer, flowing from meditation
“without ceasing” and with company
accompanied, on occasion, with fasting

Belong to his body.

covenant membership and fellowship
church life as a means of grace: corporate worship, preaching, baptism and the Table

The End of the Means of Grace

John 17:3

This is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.

Philippians 3:7–8

Whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.

http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15626510/feed-your-brain

Find your legs. Each new morning presents us with the fresh opportunity — and need — to do so.

First, of course, we need to find our literal, physical legs as we get out of bed. We’ve been laying down for hours, dead to the world and void of conscious movement. Now, as we roll out of bed, we hope to find them. Conditioned by habit (and clouded by grogginess), we may not realize how significant, and sometimes difficult, these first steps can be.

Then, less obviously, though more importantly, is the need each morning to find our figurative legs. Who am I? What am I doing here? Why did I get up, other than for coffee, breakfast, or a walk to the bathroom? What am I waking up to — to some good use of another priceless day of human life, to some calling from God to bless others and add value to the world?

In other words, as I rise to stand for the day — to get the bearings in my soul — what am I standing on? What gives me footing? How do I find my legs?

Warnings for All Who Lead

Long before Israel had a king, the nation’s first and greatest prophet left specific and perhaps surprising instructions for him, including where and how he would “find his legs” each day as the leader of God’s people.

In Deuteronomy 17:14–20, Moses describes a concession God would make one day, setting a human king over his people. As he does, he warns such kings about the dangers of “excessive silver and gold,” “many wives,” and “many horses” — that is, money, sex, and power (Deuteronomy 17:16–17). Moses gives a specific reason for these cautions: “lest his heart turn away.” This is where the point of departure will be, humanly speaking, for regimes and generations to come: the heart of the king.

As goes his heart, so goes the leader, and so goes the nation. Will he heed the siren calls around him, the subtle temptations to the compromises of acclaim and special privilege? Will he take advantage of his willing and submissive servants who are eager to give him benefit of the doubt? Will he slowly construct his own reality around him that serves his own private comforts rather than the holy interests of the people?

The battle lines will first be drawn in the king’s own heart. Which explains why Moses’s next instructions turn where they do, unexpected and perhaps peripheral as they may seem to some.

Keys to the Leader’s Heart

What the prophet says next is all the more striking because it’s issued generations before the nation would have its first king. When a new king ascends to the throne in Israel — with all the pomp and circumstance that will doubtless accompany such a coronation — as his first act, he is to take out a quill and write word for word, with in his own hand, his own copy of God’s law, and “read in it all the days of his life.”

And when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law, approved by the Levitical priests. And it shall be with him, and he shall read in it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes, and doing them, that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers, and that he may not turn aside from the commandment, either to the right hand or to the left, so that he may continue long in his kingdom, he and his children, in Israel. (Deuteronomy 17:18–20)

Note the emphasis on his heart. God’s plan for his leaders so that their hearts not turn away, is that their hearts be formed and fed daily by God’s word. Consider, then, three aspects of this simple yet profound plan, which is just as relevant for Christian leaders and churches today.

1. The Book Shapes the King

This book, copied long hand by the king himself, is no journal. The new king is not recording his own feelings or preferences or decrees — not in this book. Rather, he is copying the book of God’s law — an objective, fixed text, not open to edits and adjustments. This hand-copied book then is to be reviewed and approved by the priests, to confirm that no changes have been introduced or anything omitted.

“The king doesn’t shape this book; this book shapes the king.”

In other words, the king doesn’t shape this book; this book shapes the king. However great he may be in the sight of his people, the king fundamentally does not shape the world (or even his own kingdom) through his words, but he is being shaped by God through God’s words.

2. The Book Keeps the King

God also designs that this book will keep the king, as he is bombarded by the world of privileges and temptations leadership can bring. As the king keeps the words of God in the book, the book will keep the king — that is, keep him from turning aside to the right or left, turning from the fear of God to fear of man, from faithfulness to God to the pursuit of his own private, sinful pleasures.

In shaping the king’s heart, the book keeps him from the subtle daily migrations away from God, which all sinners experience. Which is why Moses twice mentions the inner man, “the heart.” The unseen heart of the king will come, in time, into expression in his life and the nation’s. Self-humbling before God and his word will give rise to a whole trajectory of thoughts, feelings, words, and actions; pride, another. And the greater the king, the greater the effects, for good or ill.

3. The Book Calls Each Morning

Finally, the king’s hand-copied, priest-approved book, Moses says, “shall be with him . . . all the days of his life.” With him, that is, nearby, constantly within reach. Having completed this great hand-copying project, he is not to store the book away for future reference, but make it functional, accessible, active in his reign — increasingly in him through countless hours lingering over it.

“The kind of reading that does God’s keeping is the kind of reading that feels like steeping.”

This Book is designed to be read daily. And not the sort of reading to which the pace and pixels of our modern lives have accustomed us: fast-break, hurried, distracted reading, with words coming out of the head almost as quickly as they went in. Rather, the kind of reading God intends for his servant is meditative — slow, unhurried, enjoyable, feeding on the text, at the pace of the text, rather than the pace of the world. Pondering God’s words. Rolling them around in the mind long enough to get a sense of them on the heart. The kind of reading that does God’s keeping is the kind of reading that feels like steeping.

Such daily meditation makes us, over time, the kind of person — with a shaped, kept, and fed heart — who can approve what is excellent (Philippians 1:10; Romans 2:18) and discern what is the will of God, good and acceptable and perfect (Romans 12:2), even in the complex, confusing challenges of life and leadership.

Day and Night, Today and Tomorrow

Such daily meditation on the words of God is what God so memorably expects of Joshua as he becomes Israel’s new leader in Moses’s place:

This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. (Joshua 1:8)

So too, generations later, when Israel finally had its king, the first psalm celebrated where the godly king would find his sense and wisdom to rule: “his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night” (Psalm 1:2). And not only the king, but every man of God: “Blessed is the man . . .” (Psalm 1:1).

So too, when the ultimate man, David’s great heir, came among us, his shaping and keeping and wisdom to live and lead grew out of regular feeding in the Bible. In the words of Sinclair Ferguson, “Jesus’s intimate acquaintance with Scripture did not come de caelo (‘from heaven’) during the period of his public ministry; it was grounded no doubt on his early education, but nourished by long years of personal meditation” (The Holy Spirit, 44).

His Father had appointed means for his stability in his truly human life. And it was not some extraordinary means or special trick. It was the same great and modest, amazing and ordinary daily means heralded by Moses, tested by Joshua, embraced by David, and imitable by the godly today: daily meditation on the very words of God.

Eat Like a King

How do you find your legs each day? However many you lead, whether as pastor, as father, as mother, as friend, as boss — whether in business, at church, in the home, in the community — how do you get your bearings on the shifting deck of life? Where do you find the stability you need to lead well for the long haul, including today?

Give your first and most formative moments to feeding on the word of God. Let his voice be the first you hear each day. Let him feed and keep you like he fed and kept the godliest of kings.

Have you ever had a time in your life that you would call “a crisis”? Some in this room might be in a time of crisis right now. I suspect that most of us — if we’ve lived long enough — can look back on some moment in our lives, some time, some season (if not many!) that we would identify as a crisis.

We might say that it felt like the very ground beneath our feet was shaking. We might describe it as our world being turned upside down. We reach for catastrophic language, as Psalm 46:2–3 does, to put words and concrete images to the tumult in our own souls.

It could be a national crisis. That can indeed whip up our anxieties. It may have been a national crisis that inspired Psalm 46. But a national crisis in the modern world — playing out far away, in the news and on our screens — can be a far cry from a personal crisis.

Psalm 46 was composed in a time of crisis, and it is preserved for us today for our crises. This psalm gives us a crisis-ready vision of God. The particular crisis that gave rise to these verses is left unidentified. This may not satisfy our curiosities, but it does show us the timelessness of our God. These words were not written for only one crisis, but many. And they are ready-made for our crises today.

Confident in Crisis

Psalm 46 casts the crisis in two life-or-death threats. The first and perhaps original threat is hostile nations, threatening Jerusalem. Verse 6 says that “the nations rage, the kingdoms totter,” and then in verse 9 we hear of war, bows, spears, and war chariots (or perhaps carts for making siegeworks against the city).

The second threat is nature. The earth and mountains, typically images of stability, are shifting. Verses 2–3 mention how “the earth gives way,” “the mountains [are] moved into the heart of the sea [and] its waters roar and foam,” and “the mountains tremble at [the sea’s] swelling.” The stable, secure earth and mountains are being overtaken by the restless, raging, unstable, dangerous sea. It’s a picture of natural cataclysm, perhaps even of end-times catastrophe.

“If God’s people can be without panic when the ground shifts, and the seas rage, and the nations rage, then we can face any crisis with confidence.”

And into this particular chaos, this crisis, these life-or-death threats to the city of Jerusalem, Psalm 46:2 says, amazingly, “We will not fear.” That’s how God means to help us with this psalm — to displace fear with confidence, to give us stable ground under our feet even in crisis. If God’s people can be without panic when the ground shifts, and the seas rage, and the nations rage, then we can face any crisis with confidence.

God of All Help

Whatever trouble comes, Psalm 46 tells us, with its first word, where to turn. Not to a change in circumstances. Not to our best efforts to fix the problem. Not to our anxious strategies to avoid pain and loss. But rather, to God.

God is our refuge and strength,     a very present help in trouble. (Psalm 46:1)

The entire psalm rings with the name of God. Verse 4: “the city of God.” Verse 5: “God is in her midst.” Verse 5: “God will help.” Verses 7 and 11: “the God of Jacob.” His covenant name, “the Lord,” appears in verses 7, 8, and 11. And then there’s the all-important verse 10: “Be still, and know that I am God.”

That’s where we’re headed: Stop raging and scurrying and plotting. Cease your frantic efforts. Be still, and bow to God. But don’t just bow; know. Know him. Know for the first time, or learn afresh, that he is God, and that as Jacob had him as his covenant God, so do we, and all the more, in Christ.

If God can handle the world’s ultimate undoing, and the nations raging against his own chosen people, he can handle your crisis. He can help in your trouble, however catastrophic it seems. This psalm will always be ready, because our God is always ready — which leads to what specifically this psalm tells us about our God. The power in this psalm is in its vision of God. It gives us God, so that we might not fear, but have real peace of soul in crisis by knowing him. Three main pillars uphold this vision of God in Psalm 46.

1. He Is Infinitely Strong

One of the overwhelming effects of Psalm 46 — perhaps the chief effect of the psalm — is that it communicates to our souls: “Your God is strong, with infinite strength.” Some call this a “psalm of confidence.” By rehearsing God’s strength, his people displace their fears, based on lies, with confidence in him, based on remembering who he is.

Which is why Martin Luther loved this psalm, and took this psalm as the inspiration for his great “battle hymn” of the Reformation, “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” In the face of proverbial raging seas, and literal raging enemies outside the gates, God’s people have Strength himself on our side, however quick we can be to forget that.

If you were to try depict God’s infinite strength and power to a weary soul, how would you do it? It’s one thing to say “God is strong”; it’s another to show it, to make it concrete and tangible. How do you quantify divine strength? How do you provide glimpses of infinite power? I see at least four here.

The first two are verse 1: “God is our refuge and strength.” That is, he both protects and empowers his people. “Refuge” is defensive, a place of protection and safety. Like Helm’s Deep in The Two Towers, a refuge is a place to flee to for protection when an enemy is approaching. “Strength,” then, is God’s providing his people with the inner power to keep going. Energy and hope to keep breathing, keep walking, keep fighting. So “refuge and strength,” are outward and inward, defensive and offensive, the first two depictions of God’s strength, to help his people.

Third, then, is the last part of verse 6: “He utters his voice, the earth melts.” God doesn’t need fire to melt the earth. He doesn’t even need hands and arms. He doesn’t need a tool or laser. He only needs his voice. He only says the word, and the earth melts. The power of our God is seen in the power of his word. All he has to do is say it and it happens. Just as he spoke the world into being, and then into order, so he can dissolve it into chaos and out of existence, simply with his voice, if he so chooses. And with his voice, with his word, he can dispel fear from the hearts of his people and give them confidence in him.

Fourth, and related, is verse 9: “He makes wars cease to the end of the earth; he breaks the bow and shatters the spear; he burns the chariots with fire.” In other words, God defeats the enemies of his people. No matter how fierce and strong and weaponized and terrible the army, when he’s ready, he says, “Enough!” And in the end, even as he now endures war and evil with patience, war will cease. There will be a full and enduring final peace. God, in his infinite strength, will see to it — and do it with his word.

So, the first pillar that upholds this crisis-ready vision of God is his strength.

2. He Is Attentively Present.

That is amazing, given his strength. That is amazing if you’re on his side, if he’s your God. And it is horrifying if you’re against him. Which is the second part of verse 1:

God is our refuge and strength,     a very present help in trouble.” (Psalm 46:1)

He is not only strong, with infinite strength, but he’s present to help in trouble. And not just present, but “very present,” attentively present. In other words, he is ready and eager to help. He is not only able to help when he chooses; he is eager to help. And he’s near, he’s present, he’s accessible.

Verses 4–5 expand for us what it means that God is “a very present help”:

There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,     the holy habitation of the Most High.God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved;     God will help her when morning dawns. (Psalm 46:4–5)

The river in verse 4 is not the first mention of water in Psalm 46. What was the other water? The sea — the restless, raging, unstable, dangerous sea. The sea is threatening water. But now we have very different water: a river. That is, water that is predictable and life-giving. Water that keeps a city alive when cut off from the outside by the siege of a foreign army. This river, in the city of God, while it’s in crisis, is so precious that it doesn’t just keep the city alive, it “makes [the people] glad.” Even in the midst of crisis, there is gladness. There is joy, even in pain and threat. Because this life-giving river, who is God himself, is present with his people to sustain them in their crisis. Our God, as our refuge and strength, doesn’t only get us through crisis, but even gives us joy in crisis.

“God’s help does not mean that his people are kept from crisis, but that he keeps us through crisis.”

But this river and city raises an important question: where? This is a particular city which God makes glad with the water of life and the river of his presence. This is not any city. It’s Zion, the city of Jerusalem, the place God chose to be “in the midst of her,” so that “she shall not be moved” (Psalm 46:1), which is significant for us reading Psalm 46 as Christians. No longer is there a particular physical place where God has pledged his special favor and presence. Now, there is a particular person, God’s own Son.

Christians do not rally to a particular city; we rally to a particular person for refuge, strength, and very present help in trouble. And we do so together — to form a people. Which means the church is a critical context for finding joy in crisis. And this place, where God chooses to be present, in all his strength — once in ancient Jerusalem, and now in Jesus Christ, and his body — verse 5 says “shall not be moved.” Verse 2 spoke of mountains being moved into the sea. Verse 6 speaks of kingdoms tottering, that is, literally, being moved. Nature is moved, nations are moved, and verse 5 says God’s people, then in his chosen city, and now in his beloved Son, by faith, “shall not be moved” (Psalm 46:5).

Which doesn’t mean that God’s people never enter into any trouble. This psalm, with all its confidence in the strength and nearness and eagerness of God, never promises that we will be spared crisis. In fact, it assumes crisis. It readies us for crisis. And in the crisis, it promises God’s help, but not on our timetable. Verse 5: “God will help her when morning dawns.”

When Morning Dawns

In Exodus 14, as God’s people seek to escape from slavery in Egypt, with their backs against the Red Sea, and the Egyptians bearing down on them with “six hundred chosen chariots and all the other chariots of Egypt” (Exodus 14:7), the people panic. This is a crisis indeed, with no walled city, and no river of fresh water. And into this crisis, Moses, prompted by God, speaks these words his people, “Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will work for you today” (Exodus 14:13). Then he lifts his staff, the sea parts, and God’s people walk through on dry land. The Egyptians follow, and so, at God’s command,

Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the sea returned to its normal course when the morning appeared. And as the Egyptians fled into it, the Lord threw the Egyptians into the midst of the sea. (Exodus 14:27)

“For every crisis we face in Christ, and all its darkness, God has a dawn designed.”

For every crisis we face in Christ, and all its darkness, God has a dawn designed. He will help when morning dawns. Your dawn will come. God’s help does not mean that his people are kept from crisis, but that he keeps us through crisis. In his perfect timing, when the appointed morning dawns, he rescues his people from their trouble, having preserved them through the long night.

Which leads to a third and final pillar of this passage.

3. He Will Be Exalted.

Which might be surprising. If God’s infinitely strong, and attentively present and ready to help, isn’t that enough? What does God’s being exalted have to do with the help we need in crisis? Why, at the very height of Psalm 46, in verse 10, the climactic verse — the famous “be still and know” verse —why does God say here, “I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!”? How does God’s own declaration that he himself will be exalted feed our confidence?

To answer that, let’s get verse 10 in context. Verse 8 issues an invitation to the raging nations, those setting themselves up as enemies against God and his people. It’s almost a taunt, and also an invitation to any among God’s people who might be fearful:

Come, behold the works of the Lord,      how he has brought desolations on the earth. (Psalm 46:8)

Remember, all God has to do is say the word. As we saw in verse 9, when he chooses, in his perfect timing, he makes wars cease, breaks bows, shatters shields, burns chariots and siege works with fire. In other words, it is a lost cause to set yourself against the living God.

Verse 10, then, issues another word of invitation, again both to raging nations and God’s fearful people. And this is the climactic statement of the psalm. Raging nations, fearful people, “Be still, and know that *I am God.”

Did you catch that change of voice? The first invitation, verse 8, is from the psalmist: “Come, behold the works of the Lord.” But now, in verse 10, God himself speaks. He issues the invitation. He utters his voice, to the raging nations and tottering kingdoms — and oh, do we still know tottering kingdoms and raging nations!

And he speaks into the chaos, into the raging and tottering, “Be still.” Lay down your weapons. Cease your warring and deconstruction. Cease your rage and disorder. Be still, which is first a rebuke to the raging nations, to our turbulent world.

Happy to Be Human

However, it is also a word to God’s people, who hear him say it to their foes, and read it in their Bibles. Be still, church. You need not be anxious. You need not fear. You don’t need to go into a frenzy to help yourself and save your family and take your country back to the 1950s. Be still, and look to me. Rest from all your horizontal diversions and distractions and discouragement, and look up. Be still, and in that stillness, own that you are not God, and can be happy about it. You are not infinitely strong. You are not attentively present. You dare not be self-exalting. But know that I am God.

And then follows the two great declarations from the mouth of God himself, of his own certain exaltation. As surely as he is God, “I will be exalted among the nations. I will be exalted in the earth!” (Psalm 46:10).

Fortress Never Failing

For God’s covenant people in Israel back then, and for his covenant people today in Christ, our God’s exaltation is our salvation. His exaltation is our refuge and strength — and very present help in trouble. The surety of his exaltation is precious beyond words and gives us a place to stand when all around us seems unsure. The certainty that he will exalted is granite under our feet. It is the guarantee of our help. It is our fortress.

Psalm 46 ends with a powerful word. The word “fortress” in verse 7, and in the refrain in verse 11, the final word on which the psalm ends is an even stronger image of security than “refuge” in verse 1. This “fortress” is a picture of inaccessible height. Helm’s Deep is a refuge. Heaven in a fortress. Not just a strong bulwark but one never failing.

The refrain is beautiful in verse 7, but it comes with added force in verse 11, on the heels of God’s promise that he will be exalted. Not only is he infinitely strong, and attentively present, but he will be exalted. As surely as he is God, he will be exalted. And for his people, we have in this God, and his exaltation, an impenetrable fortress, come what may.

Stillness at the Table

As we come to the Table, we remember that Psalm 46 is not the last time the voice of the Lord uttered, “Be still.” God himself, in human flesh, slept in the middle of a raging storm. His disciples panicked. This seemed to be a life-or-death crisis. And when they woke him, Jesus was not frantic but spoke stillness into the crisis: “Peace. Be still.” And so, the calm of his own spirit settled over the raging sea: “the wind ceased, and there was a great calm” (Mark 4:39).

In Jesus Christ, we know the God of Psalm 46. And in him come together the saving strength and presence and exaltation of the one to whom we turn in crisis, and who speaks, “Peace, be still” into the raging storm of our soul.

Ever heard of Elmer Gantry?

If not — or if the name only vaguely rings a bell — then you might, like many today, lack an important bit of context for understanding the origins of the so-called “Billy Graham Rule.”

The choice of the singular “Rule” also may represent two additional misunderstandings. Graham and his three closest ministry associates made four resolutions, not one — and importantly, they did not call them rules (to enforce on others) but resolutions (embraced for their own lives). Graham says it was an “informal understanding among ourselves.”

Just as He Was

In his autobiography, Just as I Am, published in 1997, Graham himself tells the story of the beginning of the now (in)famous “Rule” that bears his name. During a two-week crusade in Modesto, California, in October of 1948, the 29-year-old Graham found himself at a critical juncture.

He had been working as an evangelist for a large and long-established ministry called Youth for Christ. Now, he was beginning to launch out on his own, to begin a new work as an independent evangelist, and he and his team felt the weight of the public scrutiny they’d be under. And they longed not to become, or even appear to be, what characterized some evangelists in the first half of the twentieth century. They heard their share of stories, and personally knew evangelists whose “success” became devastating. Such men slid from one small degree of compromise to the next in their desires for money, power, and illicit sex, all under the cloak of Christian ministry and seeming fruitfulness.

Graham and his team were not the only ones aware of such stories. Twenty years before, in 1927, author Sinclair Lewis (1885–1951) — the “red-haired tornado from the Minnesota wilds,” as H.L. Mencken called him — published the satirical novel Elmer Gantry, dedicated to Mencken, his fellow satirist. The title character was a narcissistic, womanizing evangelist. And the book was as a sensation.

On the one hand, it was banned in Boston and denounced by evangelist Billy Sunday, Graham’s forerunner, as “Satan’s cohort.” On the other, it became the bestselling fiction work of 1927. And this just two years after the 1925 “Scopes monkey trial,” reported on by Mencken, as part of the growing social critique of “fundamentalist” Christianity. (The fictional Gantry would make another pop culture appearance in the 1960 summer film bearing his name, introducing the character, and his notorious lack of character, to yet another generation.)

Hallmark of Integrity

In the fall of 1948, as Graham contemplated leaving the security of a respected and rooted ministry to found his own evangelistic association, he saw an imposing obstacle on the horizon: “the recurring problems many evangelists seemed to have, and . . . the poor image so-called mass evangelism had in the eyes of many people.” Then he adds, “Sinclair Lewis’s fictional character Elmer Gantry unquestionably had given traveling evangelists a bad name” (127).

Importantly, Graham says these resolutions among the four founders “did not mark a radical departure for us; we had always held these principles.” Yet the act of resolving, and doing so together, had purpose and effect. “It did,” he says, “settle in our hearts and minds, once and for all, the determination that integrity would be the hallmark of both our lives and our ministry” (129). (The 500-word section in Graham’s autobiography on the four resolutions is available online at billygraham.org.)

First Up: Money

What, then, were these four resolutions (rather than one rule) that made up the “Modesto Manifesto,” as Graham and his team came to call it?

First, they renounced “the temptation to wring as much money as possible out of an audience.” I’m not aware of any public outcry then or today against this first resolve. Traveling evangelists had little accountability in those days. As they moved from town to town, supporters had no clear sense as to whether the evangelistic team had fallen behind on its costs, or was way ahead, and living in hidden luxury.

The temptation was great to push the extra buttons to wrest as much income as possible out of each town, like the televangelists of the next generation would learn to do on cable TV. Knowing the love of money to be the “root of all evils,” Graham and his team resolved then, ahead of time — before one subtle concession after another dulled their conscience to the danger and accustomed their tastes to indulgence — to steer clear of such “financial abuses” and to “downplay the offering” and “depend as much as possible on money raised by the local committees in advance” (128).

They wanted to make reasonable efforts, like the apostle Paul, not to be perceived as “peddlers of God’s word” (2 Corinthians 2:17) but as those who had “renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways” (2 Corinthians 4:2). Who knows what devastation, and shipwreck, they saved themselves, and others, by this early resolve to handle their finances with Christian integrity?

Next: Sex

Second, and now famously, Graham and friends resolved — expressly in light of their constant travel and being so regularly away from home — to take particular precautions against sexual sin. Graham writes,

We all knew of evangelists who had fallen into immorality while separated from their families by travel. We pledged among ourselves to avoid any situation that would have even the appearance of compromise or suspicion. From that day on, I did not travel, meet, or eat alone with a woman other than my wife. (128)

In contrast to Elmer Gantry, known for his sexual exploits, Graham and his team committed to take unusual care to protect their marriages, not indulge the suspicions of cynics, and work toward establishing a new reputation for their profession.

Then, Of Course: Power

The fourth Modesto resolution (we’ll come back to the third) addressed publicity, or truth in advertising. Graham and friends renounced “the tendency among some evangelists . . . to exaggerate their successes or to claim higher attendance numbers than they really had.” In other words, “we committed ourselves to integrity in our publicity and our reporting” (129). That is, the reporting and publicity that goes hand in hand with a lust for power and sinful ambition to swell influence. Is this not yet another resolution all can rally to?

Power in itself is not evil. And in local churches, the question is not whether pastors have power but how they use it, whether to serve self or the flock. So too with evangelists, holy influence is understandably desirous, to be put to holy use in gospel work. But deception and exaggeration, however seemingly good the intended end, poison the work. Graham and his team saw it then, before fame had clouded their vision, and they resolved to be honest and accurate. Oh, for more such “integrity in our publicity” today.

Finally: Pride — and the Local Church

Whatever the thinking behind Graham’s ordering, and whether third in the list was intended as the climactic position or not, it is no small inclusion that the third resolution purposed to commend, rather than criticize, local churches and their leaders. And especially given the particular traveling or “wider ministry” sphere of the team’s work.

In their own words, they determined “to avoid an antichurch or anticlergy attitude” (129). What troubled Graham, he says, was “the tendency of many evangelists to carry on their work apart from the local church, even to criticize local pastors and churches openly and scathingly.”

In an important sense, the resolutions about money, sex, and power aren’t all that surprising, or even probing. This deadly trio, while ruinous, does not represent the deepest sins of the heart. They are manifestations of unbelief and rebellion, but they grow in the soil of “the great evil,” as C.S. Lewis calls it: pride.

So, it’s actually this third resolution — the one that many eyes might overlook — that may be the most preceptive and profound, the most searching, the most unexpected and significant of the four: to not talk down churches and pastors.

Graham and his associates demonstrated admirable maturity and biblical anchorage in their relative youth in resolving for their new evangelistic endeavor to respect, bless, and partner with the local church, rather than criticize it.

Cherish the Local Church

Doubtless, they faced a great temptation at this critical juncture. Unproven and perhaps insecure about their own place in the constellation of Christian ministries, they might have focused on the evangelistic work local churches weren’t doing, which made Graham’s work necessary. Surely, the team heard the worst of stories about local churches and pastors as it traveled. With a prideful, self-serving mindset, it would have been easy to seize upon those, and ignore the other stories of God at work in local churches.

But the young evangelistic associates, with their emphasis on preaching the gospel, knew that faith in Christ not only creates new individual persons but also a new people. In his letter to the Ephesians, the apostle Paul celebrates this people as the church, the corporate body that has received the sovereign Christ as its head (Ephesians 1:22; 5:23), has been loved by him (Ephesians 5:25), and is nourished and cherished by him (Ephesians 5:29).

Paul himself had a traveling team, but when it came time to say how the manifold wisdom of God is made known not only in more and more earthly places, but also in the spiritual realm, he says it happens through the church (Ephesians 3:10). The hosts of heaven are watching. And not only is our God glorified in Christ Jesus and his perfect gospel but also in the church (Ephesians 3:21) and his imperfect people.

We will do well to remember not just one infamous Billy Graham “rule,” but all four resolutions, and particularly the one we may be most prone to conveniently overlook: cherishing the local church.

In 1977, California pastor Jack Hayford and his wife visited England during the Silver Jubilee (25th anniversary) of Queen Elizabeth’s accession to the throne (1952). They were struck by the grandeur of the celebration, and the manifest joy of the people in their monarch. While there, they visited Blenheim Palace, birthplace of Winston Churchill, and famous for the magnitude and stateliness some Americans today know only through watching Downton Abbey.

Driving away from the palace, overcome with awe, Hayford found himself reaching for words — language that would transpose the weight of the earthly experience into the key of heaven. As he stretched, the word that seemed most fitting, both to describe the stunning magnificence of the palace, and how it pointed to the superiority of the reigning Christ, was majesty. According to a California newspaper’s retelling of the story,

As the Hayfords pulled themselves from that regal palace and drove away, Dr. Hayford asked his wife to take a notebook and write down some thoughts that were coming to him. He then began to dictate the lyrics, the key, and the timing to a song now being sung by Christians worldwide. (“Story Behind the Song: ‘Majesty,’” St. Augustine Record, August 13, 2015)

Hayford’s impulse to reach for the word majesty, however much he knew it at the time, was profoundly biblical. Majesty is indeed a frequent, and carefully chosen, attribute in Scripture of the living God — a trait often overlooked in studies of the divine attributes, but an important witness of both the prophets and apostles, one that sheds brilliant light on other well-rehearsed attributes, and one that is truly, deeply, wonderfully fit for worship, as Hayford intuited:

Majesty! Worship his majesty!Unto Jesus be all glory, honor, and praise.Majesty! Kingdom authority,Flow from his throne, unto his own;His anthem raise!

Purple Mountain Majesties

Those, like Hayford, who reach for the word majesty often find themselves standing before, or remembering, some natural or manmade wonder that is both imposing and, at the same time, attractive. In our language, as in biblical terms, the word captures not only greatness but also goodness, both bigness and beauty, awesome power together with pleasant admiration.

Mountains might be the quintessentially majestic natural feature. Psalm 76:4 declares in praise to God, “Glorious are you,” and then adds, “more majestic than the mountains.” Alongside the illustrious plain of Sharon, which had its own peculiar glory, Isaiah’s hope-filled prophecy of future flourishing for God’s people hails “the majesty of [Mount] Carmel” (Isaiah 35:2). Yet alongside mountains, we also might attribute majesty to gold, or some precious material or gem, fit for a king, that dazzles the eye with its beauty, as Job 37:22 links God’s “awesome majesty” with “golden splendor.”

Not only natural phenomena, but also the work of human hands, when on a grand scale, might have us reaching for majestic. Lamentations 1:6 mourns the loss of such civic majesty after the destruction of Jerusalem by Babylon, and not long after, Nebuchadnezzar, Babylon’s king, professes to have built his city “by [his] mighty power as a royal residence and for the glory of [his] majesty” (Daniel 4:30) — this, just before his great humbling.

How, then, does the common use of majesty for mountains and mansions, gold and cities, relate to attributing majesty to God?

What Is Divine Majesty?

In bringing together both greatness and goodness, both strength and beauty (Psalm 96:6), majesty is not only a fitting term for mountain majesties but a particularly appropriate descriptor of God, who is, above all, “the Majestic One” (Isaiah 10:34).

At a critical juncture in the history of God’s first-covenant people, as they assemble under the leadership of Solomon, to dedicate the temple, the king prays, in his great wisdom, “Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty.” Consider those first three — greatness, power, and glory — often associated with majesty elsewhere, as revealing angles into the attribute of divine majesty.

His Is the Greatness

First and foremost is greatness.

The opening verse of Psalm 104 declares, “Bless the Lord, O my soul! O Lord my God, you are very great! You are clothed with splendor and majesty.” Likewise, after their dramatic God-wrought exodus from Egypt, God’s people sing, “In the greatness of your majesty you overthrow your adversaries” (Exodus 15:7). Later in Babylon, as Nebuchadnezzar tells of his great humbling, and restoration, he speaks of his “majesty” returning to him “and still more greatness was added to me” (Daniel 4:36; see also 5:18). Micah’s famous Bethlehem prophecy tells of a majesty that is greatness in one coming who will “stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God. And they shall dwell secure, for now he shall be great to the ends of the earth” (Micah 5:4).

“God has not only the might to rule, but also the right.”

Majesty often connotes some greatness in size, as with mountains and mansions: Ezekiel speaks of “majestic nations,” once numerous and powerful, but now humbled by God (Ezekiel 32:18). But that greatness also can include God’s divine right and prerogative, as God, to rule and do as he pleases. As Solomon prayed, “Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours” (1 Chronicles 29:11). God has not only the might to rule, but also the right.

His Is the Power

Majesty also is tied to God’s power and strength. “Yours, O Lord, is . . . the power.”

Not only does Micah 5:4 connect God’s majesty with divine strength in shepherding his people, but Psalm 68:34 forges the bond even stronger:

Ascribe power to God,     whose majesty is over Israel,     and whose power is in the skies.

“Awesome,” says David, “is God from his sanctuary.” He is majestic not only in the power he possesses, but also in the power he generously gives: “He is the one who gives power and strength to his people” (Psalm 68:35). So also in Psalm 29:4, we hear,

The voice of the Lord is powerful;     the voice of the Lord is full of majesty.

While his powerful, majestic voice relates to the audible, the apostle Peter testifies of it becoming visible in God’s incarnate Son: “We did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty” (2 Peter 1:16).

His Is the Glory

Third, as Solomon prayed, “Yours, O Lord, is . . . the glory.”

Of greatness, power, and glory, ties are deepest with the third. Psalm 8, Scripture’s signature celebration of the majesty of God, manifestly sings of glory — God’s glory, set above the heavens (verse 1), and man’s glory, from God, as one he has “crowned . . . with glory and honor” (verse 5). And so that memorable opening line, reprised as the final note, hails the majesty of God’s name:

O Lord, our Lord,     how majestic is your name in all the earth! (Psalm 8:1, 9)

As we’ve seen in Psalm 76:4 (“Glorious are you, more majestic . . .”), divine majesty is so closely connected to divine glory that we might even see the word majesty as providing God’s people with further language for expressing, commending, and marveling at his glory and beauty. Along with splendor (frequently paired with majesty), the term expands our vocabulary for glory.

Our God is so great, so admirable, so wonderful, so awesome in the eyes of his people, and so fearsome to his enemies, that the Hebrew kavod, Greek doxa, and English glory will not suffice. That is, not for his worshipers. We need more terms. We press more words into service. As we seek to keep speaking of him in his beauty, his power, his greatness, his glory, we grope for language: dominion, authority, splendor, majesty. At times, we even pile words upon words, as Psalm 145:5 does with “the glorious splendor of your majesty.”

Majesty, in particular, is emotive, or affective. It indicates greatness in sight or sound that is also wonderful. Bigness that is beautiful. Imposing size that is viewed with delight, imposing power received as attractive. While having significant overlap with divine dominion or lordship, majesty does more. Dominion and lordship are more technical and prosaic; majesty rings more poetic, with the awe of worship.

Meditate on His Majesty

In the end, it may be majesty’s poetic ring that makes it such a precious word, and fit for worship. As Jack Hayford groped for language to voice the wonder rising in his soul far beyond the legacy of English tradition and the largesse of its palaces — that is, reverence for the living God — majesty came not as a technical, functional, denotive term. It had a feel. It communicated soul-expanding awe. It was a mouthing of worship.

“God is not only great but good — good in his greatness and great in his goodness.”

The choice of the word majesty, then, says something about the speaker. Majesty attributes not only greatness, power, and glory to some object, but signals awe and wonder in the one who chooses the word. God’s friends, not his foes, declare his majesty. In Egyptian eyes, God was not majestic at the Red Sea but horrific. His striking size and strength were not for them but against them. But in the eyes of Israel, in the sight of his people, their God was indeed majestic in his greatness and power, and worthy of praise for terrifying and wiping out their enemies (Exodus 15:7, 11).

Perhaps you find yourself in need of fresh language for attributing greatness, and power, and glory to the God whom you worship in Christ. He is not only great but good — good in his greatness and great in his goodness. He is not only big, strong, imposing, indomitable, omnipotent; he is beautiful, attractive, stunning, compelling, glorious. He is the Majestic One, who delivered Israel at the Sea, and his church at the cross. And so, we say with the psalmist, “On the glorious splendor of your majesty, and on your wondrous works, I will meditate” (Psalm 145:5).

And we worship his majesty.

I love the old word equanimity. It’s almost fallen out of use today. Perhaps that’s because, in part, the reality has become increasingly rare. Equanimity is a term for composure, for emotional calmness and presence of mind, particularly in trying circumstances.

We’re living in times that condition us to overreact and explode, in a society that rewards outrage and outbursts. It’s never been easy for sinners to keep even tempers in trial, but present distresses summon us afresh to learn composure under pressure, how to “hold our peace” when the moment requires it, and give release to emotion in its proper time and place. Our families and churches and communities need leaders who have learned to keep their heads when others are losing theirs, to not lose control in anger or self-pity but keep a sober mind, and be, like our God, “slow to anger” (Exodus 34:6).

We need to bring equanimity back.

Non-Anxious Presence

The road-tested wisdom of Proverbs 16:32 whispers to those with ears to hear,

Whoever is slow to anger is better than the mighty,and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city.

“Our families and churches need leaders who have learned to keep their heads when others are losing theirs.”

Count “he who rules his spirit” as a biblical phrase for equanimity and holy composure. Note well, the wise man neither smites his spirit nor takes orders from it. He neither stuffs his emotions nor lets them play king. Rather, he rules his spirit. He learns how to keep his spirit cool, his temper even, in moments when fools get hot, weak kneed, and their passions carry the day.

This is not stoicism. Christians have long called this “self-control.” We aim not to be men without spirits but those who keep “a cool spirit” under duress, when the immature lose control. We do not discard our emotions (as if we could) or suppress them, but by God’s grace we seek to bring our spirit increasingly under the control of his Spirit.

Holy Calm

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) commends the “holy calm” of godly strength and praises the Spirit-empowered composure to which God calls his people and provides — and all the more in times volatile and easy agitated.

The strength of the good soldier of Jesus Christ appears in nothing more than in steadfastly maintaining the holy calm, meekness, sweetness, and benevolence of his mind, amidst all the storms, injuries, strange behavior, and surprising acts and events of this evil an unreasonable world. (Religious Affections, 278)

Foreign as “holy calm” and equanimity might seem in our frenetic and furious age, we are well aware of the present challenges to our composure — which Edwards names in language we could hardly update more than two hundred years later: “storms, injuries, strange behavior, and surprising acts and events of this evil and unreasonable world.”

Superlative Meekness

Yet Edwards not only commends “holy calm” in Christ’s soldiers. He presses deeper. He celebrates it in our captain and Lord himself. “In the person of Christ do meet together infinite majesty and transcendent meekness,” he writes, which are “two qualifications that meet together in no other person but Christ.”

Only God has infinite majesty; only in becoming man does Christ have meekness, “a virtue proper only to the creature.” In this meekness, Edwards says, “seems to be signified, a calmness and quietness of spirit, arising from humility in mutable beings that are naturally liable to be put into a ruffle by the assaults of a tempestuous and injurious world. But Christ, being both God and man, hath both infinite majesty and superlative meekness” (“Excellency of Christ”).

Who among us has not felt the temptation “to be put into a ruffle by the assaults” of our lives and age? And what comfort might we take that God himself, in the person of his Son, entered into our same “tempestuous and injurious world” and exhibited such an unusual and admirable “calmness and quietness of spirit”?

Sinless as he was, Jesus had his emotional moments as he dwelt among us. We do not presume he was “calm” when he took up a whip and cleared the temple with zeal, or when he wept at Lazarus’s tomb, or when he prayed, in anguish, in the garden, with loud cries and tears. Yet apart from a few exceptions, the Christ we encounter in the Gospels is strikingly calm. A man of equanimity indeed — a model of the kind of composure that we his people want to grow in, and can grow in, by the power of his Spirit.

Severely Injured and Remarkably Calm

For Edwards, such equanimity wasn’t theoretical. It was all too real, in fact. Years of injuries, strange behavior, and surprising acts in this evil, unreasonable world came to a head in the spring of 1750. His trial was his own congregation, the church he had pastored for twenty-five years. His own people dismissed him after a week of painful proceedings. However, from all surviving accounts, he never lost his composure.

Even though the church dismissed him for his spiritual views about church membership, they couldn’t help but commend his “christian spirit and temper.” As biographer George Marsden reports, “Edwards’ demeanor during these proceedings apparently was remarkably calm and helped earn him this affirmation even from his opponents. His supporters viewed him as simply saintly” (Jonathan Edwards: A Life, 361). One observer of the long, gut-wrenching process wrote,

I never saw the least symptoms of displeasure in his countenance the whole week, but he appeared like a man of God, whose happiness was out of the reach of his enemies, and whose treasure was not only a future but a present good, overbalancing all imaginable ills of life, even to the astonishment of many, who could not be at rest without his dismission.

Even as Edwards, before his God, received “these afflictions as a means of humbling him” — and he did suffer deeply, and had his own failings — he held his peace. He showcased an equanimity under strain that could not be pretended, a composure arising from decades of grounding and a happiness “out of the reach of his enemies,” from a treasure that was “not only a future but a present good” — that is, from looking to Equanimity himself, the preeminent man of God, and God-man, seated at his Father’s right hand.

Edwards — like Stephen, whose “face was like the face of an angel” (Acts 6:15) before his accusers — looked to that same face as church’s first martyr, who

full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. And he said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” (Acts 7:55–56)

Asleep in the Storm

No doubt, Edwards, like John Owen (1616–1683) before him, would have us “study Christ more,” not only to “recover spiritual life” when we find ourselves to have “decayed” spiritually, but also “to have an experience of the power . . . in our own hearts” that would feed composure and produce equanimity in trying times.

As we look habitually to Christ, as we find him communicated to us in the Gospels, we observe a man who is stunningly calm. What composure, what self-control, what holy equanimity he demonstrates again and again when failed by his disciples, interrupted by the infirm, imposed upon by the well-meaning, challenged by the sophisticated, and disrespected by the authorities. He even shows us what calm is possible in our own storms by what he did in a literal storm: he slept.

And when they woke him, he was not frantic but spoke stillness into the wind: “Peace. Be still.” And so the calm of his own spirit settled over the raging sea: “the wind ceased, and there was a great calm” (Mark 4:39).

Face of Composure

So too, as we look to Christ at the right hand of the Father, in glory, we see the one who not only modeled such composure in our own skin and setting, but now, with all authority in heaven and on earth, he upholds us and makes it possible for us to find the feet of composure.

“We cannot study the real Christ too much. We cannot look to him too often. We cannot meditate on him too much.”

Christ, as man, is not only our example of Christian equanimity. Seated on heaven’s throne, he is now God’s mediatorial king who, by his very reign, makes our progress in equanimity to be holy, rather than delusional. We not only follow him, imitating his calmness; we have faith in him as the world’s only unshakable footing for real and lasting composure. We can scarcely even begin to estimate what healing there is for the flighty, ruffled soul, what health and strength and stillness may be found in “the frequent actings of faith upon the person of Christ,” as Owen says.

Beholding the glory of our Lord — in his striking Gospels calmness and his present imperturbable equanimity — we are “transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Corinthians 3:18). We cannot study the real Christ too much. We cannot look to him too often. We cannot meditate on him too much.

In coming as near to him as we can, and abiding in him as much as we are able, we will in time learn more of that holy stillness of soul, that godly composure, that glorious equanimity, and a thousand other graces besides.