From "Memoir, Select Thoughts and Sermons of the Late Rev. Edward Payson, Volume 1" by Edward Payson (1783-1827) and Asa Cummings:
The feelings which prompted and sustained his [Payson's] restless activity for the glory of God and the salvation of men, very frequently disclose themselves in his correspondence and diary :—"December 26, 1821. I do not think you understand my feelings about a revival. Unless I am very much deceived, I have no controversy with God respecting it. But ought a minister to feel easy while his people are perishing, and Christians are dishonoring their Master? Did not Paul feel great heaviness, and continual sorrow of heart for his countrymen. All the joy and gratitude he felt, in view of what God had done for him and by him, could not remove that sorrow. And the prophet would weep day and night for the daughter of his people. Instead of feeling less, it seems to me that I ought to feel more, and to have no rest. But I do not murmur at God's dealings. I only wonder that he ever did any thing for me or by me; and that he has not long since cast me out of his vineyard. As to the bed-ridden female you mention, I see nothing very wonderful in her rejoicing and gratitude. Well may she rejoice and be grateful when she is filled full of divine consolation. She has outward trials, it is true; but what are they, when Christ is present? Who wants candles when he has the sun? Give me her consolations, and I will sing as loud as she does. And let her have my showers of fiery darts, and my other trials, and, unless I am much mistaken, she will groan as much as I do. I have seen very young Christians terribly afflicted by bodily pain and sickness, for months together, and all the time full of joy and thankfulness; and I have seen the same persons afterwards, when they were surrounded by temporal mercies, show very little of either. Things seem to be a little on the mending hand; and the church are again beginning to hope for a revival. Last Sabbath was an uncommonly solemn day."
(p. 255-256)
Like Payson and the apostle Paul, I confess I've had great heaviness and continual sorrow quite a lot lately as I look out at the state of many Christians and the church at large, as well as the lost loved ones.
But ought a minister to feel easy while his people are perishing, and Christians are dishonoring their Master?
How can we thrive and rejoice when our eyes have been opened to the dreary and dreadful and all but dead state of Christians and Christ's church?
How can we thrive and rejoice while we grieve for the lukewarm and lethargic souls that fill our churches?
How can we thrive and rejoice while we are burdened for the perishing souls of men and women and boys and girls outside of Christ?
How can we be sorrowful yet always rejoicing in the midst of all these ruins, in the valley of dry bones, while in continuing trials, tribulations and temptations, as Paul wrote in II Corinthians 6: As sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing ...
How can I?
1. We must have a deep and abiding conviction of the sovereignty of God and humbly bow to His wisdom and His workings and ways.
I have no controversy with God respecting it.
But I do not murmur at God's dealings.
Payson was longing and pleading to see God rend the heavens and come down and kindle a revival in the souls of his people (~ Isaiah 64), and yet he was trusting God's sovereign hand in the timing and did not murmur! Ah, but we are by nature a murmuring people, are we not? Prone to murmur, Lord, we feel it. Indeed!
However, if we are Christians, we have received Christ's nature, and it is God who works in us, not only to will and to do of His good pleasure but also so we might do all things without murmuring (see Philippians 2).
After explaining God's sovereign grace in election, making it clear there was no injustice in God at all for choosing some and passing over others, the apostle Paul wrote at the end of Romans 11:
O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counsellor? Or who hath first given to him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again?
For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen.
As Christians, we ought to have a desire to see people saved and to see the church reformed and revived, to see the sleeping church awakened out of her slumber, and so we should be working to the those ends and pleading with importunity at the throne of grace for these matters for we know these are our Father's heart's desires (as Payson referenced the watchmen in Isaiah 62 - day and night, not keeping silence, nor giving the Lord rest, but continuing on until He makes the church once again a praise in the earth, a lamp that burns, the city on the hill He intends us to be), but ultimately it is up to God as to when and how and where He will move in answer to those prayers. God's sovereignty in these matters continues to be our sanity. He has promised that we do not seek Him in vain, and yet we also know He works all things according to the counsel of His will and that His plan cannot ever be thwarted. We know as we labor in Him, as we are seeking His will to be done here on earth as it is in heaven, our labor in not in vain. As Whitefield once said, "God never sends any of His servants on a needless errand." Amen.
2. We must have a profound humility and sense of thanksgiving to God for the work He has done to save us and to keep us through the Lord Jesus Christ.
I only wonder that he ever did any thing for me or by me; and that he has not long since cast me out of his vineyard.
As we continue to look upon our wretchedness, that God found us in the field alone and cast out in our blood, that He raised us up from the ash heap, that we are worms who deserve absolutely nothing, that Christ died for us while we were yet sinners, we know it is by grace through faith we have been saved, and so we are profoundly humbled and our hearts are drawn out in thanksgiving to God for our own salvation. And so, as we labor in the vineyard, no matter what fruits we might be privileged to see, we are brought back to Jesus' gentle rebuke to the disciples:
Notwithstanding in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven.
That perspective helps keep our eyes where they belong – on the Lord Jesus Christ first and foremost... Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith. God forbid we lose a sense of the wonder, love and praise at our own salvation – and may our God continue to increase that daily. And if we've never had that, for it's possible to be a Christian and not really have a sense of it, may God grant it to us (see # 3). Let us reflect more and more on His continuing persevering love toward us for we are all prone to wander and apart from His grace, we can do nothing and we are unable to keep ourselves. It is all of God's mercy and grace that we are His, that He alone might get all the praise, honor and glory. Not unto us, O LORD, not unto us, but unto thy name give glory, for thy mercy, and for thy truth's sake.
3. We must have an experience of the living Christ.
Well may she rejoice and be grateful when she is filled full of divine consolation. She has outward trials, it is true; but what are they, when Christ is present? Who wants candles when he has the sun?
Payson had come to see that in comparison to Christ, all the world had offer was as candles in comparison to the sun!
Is this how you view Christ: that any and all things the world has to offer are but candles when you have the Son of God?
This begs the question: How do you know you have the Son of God?
I heard the Scottish minister Kenneth Stewart once say something like this,
"You know you HAVE Christ when you are content WITH Christ."
Doesn't our heavenly Father tell us, all that He has is ours (see the end of Luke 15)? Hasn't Jesus told us that all things that the Father has are His and that the Spirit is sent to make all of that known to us (John 16:5-15)? Imagine it – and then consider it: Is Christ really enough for us? Are His unsearchable riches really not enough for us?
Payson's experience was like the apostle Paul's:
Philippians 3:7 But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ.8 Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ...
Notice there: ALL things but loss... the loss of ALL things. Paul counted them dung! All of them! Why? Because Jesus Christ had shone brighter to him than all things he had found on earth.
Has Christ shone brighter to you than all things you have found on the earth?
Who wants candles when he has the sun?
The Third Day song expresses it this way:
Nothing compares to the greatness of knowing You, Lord!
Nothing! Nothing at all compares! All else is like candles in comparison to the sun, is it not?
Can you say in truth with the apostle Paul that you are counting all things loss for Christ?
Can you sing the song lyric in truth that nothing compares to the greatness of knowing Him?
What in your world comes even close to comparing to Christ?
You may say you are a Christian and you may even be a Christian, but have you really come to have the Son of God in the sense that you are wholly content with Him and need nothing more? Are all your springs in Him?
Like the apostle Paul, Edward Payson had had a experience of the risen Christ, he had experienced intimate communion the living God.
I call this the icing on the cake. For yes, we can have those other things I mentioned: an appreciation of the sovereignty of God and a profound humiliation and thanksgiving to God for our salvation – but this experience of the living God is what really fuels us on so we might persevere in the work God has for us in spite of what we see. Payson used the words, "when Christ is present." Have you ever encountered the living God where you would say He was present, really present?
I know I'm pushing the envelope by saying that in order to be sorrowful yet always rejoicing "we must have an experience of the living Christ," but I am making no apologies for it. I am pushing for this reason: I am seeking that your joy be full. I see too many forlorn, downcast and despondent Christians, who continue that way day in and day out, week in and week out, year in and year out. You know who you are. I was that way, too, and I don't want you to be that way for another moment. I want you to know the joy of the Lord, really know – not as a mere notion, not as a mere saying from your lips, not as yet another memorized Bible verse in the head, not as an emotional "high" – but to know in your heart the joy of the Lord, that you might have such intimate communion with Him that the rivers of living water are filling you and bubbling up and springing up and out of you, so you cannot help but sing the new song God has given you.
Psalm 30:11 Thou hast turned for me my mourning into dancing: thou hast put off my sackcloth, and girded me with gladness; 12 To the end that my glory may sing praise to thee, and not be silent. O LORD my God, I will give thanks unto thee for ever.
And I want to make it clear here that this gift of the felt presence of Christ is not merely for our own enjoyment (though of course we do enjoy Him wonderfully in it!) – but is given to us for God's joy and the enjoyment of the nations. We are blessed to be a blessing! We are fed to feed others! We drink to pour out to others! Freely we have received, freely we are to give! And then, as Christ is proclaimed and as the nations come to know Christ, the heavens rejoice, do they not, and God is magnified and glorified as His glorious name and praise runs throughout the earth! So Christian hedonism considered rightly is never self-centered, but is always Christ-centered, Christ-magnifying and God-glorifying!
Now here's Bernard of Clairvaux expressing the way out of that cycle of joyless Christianity into a ever-deepening assurance:
When once Thou visitest the heart,
Then truth begins to shine,
Then earthly vanities depart,
Then kindles love divine.
When ONCE! If you've had that visit of the living Christ once to your heart it does make all the difference. For it is then you are able to proclaim and exclaim with the Shulamite woman in the Song of Solomon ~ "Oh, if you knew my Beloved! You would never ask how He is different than any other beloved! He really IS altogether lovely! He IS beautiful beyond all measure! I have tasted Him and seen Him, and this is my testimony to you: He IS good. All the things I've read about, I knew they were true with my head for I knew the Scripture is God's Word and I know it is all true and infallible, but now! Ah! but now - it's all firing in my heart now! The truth is aflame! And I cannot hold it, hold Him, in any longer!"
With such a visit, you not only know the doctrine in your head (to emphasize here: I'm not tossing out doctrine at all - not at all! - we can't ever do that! And doctrine itself is what really undergirds any true and right and pure experiences with the living God – otherwise we'll go off on our feelings, which may be fire, but very well may be false fire!), but the doctrine is now burning in your heart ~ much like what happened to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24), should I say CHRIST is burning in your heart?!
Have you known the burning heart? Is truth aflame in you?
Have you ever asked the living God to condescend to you and visit you in such a way so you might begin to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height of God's love for you in Jesus Christ (see Paul's prayer at the end Ephesians 3)? (Please see my personal note below for more on this.)
That is the very same love that was constraining and compelling the apostle Paul (II Cor. 5) and causing him to say that necessity was laid upon him ~ Woe is me if I don't preach the Gospel!
Have you had such an experience of the presence of Christ that makes all the candles of the world dim in comparison to His shining face so that you consider all else loss and dung, that all else you once valued and treasured is now vanity and worthless in comparison with the Pearl of great price?
Have you had such an experience of the presence of Christ that makes all the candles of the world dim in comparison to His shining face so that you strongly desire that the earth be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea?
Have you had such an experience of the presence of Christ that makes all the candles of the world dim in comparison to His shining face and propels you out to be a shining light in a dark world?
Many of you have been seeking for a life ambition. I will guarantee you this: your ambition will become a holy ambition if God graciously comes and visits your heart once!
Are you going to keep wasting your life on unholy ambitions? Or are you going to seek after Christ so your life's ambition might please and glorify your Maker and Redeemer?
Who wants candles when he has the sun?
This experience of the living Christ is a possibility for you and for all Christians, and I urge you to pursue Him and ask Him to shine His countenance upon you.
Yes, I said all Christians. Please read Paul's prayers for the Ephesians in chapters 1 and 3 and Colossians 1. Have you ever really considered the inheritance God has for you as a Christian – beginning today, in the here and now? If we have Christ, we have eternal life, beginning NOW, it's not starting in heaven, but it's already begun. If you are Christ's, the Kingdom of God is within you! Paul speaks of these things as being available for ALL the saints. If you are a saint, these prayers are for you. These possibilities are for you. This blessedness, this experience of the love of Christ is available to you.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones spoke of the glorious possibilities of the Christian life. And with that, he reminded us that we are in constant danger of interpreting the word of God by our own feelings or flesh or what we've experienced. Please read the Scripture and ask the Spirit of God Himself to show you all that He has for you in the Christian life! Our expectations of God can be so very puny at times! We get into the danger that the Israelites found themselves in: we limit the Holy One of Israel (Psalm 78). We read of the workings of God in the past, we read Christian biography, or we look at other people, and we think, "Oh, how wonderful that all was, but certainly this is not for me!" No! No! It IS for us! It is set before all of us. Has God changed? Does He not want to give His children good gifts and all we need to live a godly life? Does He not wish for us to know Him and His love and His joy and in greater and higher and deeper measure? Should we not be rejoicing with joy unspeakable and full of glory in the midst of our trials? Should we not know the love of God shed abroad in our hearts in tribulation? Should we not expect the Spirit of God to manifest Himself to us in our time of need? Should we not expect our hearts to burn as we encounter Christ in His word? Should we not expect the Comforter to come to assure us we are not orphans when we are alone and we feel forsaken? Should we not expect the Spirit to bear witness with our spirits that we are the children of God in the midst of suffering? Should we not expect the great high priest to come to us in His compassion and strength to encourage us and bear us up so we might come through temptations rather than collapsing under them? These are descriptions of the Christian life we find in the word of God. Cannot God do exceedingly above all we can ask or imagine? Is He not able to perform that which He has promised?
In his hymn "I Hunger and I Thirst," John Samuel Bewley Monsell, Jr., expressed the wonderful divine filling and soul satisfaction, a fullness that cannot be found in all the world, no matter how far we search...
I hunger and I thirst,
Jesu, my manna be;
Ye living waters, burst
Out of the rock for me.
Thou bruised and broken Bread,
My life-long wants supply;
As living souls are fed,
O feed me, or I die.
Thou true life-giving Vine,
Let me Thy sweetness prove;
Renew my life with Thine,
Refresh my soul with love.
Rough paths my feet have trod
Since first their course began;
Feed me, Thou Bread of God;
Help me, Thou Son of Man.
For still the desert lies
My thirsting soul before;
O living waters, rise
Within me evermore.
In the same way Edward Payson had eaten of the True Bread and had drunk of the Living Water, and he was seeking to
continue to do so. He was looking to Christ alone to supply his life-long wants – for he knew that he had been dead in sins and transgressions but having been quickened by Christ, he now lived day by day by Christ. He knew there was no true and living sustenance for him apart from Christ's life. He knew there was no real joy or happiness to be found any place but in Christ. Payson was what John Piper would call a Christian hedonist. Payson walked through those rough paths and desert, as do we all for we all live in a fallen world, but in it all, he kept seeking Christ to satisfy him.
Do you? Where do you turn when your world is rough paths and desert? Is your soul panting for the living God?Who wants candles when he has the sun?
Payson also knew of the painful withdrawals of the face of God, something we hear or read little about today. As we read his words, we see how his relationship with Jesus Christ was his only source of real happiness because he had come to know, experientially know, Christ alone as his sole comfort and vital sustenance in the midst of all the sorrows that accompanied the ministry. Like the Psalmists, he kept seeking God's presence, He kept panting and longing and fainting for Christ alone, and in doing so he was lifted above all the stresses and concerns of the ministry that continued to press in upon him.
"As to my desires for a revival, I have not, and never had, the least doubt that they are exceedingly corrupt and sinful. A thousand wrong motives have conspired to excite them. Still I do not believe that my desires were ever half so strong as they ought to be; nor do I see how a minister can help being in a 'constant fever,' in such a town as this, where his Master is dishonored, and souls are destroyed in so many ways. You can scarcely conceive how may things occur, almost daily, to distress and crush me. All these are nothing, when my Master is with me; but, when he is absent, I am of all men most miserable. But now he is with me and I am happy."
(p. 248)
May our Master give to each of us such a desire for Him. May He be gracious to us and visit us with His presence as He deems fit, to be like the dew, to pour down on us when we are thirsty, to supply a drop from His fountain to strengthen and sustain us and rejoice our souls on our pilgrimage through the weeping and thirsty Valley of Baca. May He lift up His countenance upon us so might be privileged to see a glimpse of His glory, and we might be able to say with Payson, "Who wants candles when he has the sun?" And though we will still have many occasions to be sorrowful on our journey here, may He grant us grace to always be rejoicing in and through Him.
Romans 9:1 I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost, That I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart.
II Corinthians 6:10a As sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing ...
Who wants candles when he has the sun?
A personal note: In October 2009 I found myself continuing to be overwhelmed with a sense of depression and sorrow and had no real rejoicing in ministry. Things came crashing down on me, and while I was sitting in a coffee shop, and I began to pour out my heart to the Lord, asking Him rejoice my soul: that I might find my joy in Him - no matter what I might be seeing. I knew I needed to walk by faith and not by sight, and I couldn't depend on visible ministry results, which were uncertain at best - and in reality that reflected a sinful idolatry of my heart. I was dying on the vine and had come to the point where I knew I certainly couldn't live by such results for they were all vanity.
Christ alone is the only true and unfailing sustenance for our souls. We live by Him. We never live by our work for Him! And this is a dangerous snare any of us who are in ministry. Anytime we begin to rely on the earthly for our joy, even good things, we are going to come up empty (please see my posts My love affair . . . whose trumpet, whose glory & incomplete joy and a conversation with Jesus about misplaced joy ("do not rejoice in this" - letter 73 on joy , as well as this earthly manna ~ the Christian hedonist's plea.) As John Calvin wrote, "Man's nature, so to speak, is a perpetual factory of idols." If we are not seeking Christ and being satisfied in Christ, we will be seeking elsewhere, but that elsewhere always leaves us empty and dry – every single time!
The Lord has been gracious to me and heard by cries and has allowed me to begin to experience some of the glorious possibilities of the Christian life, and that is my desire for you as well. As Christians we are given liberty by the Spirit of God to go from grace to grace and glory to glory; the light does shine brighter and brighter until the Day we see Him face to face; therefore, we can be sorrowful yet always rejoicing as we come to know Christ more and more in an experiential sense.
My series of letters on assurance and fighting for joy chronicle some of my journey. Some of the letters are more relevant to trials and struggles related to ministry and have included links to some of them here.
Please Note: If God has been burdening you over the current state of the church and putting a desire into you to pray to see the church reformed and revived, I encourage you to visit my other sites, tent_of_meeting (prayer for revival) and deerlife (ministry encouragement on our pilgrimage), comment below and/or message me. I would also encourage you to read my holy ambition as well as these three posts, which express some of my heart for revival.
More on Holy Ambition:
"There is no way that Christians in a private capacity can do so much to promote the work of God, and advance the kingdom of Christ, as by prayer. By this, even women, children, and servants may have a public influence. Let persons in other respects be never so weak, and never so mean, and under never so poor advantages to do much for Christ and the souls of men; yet, if they have much of the spirit of grace and supplication, in this way they may have power with him who is infinite in power, and has the government of the whole world. A poor man in his cottage may have a blessed influence all over the world. God is, if I may so say, at the command of the prayer of faith; and in this respect is, as it were, under the power of his people; as princes, they have power with God, and prevail. Though they may be private persons, their prayers are put up in the name of a Mediator who is a public person, being the Head of the whole church, and the Lord of the universe. If they have a great sense of the importance of eternal things, and a concern for the precious souls of men, they need not regret it that they are not preachers; they may go in their earnestness and agonies of soul, and pour out their souls before one who is able to do all things. Before him they may speak as freely as ministers; they have a great High Priest, through whom they may come boldly at all times, and may vent themselves before a prayer-hearing Father without restraint.
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