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Creature idolatry?
(From Octavius Winslow's, "Bring him unto
Me; or, Help and Salvation Only in Christ")
This is what the Lord says: "Cursed are those
who put their trust in mere humans and turn
their hearts away from the Lord." Jeremiah 17:5
We trust either in our own selves or in others,
until God writes upon our human dependence
the sentence of death.
Thus the Lord empties us of our heart's idolatry,
teaches us the weakness of human power, withers
the arm and dries up the spring of creature help,
that He might but draw us to Himself.
Accept, as sent in love to you, child of God, the
painful and humiliating discipline of your heavenly
Father, which has destroyed all your creature
confidences, broken your beautiful vessels and
blasted your pleasant gourds of created good.
Oh, never did Jesus evince His love to you as now!
Were not His desire towards you, were He not
jealous of your love, and did He not wish to make
you supremely happy by bringing you to seek and
find that happiness supremely in Himself, then
would He have allowed you to follow after your
lovers, giving you up to the creature idolatry
of your too fond and clinging heart.
How seldom do we repair to Jesus with our
burdens, perplexities, and needs until we
have tried any and every other resource.
So earthly and carnal beings are we, that if
we can but attach ourselves in seasons of
conscious sorrow and need and weakness to
another creature, however frail the object
and feeble the hold, we would rather do so
than trust in the invisible God. We bear our
burden first to the creature rather than directly
and immediately to Jesus Himself.
When all human power failed, and all creature
resources dried, and men or angels could not
help us, we only then turn to Jesus.
"Bring him here unto ME." Matthew 17:17
It is the highest as the sweetest privilege of
the believer to bring all to Jesus; to come,
though He be a last resource; to come, though
filled with shame and penitence at not having
come to Him before, at not having come to
Him at first, yet to come bearing the burden,
unveiling the grief, disclosing the need to Jesus.
Do not take your burdened heart to minister, nor to
saints, nor to sacraments, nor to religious duties,
nor to pious services; all, all these, are vain helpers,
having no power to lighten you of the burden.
Let us endeavor to strengthen and encourage
you, my reader, in this holy and helpful privilege
of bringing to Jesus what, in all probability, you
have brought in vain to man.
Imagine the Lord addressing these words to you,
"Bring it here unto me." The invitation, perhaps,
finds you in deep need, in overwhelming distress,
at a critical crisis of your history. Human power
has proved helpless, friends faithless, plans futile,
and you are at your wits' end.
Do not be ashamed to take your case to Jesus,
even though you have gone first to human help.
It is His glory to step in and achieve a work and
bestow a blessing when all human power and
resources have failed. He loves to unlock His
treasury when man's is utterly exhausted.
Go, then, fall at His feet, and tell Him you have
tried all other help, and all has failed you, and
at last you come to Him.
In a word, Jesus bids you bring all to Him....
your depression and despondency,
the sadness of your heart,
the anxieties of your mind,
the wounds of friends,
the calumnies of foes,
the assaults of man,
your fear of death and
your dread of judgment.
All, all He invites to the asylum of His
love, to the arm of His power, and to
the fulness of His sufficiency.
No word of upbraiding will fall from His
lip, no look of anger dart from His eye.
Well will He remember how you leaned upon
the arm of human power and it failed you, how
you reposed upon the heart of human love and
it disappointed you, how you resorted to human
skill and it could not cure.
And now, in the deepest, tenderest sympathy
with your blighted hopes, your wounded affections,
your disappointed plans, He would sincerely uplift
the flower crushed and trampled in the dust, and,
bathing it in the dew of His grace, place it in His
sheltering bosom, to freshen and to bloom forever
beneath the warm sunshine of His smile.
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