From Strength to Strength part IV

"From Strength to Strength" Psalm 84:7

It is strength to ''withstand in the evil day and having done all to stand." It is strength to endure. Let us read attentively Col. 1:11. "Strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power, unto all patience and long-suffering with joy fullness." Here is one of the advanced stations of the pilgrim's progress ''from strength to strength."   We may well pause and ask if we have reached this place of strength. Is this then the goal of Pentecost? Is this the great objective point contemplated by the mighty baptism of the Holy Ghost? Is this the meaning of the power from on high?

"Strengthened with all might according to His glorious power!" One would surely look for a sublimer battlefield to follow such a splendid parade of the armies of God; however, we see an entirely different spectacle. A solitary soldier on an obscure and weary pathway, battling with a thousand petty hardships, difficulties and trials, or standing through all the day of battle without a single opportunity of advancing, and seemingly called to nothing else but to stand under the fire of the enemy and to ''endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ." His whole business seems to be "patience and longsuffering;" the first, with reference to the trials; the second, the annoyances and injuries of men. These are the very things human strength cannot endure. Many a brave man can stand under a cannon's fire more calmly than he can endure the taunts of a fellow-creature. The highest victory of the Son of God was, that, "when He was reviled He reviled not again; when He suffered He threatened not:"and the mightiest triumphs of the strength of God in us are realized when we can receive the hiding of our Father's face and even the weight of His mighty hand without a doubt or murmur, and accept the misconceptions,reproaches and wrongs of our fellow-men, not only with long-suffering, but with joyfulness; not only unruffled and un retaliating, but sweetly realizing and fully believing that they are to us the pledges of some richer blessing from our heavenly Father, and the guarantees of something so glorious that we cannot but thank God for giving us the opportunity of thus winning another blessing.