Steadfast Love

Did you know that “Steadfast Love” appears 206 times in the Bible? 206 times! Over two hundred times that God is reminding us that His love towards us is firm, never changing, unmovable, unshakable.

The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness… Exodus 34:6

Wondrously show your steadfast love, O Savior of those who seek refuge from their adversaries at your right hand. Psalm 17:7

For your steadfast love is before my eyes, and I walk in your faithfulness. Psalm 26:3

I think God is trying to make a point. What do you think?

Steadfast Love in the ESV

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dry wells send us to the fountain.

No pen, no words, no image can express to you the loveliness of my only, only Lord Jesus.

- Samuel Rutherford, The Loveliness of Christ

Free Grace

I find Christ to be Christ, and that he is far, far, even infinite heaven’s height above man. And that is all our happiness. Sinners can do nothing but make wounds that Christ may heal them; and debts that he may raise them; and deaths, that he may quicken them; and spin out and dig hells to themselves, that he may ransom them.

Now I bless the Lord that ever there was such a thing as the free grace of God and a free ransom given for sold souls: only, alas! guiltiness maketh me ashamed to apply to Christ, and to think it pride in me to put out my unlean and withered hand to such a Saviour!

I know no sweeter way to heaven, than through free grace and hard trials together, and none of these cannot well want another.

- Samuel Rutherford, The Loveliness of Christ

Not One Ounce

Not one ounce, not one grain-weight more is laid on me than he hath enabled me to bear…Faith hath cause to take courage from our very afflictions; the devil is but a whetstone to sharpen the faith and patience of the saint. I know he but heweth and polisheth stones for the new Jerusalem.

- Samuel Rutherford

Strike Sail To Him

None have right to joy but we, for joy is sown for us, and an ill summer or harvest will not spill the crop.

I am in this house of my pilgrimage every way in good case; Christ is most kind and loving to my soul: it pleaseth him to feast with unseen consolations a stranger, and an exiled prisoner: and I would not exchange my Lord Jesus, with all the comfort out of heaven; his yoke is easy, and his burden light. This is his truth I now suffer for; for he hath sealed it with his blessed presence.

I am in as sweet communion with Christ as a poor sinner can be; and am only pained that he hath much beauty and fairness, and I little love; he great power and mercy, and I little faith; he much light, and I bleared eyes.

This water was in your way to heaven, and written in your Lord’s book; ye behoved to cross it: and therefore, kiss his wise and unerring providence. Let not the censures of men, who see but the outside of things (and scarce well that), abate your courage and rejoicing in the Lord; howbeit, your faith seeth the black side of providence, yet it hath a better side, and God shall let you see it.

Let not the Lord’s dealings seem harsh, rough, or unfatherly, because it is unpleasant. When the Lord’s blessed will bloweth cross your desires, it is best in humility to strike sail to him and to be willing to be laid any way our Lord pleaseth: it is a point of denial of yourself, to be as if ye had not a will, but had made a free disposition of it to God, and had sold it over to him; and to make use of his will for your own is both true holiness, and your ease and peace.

Ye know not what the Lord is working out of this, but ye shall know it hereafter.

- Samuel Rutherford, The Loveliness of Christ

Ebb and Flow

Ye may yourself ebb and flow, rise and fall, wax and wane; but your Lord is this day as he was yesterday; and it is your comfort that your salvation is not rolled upon wheels of your own making, neither have ye to do with a Christ of your own shaping.

-Samuel Rutherford

That Day

O, blessed is the soul whose hope hath a face looking straight out to That Day.
- Samuel Rutherford

Our Wants Qualify Us For Christ

The Great Master Gardener, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, in a wonderful providence, with his own hand, planted me here, where by his grace in this part of his vineyard, I grow; and here I will abide till the great Master of the vineyard think fit to transplant me.

O, what owe I to the file, to the hammer, to the furnace of my Lord Jesus!

My shallow and ebb thoughts are not the compass Christ saileth by. I leave his ways to himself, for they are far, far above me…There are windings and to’s and fro’s in his ways, which blind bodies like us cannot see.

Let him make anything out of me, so being he be glorified in my salvation: for I know I am made for him.

I find that our wants qualify us for Christ.

Neither need we fear crosses, or sigh, or be sad for anything that is on this side of heaven, if we have Christ.

- Samuel Rutherford, The Loveliness of Christ