Virginia Brandt Berg (1898-1968)
God blessing you! I can't begin to tell you how sincerely that's said, because we do pray so earnestly for you and I say again, God bless you indeed.
From these letters that we have received, there are some very pathetic cries that come in. One from a sufferer who lives in a wheelchair, terribly crippled with arthritis. She tells of the long years of bondage and then she sums it all up in these words,
"Is this God's Will for me?" -- Well, I tell you there's pathos in that and our hearts are burdened for her. But there is also a real questions there: Is that God's Will for her?
So many people handle this phrase "the Will of God" so lightly and mistakenly that great confusion is the result sometimes. And sometimes a Godly consecrated soul who wants above all else to be submissive to God's Will will say, "It's the Will of God and I have to bow to it though I can't understand why God's Will is always so hard."
I can't help but wonder why we think of God's Will as something so hard to bear, as if God were some inexorable tyrant whose inscrutable Will is always forcing us into hard places! I can think of so many things this minute that are the result of, I would say, universal sin, or colossal ignorance, or the breaking of God's Law somewhere back down the line, or even Man's own selfish carelessness or the carelessness of others.
But it's all blamed on "God's Will!" "This is God's Will." And Job's comforters are always there to say, no matter how severe the sufferer or the broken-hearted, "Well, God wills it, you'll just have to accept it." In many cases I do not believe that's God's intention!
I think that God always intends good towards His children though circumstances of Man's making or Man's own will can temporarily defeat God's intention. I want to make it very plain that I believe in utter submission to the Will of God.
I believe that submission is the very basis of victory in prayer, in getting answer to prayer -- an utter submissiveness to the Will of God. But I also know that many people submit to suffering and bondage and hardships that are not the Will of God at all.
God's Will for them is really victory over these things! And I've seen it come to pass that when certain ones that felt that way have built up their faith by living in the Word of God and have met God's conditions, they have been utterly delivered.
And there are many though through some mistaken teaching even, live on under bondage because they just take it that God's Will is so hard, and that's "the Will of God." And I think about the little poem that has this thought in it by Annie Johnson Flint:
"His Will Be Done,"
We say with sighs and trembling,
Expecting trial, bitter loss and tears.
And then how doth He answer us?
With blessings,
And sweet rebuking of our faithless fears.
God's Will is peace and plenty
And the power to be,
And have the best that He can give:
A mind to serve Him, a heart to love,
And faith to die and the strength to live.
It means for us all good,
All grace, all glory
His King coming and on Earth begun.
Why should we fear to say,
"His Will, His righteous,
His tender loving, joyous Will be done!"?
It is important to know just what is meant by "the Will of God." The Will of God was the very framework for all of Christ's Ministry. He said, "I do always the Will of My Father." And He made it plain that to do the Will of God was a sure way to the heights of spiritual power and understanding.
But always the Father's Will was a joy. He never once intimated that we were to take all the tragedies of life, the oppressions of the Devil, the unhappy circumstances, and pile them all up in one place and say, "Well, this is the Will of God."
Perhaps I feel deeply on this subject because as I have often told you I was a hopeless invalid for years and my case was given up by the finest specialists as an incurable case.
Every minister that came to my bedside talked to me earnestly just about submitting: Submitting to my plight, that it was the Will of God for me; that as this was God's Will for me I must accept it sweetly and bear it patiently. "God's Will for me" was all they told me.
I feel, perhaps I do believe, that this was the easy way out for those men because they didn't have the faith to pray for my deliverance, and this is the easy way out for many who will not take the rugged path of the fight of faith and resisting the Devil and putting forth a determined effort of a believing will.
You know, it is easier just to sigh and say, "Well, this is God's Will" and not fight the good fight of faith. But oh, thank God! One day there came to my bedside a minister who rightly divided the Word of Truth! And he said as he held the New Testament out before me,
"A will you know is the last testament of a man Who has died. Now this New Testament here is the Last Will and Testament of One Who died for you. And this is His Will for you." -- Then he read me of His Will. He read to me over and over about my inheritance and the joyous promises that were God's Will for me.
And I began to see clearly into the divine purpose until all the confusion and torment left my mind and faith took hold of some of those wonderful things that were God's Will for me. Yes, the Lord healed me completely, restored and sent me out to minister to others.
I found that the New Testament did not give me the right to associate everything that was just dark and hard and unhappy with the Will of God. God's Word says in Lamentations,
"He does not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men!" -- Lam.3:33. And His Will was not to rob me of all I prized and loved most! But rather God has spoken His Will through His Word. And here are some of the wonderful promises that were Willed to me that this man of God read to me. -- And you know, some of you do, that that man, that minister of the Gospel was my own husband.
It says in John 10:10, "He came that we might have life and have it more abundantly." And in Psalm 84:11, "No good thing will He withhold from them which walk uprightly." This is the Will of God! And in Matthew 7:7 and 11, "Ask and it shall be given you...for if ye being evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Father which is in Heaven give good things to them that ask Him?"
In John 16:24, "Ask and ye shall receive that your joy may be full." And John 14:13,14: "And whatsoever ye shall ask in my Name that will I do that the Father may be gloried in the Son. And if ye shall ask anything in my Name I will do it." -- Oh, we could read on and on,
For He has promised us much, and offered such an abundance as His revealed Will for us that we can't help but see that He longs to give us the best. As He says, "Delight thyself in the Lord and He will give thee the desires of thy heart." Oh my friend, here's a wonderful verse we give you as an admonition!
"Taste and see that the Lord is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in Him. The young lions do lack and suffer hunger: but they that seek the Lord shall not want any good thing. Many are the afflictions of the righteous: but the Lord delivereth him out of them all." -- Psa.34:8,10,19.
Wonderful precious promises and they are for you, and this is God's Will for you, wonderful Will of a loving Heavenly Father.
This Is His Plan For Me
When I stand at the Judgment seat of Christ
And He shows me His plan for me:
The plan of my life as it might have been
Had He had His way. And I see
How I blocked Him here and I'd check Him there
And I would not yield my will.
Will there be any grief in my Savior's eyes?
Grief, though He loves me still?
Oh Lord, of the years that are left to me
I give them to Thy hand.
Take me, break me, mold me
For Thy Will, and the pattern Thou hast planned.
When I stand at the Judgment seat of Christ
And He shows me His plan for me:
The plan of my life as it might have been
Had He had His way, and I see
Then my desolate heart will well-nigh break
With the tears I cannot shed.
I shall cover my face with my empty hands
I shall bow my uncrowned head.
For He'd have had me rich and I stand there poor,
Stripped of all but His grace
While my memory runs like a haunted thing
Down the paths that I cannot retrace.
-- God bless you. He still lives and answers prayer, and He will answer prayer for you my friend!
Put your hand in His! Let Him take you and make you all that He planned in His precious Will. He Wills the best for you! Believe it and reach out and touch Him by the finger of faith today! Amen.