Learning to Live by Faith

This post will be Part 2 of the Chapter 4 summary. Here is a link to Part 1 in case you have not had a chance to read it yet: “The Lord Our Shepherd” Part 1 of Ch. 4 Summary of God of All Comfort – Learning to Live by Faith. We will pick up from where we left off last time.

In the next part of the chapter, Hannah Whitall Smith compares 2 flocks of sheep: one flock fat and strong and in good condition, and the other poor and lean and diseased. It is important to remember that when she is making these comparisons in this chapter between sheep and people, she is only referencing our spiritual condition not our physical condition.

There is a very powerful sermon series by Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones called Spiritual Depression. I started reading through it without really knowing what it was, and he was talking about how people in a sad condition do not bring glory to God. I have chronic health conditions, and it hit my ears wrong initially because I had thought the sermons were going to be about depression in the sense that we normally hear the word – like depression and anxiety – so I thought he was saying that someone with clinical depression did not glorify God. But the sermon series was highly recommended, so I kept reading and realized he was talking about something different. He was talking about being in a depressed state spiritually, where you are not finding joy in your walk with God. He was actually making the same point that Smith makes here, that if an unbeliever looks and sees that Christians are not enjoying following God, the unbeliever probably will not be drawn towards following God either. We must remember that we are ambassadors for Christ. We go into the world as His representatives. We are supposed to tell them the glorious good news of the gospel and then be living in such a way that others will be drawn to Jesus by seeing the kind of relationship we have with Him. But if we are in a sad spiritual condition, if we are not finding joy in following God, that does not make Him look like a good shepherd. Smith says that we are supposed to show the world that Jesus is a shepherd they can trust. But in order to do that, we must first trust Him ourselves. And so throughout this chapter she continues to show us reasons why we can trust Him.

I just wanted to take a minute to clarify that in case anyone else with chronic health conditions is reading through this book. As Smith has said before, sometimes God works through afflictions and suffering. So if someone is suffering from a health problem that affects their physical condition, they can still bring great glory to God by continuing to follow Him and continuing to find joy in Him in the midst of their suffering. Smith is only talking about how a weakened spiritual condition does not bring honor to God.

In this next part of the chapter, Smith says, “I beg of you to answer this question honestly in your own soul. Have you had a comfortable religious life or an uncomfortable one? If [you have had an uncomfortable one], how can you reconcile it with the statement that the Lord is your Shepherd, and therefore you shall not want? You say He is your Shepherd, and yet you complain that you do want. Who has made the mistake? You or the Lord?” She says that sometimes people will answer, “Oh, no, I do not blame the Lord, but I am so weak and so foolish, and so ignorant, that I am not worthy of His care.” But Smith explains that the fact that sheep are weak and helpless is the very reason why they need a shepherd in the first place. So, in other words, it’s not a reason why they are not worthy of a shepherd but the reason why they need a shepherd.

So try to picture a sheep that is walking by itself looking over and seeing a tender, loving shepherd with plenty of food who is offering to take care of it. Would the sheep say, “Oh, no…I couldn’t follow you! I’m not worthy of your care!” or would the sheep be excited the shepherd had found it and then eagerly follow that shepherd? A sheep would eagerly follow. Smith uses the word “silly” in the sense of “lacking in judgment” and says, “Silly as sheep are, we know well no sheep could be so silly as to talk in this way [of saying they are unworthy of a shepherd]. And here comes the difference. We are so much wiser than sheep, in our own estimation, that we think the sort of trust sheep exercise will not do for us; and, in our superior intelligence, we presume to take matters into our own hands, and so shut ourselves out from the Shepherd’s care.”

One thing I have learned from reading the older commentaries that I reference in my posts is that we are supposed to rejoice that God is saving us out of this fallen world. We are born into this world in a sinful condition, totally unable to save ourselves. But God sent His own Son to be our Mediator. Jesus obeyed the law perfectly in our place, and He died on the cross in our place and bore the punishment for our sins. Through Him we are reconciled to God. And Jesus promises to be with us always, even to the end of the age, lovingly guiding us on our journey through this world until we reach our home in heaven. When we are saved, we are brought into the sheepfold of God. As our shepherd, Jesus watches over our souls and gives us our spiritual food and drink. He also cares for us in terms of earthly resources. And He has a loving plan for our lives…a pathway for us to follow Him in that leads all the way home to heaven.

In this chapter, Smith references the verses where Jesus says, “And this is the Father’s will which hath sent me, that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day. And this is the will of him that sent me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life: and I will raise him up at the last day.” (John 6:39-40 KJV) And again He said, “The good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.” (John 10:11) And still again: “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them and they follow me, and I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.” (John 10:27-28)

We are to see ourselves as a sheep, wandering through this world of darkness. We look up and see Jesus with His arms outstretched to us, longing to be a shepherd to us, longing to guide us through each step on our journey. We must not refuse His comfort and His help. We must go to Him for safety and care.

Smith says that one thing we can do to help us trust that Jesus truly is a good shepherd is to write out a list of all the qualities a good shepherd would have and then to spend time thinking about how Jesus does all of those things for us. If there are areas of your life that you are struggling to see how Jesus is helping you, spend time in prayer asking Him to help you feel His presence there with you. Smith says that we should “say the words over to [ourselves] with all the will power you can muster, ‘The Lord is my Shepherd. He is. He is. No matter what I feel, He says He is, and He is. I am going to believe it, come what may.’ Then repeat the words with a different emphasis each time:

The Lord is my Shepherd.

The Lord is my Shepherd.

The Lord is my Shepherd.

The Lord is my Shepherd.

Realize to yourself what your ideal Shepherd would be, all that you would require from anyone filling such a position of trust and of responsibility, and then know that an ideal far beyond yours, and a conception of the duties of such a position higher than any you ever dreamed of, were in the mind of our Lord when He said, ‘I am the good shepherd’.”

Smith says that when we look at the example of an actual sheep with a shepherd, we all understand what the responsibility is of the shepherd to the sheep – we see what their roles are. The shepherd cares for and tends to the sheep, and the sheep follows the shepherd. But Smith says that the moment we transfer the analogy of shepherd and sheep to our religion – to Jesus as the shepherd and us as the sheep – “we at once shift all the responsibility off the Shepherd’s shoulders, and lay it upon the sheep; and demand of the poor human sheep the wisdom, and care, and power to provide, that can only belong to the divine Shepherd and be met by Him; and of course the poor human sheep fail, and their religious lives become thoroughly uncomfortable, and even sometimes most miserable.”

The point she is making throughout the chapter is that we must not take things into our own hands and try to care for ourselves, and we also must not refuse the tender care of our good shepherd. We must learn to trust and rely on Jesus for everything. We must see that Jesus is reaching out to us, wanting to help us, and we must trust in His goodness and accept His kindness to us.

Smith says that, “There is absolutely only one thing that can hinder Him, and that is, if the sheep will not trust Him and refuse to let Him take care of them. If they stand off at a distance, and look at the food He has provided, and long for it, and cry for it, but refuse to eat it, He cannot satisfy their hunger. If they linger outside the shelter He has made, and are afraid to go in and enjoy it because they feel too distrustful or too unworthy, He cannot protect them. No sheep is so silly as to act in this way, but we human beings, who are so much wiser than sheep, do it continually. No sheep, could it talk, would say to the shepherd: “I long for the food you have provided, and for the shelter and peace of your fold, and I wish I might dare to enjoy them; but, alas! I feel too unworthy. I am too weak and foolish; I do not feel grateful enough; I am afraid I do not feel quite hungry enough, or enough in earnest about wanting it. I dare not presume to think you mean all these good things for me.”

She says to try seeing yourself how Jesus sees you. “Consider your condition as He considers it. See Him coming out to seek you in your far-off wandering. See His tender, yearning love, His unutterable longing to save you. Believe His own description of Himself, and take Him at His own sweet word.”

Then Smith quotes the hymn “There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy” by Frederick Faber:

If our faith were but more simple,
We would take Him at His word;
And our lives would be all gladness
In the sunshine of our Lord.

Smith says, “Ah, yes, this is the trouble. Our faith is not simple enough to take Him at His word, but we must needs add all sorts of ‘buts’ and ‘ifs’ of our own; and obscure the sunshine of His love with clouds of our own imagining. If we but only knew the things which belong to our peace, how quickly we would throw aside every ‘if’ and ‘but’ of unbelief, and how rapturously we would plunge ourselves headlong into an unquestioning faith in all that He has told us of His almighty and never-failing love and care!”

Here is a link to an audio recording of “There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy” by Frederick Faber: “There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy” by Frederick Faber – Learning to Live by Faith. As you sing through this hymn, spend time meditating on God’s great love towards us as we learn to view Him as a tender, gentle shepherd rather than a stern judge. Verses 4 and 5 say:

For the love of God is broader
than the measure of our mind,
and the heart of the Eternal
is most wonderfully kind.

But we make his love too narrow
by false limits of our own;
and we magnify his strictness
with a zeal he would not own.

We’ll pick up here in Part 3 of the Chapter 4 summary in my next post.

Links: Hannah Whitall Smith: God of All Comfort – Christian Classics Ethereal Library

Chapter 4 of God of All Comfort is entitled, “The Lord Our Shepherd.” King David tells us in Psalm 23 that the Lord is our shepherd. And Jesus Himself tells us in John 10 that He is not only our shepherd, but He is the good shepherd. Hannah Whitall Smith asks, “Can we conceive of anything more comforting?” She says, “Perhaps no aspect in which the Lord reveals Himself to us is fuller of genuine comfort” than the aspect revealed in these passages of Jesus as our good shepherd.

Smith explains that in her study of the Bible, she has found that “the highest and grandest truths of the religion of the Lord Jesus Christ are so often shut up in the simplest and commonest texts in the Bible.” She was taught the 23^rd Psalm in nursery school and had memorized it. But Smith explains that passages that we have learned and read repeatedly from such a young age can “sound so old and familiar to [us], that [we] cannot see what meaning they can convey. But in truth they tell us the whole story of our religion in words of such wondrous depth of meaning that I very much doubt whether it has ever yet entered into the heart of any mortal man to conceive of the things they reveal.” She says that we must look again at the verses we learned as children. We need to read them with the intelligence of our grown-up years in order to see new insights, and then we need to believe them with all our old childhood faith.

Repeat the words of Psalm 23 to yourself: “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.”

Who is your shepherd? The Lord!

Smith says, “Oh, my friends, what a wonderful announcement! The Lord God of Heaven and earth, the Almighty Creator of all things, He who holds the universe in His hand as though it were a very little thing, He is your Shepherd, and has charged Himself with the care and keeping of you, as a shepherd is charged with the care and keeping of his sheep.”

Smith explains that as she was thinking about Jesus being her shepherd, she searched through the pages of the Bible with eagerness to see “whether it could possibly be true that such untold treasures of comfort were really and actually [hers].’’ Smith says, “I did what I have often found great profit in doing, I built up a pyramid of declarations and promises concerning the Lord being our Shepherd that, once built, presented an immovable and indestructible front to all the winds and storms of doubt or trial that could assail it. And I became convinced, beyond a shadow of doubt, that the Lord really was my Shepherd, and that in giving Himself this name He assumed the duties belonging to the name, and really would be, what He declares Himself to be, a “good shepherd who giveth his life for his sheep.”

What makes a shepherd good or bad? Jesus Himself draws the contrast between a good shepherd and a bad shepherd. In John 10:11 (NIV), the verse Smith just quoted, Jesus declares, “I am the good shepherd,” and explains that, “The good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep.” So, the good shepherd is willing to die in order to save the lives of his sheep – as Jesus did on the cross. But in verses 12-13, Jesus explains that the bad shepherd does not have the same regard for the lives of the sheep. He says, “The hired hand,” the bad shepherd, “is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.” Smith explains that in the books of the prophets, God condemns the bad shepherds.

Then Smith says, “Surely one would think that no Christian could ever accuse our divine Shepherd of being as faithless and unkind as [the bad shepherds] He thus condemns. And yet, if the secrets of some Christian hearts should be revealed, I fear that it would be found that, although they do not put it into words, and perhaps hardly know themselves that such are their feelings about Him, yet at the bottom they do really look upon Him as a faithless Shepherd. What else can it mean when Christians complain that the Lord has forsaken them; that they cry to Him for spiritual food and He does not hear; that they are beset by enemies on every side and He does not deliver them; that when their souls find themselves in dark places He does not come to their rescue; that when they are weak He does not strengthen them; and when they are spiritually sick He does not heal them? What are all these doubts and discouragements but secret accusations against our good Shepherd of the very things which He Himself so scathingly condemns?”

Smith tells the story of a Christian who had just discovered he had not really understood what it meant for Jesus to be called the good shepherd. The Christian says, “I believe I read the Twenty-third Psalm as though it was written, ‘The Lord is the sheep, and I am the shepherd, and, if I do not keep a tight hold on Him, He will run away.’ When dark days came I never for a moment thought that He would stick by me, and when my soul was starving and cried out for food, I never dreamed He would feed me. I see now that I never looked upon Him as a faithful Shepherd at all. But now all is different. I myself am not one bit better or stronger, but I have discovered that I have a good Shepherd, and that is all I need. I see now that it really is true that the Lord is my Shepherd, and that I shall not want.”

Smith says it is important for us to reflect and ask ourselves if we truly see Jesus as a good, tender shepherd. Are we able to feel safe and carefree like a sheep under the guidance of a shepherd who is thinking of our well being and lovingly guiding us? Do we trust Him to stay with us when the path grows dark? Do we trust He is guiding us the right way? Or do we question His goodness and His plan for our lives and often feel like He has abandoned us on our journey and run away like the bad shepherd? As we are learning who Jesus is and how to trust Him, God will give us clearer vision to see that Jesus is always next to us, lovingly guiding us on the pathway home to heaven and that those dark places on the pathway are part of His plan for us, too – remembering how in the last chapter Smith explained that sometimes God works through afflictions.

We’ll pick up here in Part 2 of the Chapter 4 summary in my next post.

Hannah Whitall Smith: God of All Comfort – Christian Classics Ethereal Library