Quest. What ground hath this holy man for this waiting ?
Ans. He is my present help and my God, he is my salvation and my God. The word is 'salvations:' he hath more salvations than one (h). Therefore though we be troubled with poverty, shame, or any other afflic- tion, yet God is salvations and helps. Consider this, if you are in trouble of conscience for sin, or Satan condemns you, then say that ' God is salva- tion ; ' if you are in trouble, God is deliverance ; if you are persecuted by any wicked malicious enemies, God is a castle : as Ps. xviii. 2, ' The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, and my strength, in whom I will trust; my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and" my high tower.' ' Who is a rock, save our God ? I will call upon the name of the Lord, so shall I be delivered from all mine enemies.' Thus you see how David after all his victories describes God to be his God, and his sal- vation both for body and soul, for the present and for the time to come, with means, without means, and against all means. What a comfort is this ! He can command salvation, he can command the creature to save, and the devil himself to be a means to save us ; and if there be no means for thee to see, yet he can create means to do it in an instant. Thus God is our help ; and what a ground of comfort is this ! Therefore I beseech you be not discouraged. Mourn we may like doves, but not roar like beasts in our afflictions ; when we have humbled ourselves enough, then must we raise up our souls from our grief to another object. For a Chris- tian must look to divers objects : look to the trouble with one eye, and to God with the other, and know him to be his salvation. Then, let the trouble be what it will be, if God be thy deliverer ; it is no matter what the disease be, if God be thy physician. But many times we do betray our- selves into the hands of the devil for want of thinking of these things. * He is my God.' There is another ground of his comfort. Give me leave a little to unfold this sweet point. Consider therein with me two things.
1. God is the God of his children. 2. He is so constantly.
This is the ground of all comforts, God is my God, and God is our God. First, because he doth choose us, and call us in his due time, and then makes a covenant with us to be our God, and then he knows us, loves us, and preserves us, and so he is our God ; because they whom God doth
(52 discouragement's recovery.
choose, he knows them for his own, and stirs up answerable affections, that we may take God, and know God to be ours. For there must be an action on God's part in taking and choosing us, and an action of soul in us to choose God again. If God say to our souls, I will be thy God, then our souls should answer God, ' Thou art the strength of my salvation.' First, God doth love us, then know us, and then we reflect God's love upon' God. Again, he knows us, and we know him again ; he delights in us, and we delTght in him. The Scriptures are full of speeches in this kind. There is"a reciprocal natural passage between God and the soul ; for in covenant there must be consent on both sides, and then we make him our God when we choose him before all creatures both in heaven and in earth. Then we have familiarity with him, love him, and trust in him in all our necessities.
Thus we see how God is said to be onr God. First, God is ours by election, adoption, by sanctification and redemption. God is our God, by dwelling with us ; and this propriety, ' Mij God,' is the first of all ; for when God saith, ' Thou art mine,' the soul saith. Thou art mine, and shalt be mine. This is an everlasting covenant of salvation : God doth endure world without end. Our salvation is according to the nature of God, from everlasting to everlasting, from election to glory. Thus God is the God of Abraham from everlasting to everlasting ; he is the God of Abraham's body, now his soul is in heaven, and his body is in the dust. Mat. xxii. 32. Abraham hath a being in his love. And so we have an everlasting propriety therein, God takes us for ever, marries us for ever, Hos, ii. 19. Therefore we must trust in God, and wait upon God, for he is our God and our salvation.
Uscl. I beseech you, give me a little leave to press this ; for certainly there is more comfort in this word ' My God,' than in all the words of the world ; for what is God to me if he be not my God, and so make me his ? For this same propriety of comfort is more than all the comforts in the world. We account a little patch of ground, or corner of an house of our own, more than all the city and town where we live. This comforts a man, when he can say, This is mine. As a man that hath a wife, it may be, she is not of the best, or the richest, or the fairest, yet she comforts him more, and he takes more content in her, than in all the women in the world, because she is his wife ; so if a man can say, ' 0 my God,' he needs not say any more, for it is more than if he could say, All the world is mine. If we have God we have all, and if we had a thousand worlds, all were nothing to this, if we cannot say ' God is my God.' Therefore, though the child of God may seem to be a poor man, yet he is the only rich man. Other men have the riches of this world, as a kind of usurpers, for they have not the highest right unto them. Worldly men are like unto bankrupts, who are taken to be rich men because they have a great deal of goods in their possession, but the true right belongs to others, and so they prove in the end to be worth nothing. I beseech j'ou, consider what God's servants have said heretofore : ' God is my portion,' Lam. iii. 24. If God be our God, then he will supply all our wants, as it shall make for the best unto us. This is a great comfort to all Christians in what estate soever. God in dividing things, it may be, he hath given others honours, beauty, and riches, and parts of nature. Well ! God falleth to thy lot. Let the world- lings, the lascivious and ambitious persons, make themselves merry with their portions in this life, yet let the Christian, in what estate soever, glory in his portion, for God is his, and all things else. Though there be many