Checkbook of the Bank of Faith

IT is the Lord's way to tear before he heals. This is the honest love of his heart, and the sure surgery of his hand. He also bruises before he binds up, or else it would be uncertain work. The law comes before the gospel; the sense of need before the supply of it. Is the reader now under the convincing, crushing hand of the Spirit? Has he received the spirit of bondage again to fear? This is a beneficial preliminary to real gospel healing and binding up.

Do not despair, dear heart, but come to the Lord with all your jagged wounds, black bruises, and running sores. He alone can heal, and he delights to do it. It is our Lord's office to bind up the broken-hearted, and he is gloriously at home at it. Let us not linger, but at once return unto the Lord from whom we have gone astray. Let us show him our gaping wounds, and beseech him to know his own work, and complete it. Will a surgeon make an incision, and then leave his patient to bleed to death? Will the Lord pull down our old house, and then refuse to build us a better one? Do you ever wantonly increase the misery of poor anxious souls? That be far from you, O Lord.