Welcome to a year of reading Richard Sibbes together! The reading plan for the entire year can be accessed here. I encourage you to stick with us, allow yourself time to read, and soak in the riches of this gifted and prolific Puritan preacher. You will be edified and encouraged.
If you have trouble with how Sibbes used words, check out the Lexicons of Early Modern English for definitions from the period.
Summary/Engagement
The conflict of the soul is a lonely place. I can remember long nights spent praying, days spent worrying, and whole months spent in a funk. We enter these times of conflict and imagine our souls to be the boat we cling to in wide-eyed anguish, tossed from wave to wave in blackest night. The winds throw rain into our face like frozen rocks and vision only comes with the occasional flash of lightning. Thunder booms loudly, echoing around us. We hide in the bottom of the boat mouthing desperate prayers for deliverance and groaning in fear.
Lonely indeed.
These dark nights of the soul can come for any number of reasons. Maybe your job is so crushing that you yearn to be free of the negative atmosphere that pervades. Perhaps your finances just don’t work, you’re constantly upside down, yet all the while you cling to the life raft of your soul as you cry out to God for relief. Black thoughts run through your head as unwelcome and uncontrollable as cold winds, and all you can do is shiver and wrap yourself tighter.
In all this we strive to remain faithful yet feel as though we can gain no deliverance by ourselves. There is hope.
“Speak to God, to Jesus Christ by prayer, that as he rebuked the winds and the waves, and went upon the sea, so he would walk upon our souls, and command a calm there.”
Application / Further Discussion
I have cried out to God countless times to calm the storms in my heart. I want immediate deliverance from trials and suffering. I want to pray and be miraculously delivered. Often God has other ideas. Job was delivered, but not before he endured much suffering and loss. Jonah was delivered, but not until he was storm-tossed, thrown in the ocean, and swallowed by a fish. So to our souls will be delivered, but not finally until we humble ourselves before God and endure to the last day.
We are justified fully when we pass from death to life. Yet we also still struggle through life. We are not glorified yet. Sanctification is a life long process that only completes when we die. Paul said, “And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” (Phil 1:6) This means we fight sin to the end.
Friends I am calling on you to persevere. Deliverance may come, and I pray it does, in this life from your trials. There are many things, Praise God!, that I have been delivered from. However, deliverance was by no means immediate. Some storms last far longer and are more violent and dangerous than we would ever choose for ourself. Yet God says that all things will work together for his glory, and our good. (Rom. 8:28)
In the midst of these terrifying storms, cling tightly to Jesus, more tightly than to your own soul. Remember that, “It is no less power to settle a peace in the soul, than to command the seas to be quiet.” Perhaps in the midst of trials we should seek more the calmness of soul. God will deliver those of us who repent of our sins and believe in Jesus Christ. That final deliverance is coming, as sure as the promise he made, because he cannot lie.
Yet, that deliverance is when we die.
We want comfort and ease now but Christ promised us tribulation. I hope and pray that for all of you in your trials. Yet, more than that, I pray that you would be more fixed on Christ than on your comfort or relief. More than anything my prayer is that you would know Christ and believe in him and be forgiven of your sins. That is true deliverance.
When we truly apprehend all we have in Christ the things of this world, trials and all, grow strangely dim. We trust him fully with all. I pray that for you and for me.
Then, in those terrifying dark nights of ferocious intensity we can turn in the boat and see Jesus manning the tiller of our souls. Fully in control through all things. Trustworthy. Faithful. True.
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Last week, we finished Glorious Freedom: The Excellency of the Gospel Above the Law.
Next week, we’ll read chapters 7-13 of The Soul’s Conflict.
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