Nothing can be more useful or fruitful than the study of God. Let us begin seriously to watch the dealings of God with ourselves; let us pry into the different folds in the mantle of His personal providence over us, and trace out the delicate fitness of His rewards and punishment. Let us then watch the operations of His Spirit in our souls, the inward convictions, the timely and prophetic impressions He has sent us, the significant dreams which have come directly from Him or through the ministry of our guardian angels. When these two worlds of His outward and inward dealings are thoughtfully and prayerfully surveyed, we find a great variety of Divine knowledge breaking out like Spring flowers in valleys and hid away in mountain gorges. If we watched God’s dealings with us more carefully we would come to confide in Him more restfully, and unlimitedly. Among the many things which mark the dealings of God with us we may mention the following.  

1. He seems to plead more than to command. While He is the only one absolute God with boundless authority, yet the huge weight of His infinite majesty does not take on the form of tyranny, or issue commandments from His simple sovereignty, but all His commandments flow out from His paternity. They are the commands of love which is only another way of saying, they are so given that any thinking person can see they are for our advantage, so that in reality His very commandments are persuasions for our highest good.  

When a soul is in perfect harmony with God, all His commandments are like a glorious whirlpool, sucking the soul down with eager desire to be lost in the depths of Divine union. Just as every average-sized person carries a dozen tons of atmospheric pressure upon him without feeling in the least oppressed, so God’s administration, and all His commandments, rest gently on everything and everybody, except those souls who are in league with sin and Satan.  

2. He is both swift and slow in His timing of things. As we look back at God’s dealings, there have been times when He seemed to be so slow in bringing things to pass it looked as if He had forgotten, or heartlessly ignored, or on purpose procrastinated. It appeared as if He would punish or severely try the soul. In some instances where the matter had worn itself out, and we had buried it in a forgotten grave, in some unexpected way God’s train, seemingly long overdue, came rolling into the station.  

And then we see other instances in which the Lord wrought with all speed, like a hawk darting on its prey, and the prayer was answered before half uttered, and providences moved thick and fast as if instinct with lightning. Scripture and history, as well as our private lives, are full of this double phase of the slow and swift in God’s dealings.  

Notice in the lives of Joseph, Moses, Mordecai, and any number of prophets and kings, and in the crissal periods of nations, how the eternal One takes ample years in laying foundations. He is preparing instruments, weaving great networks of circumstances, tunneling through great hidden rocks of difficulty, delicately balancing persons and places. Then suddenly He touches the powder that springs a great mine. Revolutions are wrought; individual and seemingly incorrigible sinners are turned into saints; the humble are lifted; the proud are debased; the rich are penniless; the poor are wealthy; empires change hands; and one brief hour throbs with gigantic events, the culmination of slowly aggregated years or centuries. This principle can be noticed on a small scale in the smallest affairs of life.  

3. He does not explain the reasons for His conduct in numberless instances but leaves us to a life of faith. His Word says, “He giveth no accounts of His ways.” It seems to be a rule in creation that explanations are given to equals and to superiors, but seldom to inferiors.  

There is a place in Divine fellowship where He condescends to intimate to His servants, as in the case of Abraham about the destruction of Sodom, what He is about to do, and His reasons for it. But the infinite God is under no obligations to reveal His motives to His creatures. It seems to be a necessity for us to live in the present age a life of faith in every direction, and if God should make known all the special reasons of His conduct, it would hinder that life of faith, which is the true foundation for the blessed unfoldings of clear knowledge in the coming age. Remember, the splendor and dimensions of open manifestation in the coming age are in beautiful proportion to the testings of faith in the present life.  

Faith now, is the hidden seed which will flower forth in visible beauty and fruitage when Jesus comes. Hence our Heavenly Father allows myriads of sore trials, fiery temptations, strange and unexpected troubles to come to us in this life without a word of explanation. Even if we undertake to scrutinize the “whys and wherefores” of His administration, we are only plunged into still deeper mysteries. Finally, head-sore and heart-sick, and tantalized by our own questions, we crawl, like wounded soldiers on a battlefield, underneath the cool shade of God’s infinite love. Or we lie down to rest at His feet, with our questions unanswered, but our faith reposing on His eternal goodness and leaving everything there.  

The Psalmist says, “I hate vain thoughts,” but the word “vain” is not in the original, and doubtless it should be rendered, “I hate reasonings,” for so often it hinders our faith. And then, when we have died to our own reasonings, and passed through the unexplained dispensations, the Holy Spirit will frequently turn on a heavenly light, and we will plainly see more than the answer to our inquiries.  

4. He gives vision and then delays performance. One of God’s dealings is to call people to some special work, and fill their minds with bright visions of it. He fires their hearts with a longing zeal to do the work, and then holds them back, and allows the intervention of great difficulties, and months or years of patient waiting to discipline them in various ways, before permitting them to do the work.  

5. He blends punishments and rewards in the same things. How many times the Lord seems to chastise us with one hand until the heart cries out to Him; with the other hand He seems at the same time to fairly shower great blessings upon us! It is as if He is mightily strengthening us on the one side for the affliction He is giving on the other. It is also as if He is proving by His Fatherly caresses that it is Himself Who applies the rod, and that it is not the devil who has charge of our lives.  

6. He, while hiding Himself, gives clues as if to entice us to seek for Him. The prophet saith, “Verily Thou art a God that hidest Thyself.”  

Artists can draw “puzzle pictures,” with faces of persons so concealed as not to be readily seen. By a little more searching the hidden picture darts upon the eye. So God prints our lives full of “puzzle pictures,” and then suggests that we find His hand, or foot, or face, and a little study yields great returns.  

Jesus standing on the shore in the dim, misty morning, and asking the disciples if they had caught any fish, was one of these “puzzle pictures.” Peter’s quick mind soon detected the hidden One, saying, “It is the Lord.” Gold mines are so placed as to give a hint on the surface to entice men to dig deep for the rich veins beneath, and God’s works are made to resemble Himself.  

7. It is a Divine trait to speak to us after we have had our say. When we have exhausted our knowledge, and reached the point of stillness, and the attitude of listening, He speaks. Paul on the prison stairs beckoned to the mob with his hand till there was a great silence, and then spake in their mother Hebrew tongue. Our whole nature is often in a mob, and God gives us no response except to beckon mutely till all our faculties are hushed into attention, and then He speaks to us in great simplicity in the native language of our hearts. Moses was forty years in Horeb praying, and doubtless debating over his failure to emancipate his own people. He had reached the place of interior stillness before God, when he heard a voice calling him from the burning bush.  

Instead of clamoring for God to speak to us, it is good to pray Him to still all our souls until we can hear Him speak. Another thing perhaps you have noticed is the quiet and unostentatious way God brings things to pass. This is in order that what at one time seemed impossible of accomplishment is brought about by gentle, circuitous methods as almost to be unnoticed. The universal Ruler walks around in shoes of velvet, and reaches a destination so quietly as to hardly arouse attention. Just look back for instance over five or ten years, and see what God has been doing both in you and around you, and far off in the lives of others. See how many things God has brought about, which if they had taken place within the space of one month or a year, it would have shocked the understanding with strangeness or incomprehensibility.  

8. It is a fixed principle that God deals with individuals, and collective bodies of men, and nations and races, by the same pattern. The entire history of the Jews is condensed in the single life of many a man. God told the prophet that He would do certain things “whether it was with a nation or a man only.” Each of our lives would form a Bible if God should write it out from His standpoint. The greatest thing in our existence is to have dealings with the infinite, eternal, living God; the one God, with three Persons, as revealed in Scripture, illustrated in creation, exemplified in providence, and experienced in a life of true prayer. As the greatest thing with a bird is its contact with the air, and the greatest thing with the fish is its contact with the sea, so the greatest thing with a creature man is his contact with his God. And to watch the dealings of God is his highest occupation, to trust God is his highest security, and to love God with a pure, constant love is his sweetest joy.