I have been reading and re-reading The Letters of Samuel Rutherford, and I keep jotting down notes, underlying -and over-underlying! the text, praying, and meditating on the words he penned from prison to his parishioners. What a gift for us to be encouraged by this man’s gift to point us to Christ and keep looking up to Him no matter how heavy our afflictions may be.

Here are a few quotes for your own encouragement and meditation:

“Now honor God, shame the strong roaring lion, when you seem weakest. Should such an one as you faint in the day of adversity? Call to mind the days of old; the Lord yet liveth; trust in him, although he should slay you. Faith is exceedingly charitable, and believeth no evil of God.”

“I would advise you ask of God a submissive heart.”

“…and though we cannot see a reason for it, yet He hath a most just reason.”

“Worthy and dear Lady, in the strength of Christ, fight and overcome. You are now alone, but you may have, for the seeking, three always in your company, the Father, the Son, and Holy Spirit. I trust they are near you.”

“Therefore, I entreat you and charge you in the Lord’s name, pray!”

“I know Christ shall make Aberdeen [where he was imprisoned] my garden of delights.”

“Faith will trust the Lord, and it is not hasty nor headstrong. Neither is faith so timorous as to flatter a temptation or ti bud and bribe the cross.”

“I think it the Lord’s wise love that feeds us with hunger, and makes us fat with wants and desertions.”

“I know that He who sent me to the west and south sends me also to the north. I will charge my soul to believe and to wait for Him, and will follow His Providence and not go before it nor stay behind it.”

“My adversaries have sent me here [the prison in Aberdeen] to be feasted with love banquets with my royal, high, high, and princely Lord Jesus.”

“But I will yield to Him, providing my suffering may preach more than my tongue did.. I will hold my peace hereafter.”

“To pray and believe now, when Christ seems to give you a nay-say, is more than it was before. Die believing; die, and Christ’s promise in your hand!”

“I find it most true, that the greatest temptation out of Hell is to live without temptations. If my waters would stand, they would rot. Faith is the better for the free air and the sharp winter-storm in its face. Grace withereth without adversity. The Devil is but God’s master-fencer, to teach us to handle our weapons.”

“[I have been helped] By praying for others; for, by making an errand to God  for them, I have gotten something for myself.”

“I have been really confirmed, in many particulars, that God heareth prayers; and therefore I used to pray for any thing, of how little importance soever.”

“I know it is no dumb Providence, but a speaking one, whereby our Lord speaketh his mind to you, though for the present ye do not well understand what He saith. However, it  be, he who sitteth upon the floods hath shown you this marvelous loving kindness in the great depths. I know that your loss is great, and your hope is gone far against you. but I entreat you, sir, expound aright our Lord’s laying all hindrances in the way.”

“My dear brother, let God make of you what he will, he will end all with consolation, and will make glory out of your sufferings; and would you wish better work? This water was in your way to heaven and written in your Lord’s Book: ye behoved to cross it, and therefore, kiss the wise and uttering Providence. Let not the censures of men, who see but the outside of things, and scare well that, abate your courage and rejoicing in the Lord. Howbeit your faith seeth but the black side of Providence, yet it hath a better side, and God will let you see it.”

“Your heart is not the compass Christ saileth by.”

“O sweet stability of well-founded salvation! Who could win heaven, if this were not so? and who could be saved, if God were not God, and if he were not such a God as He is? O, God be thanked, that our salvation is coasted and landed and shored upon Christ, who is Master of winds and storms!”

“I hold my peace here; let Him do His will.”

“I remain a still a prisoner of hope, and do think it service to the Lord to wait on still with submission, till the Lord’s morning sky break, and his summer day dawn.”

“Our hope is not hung upon such an untwisted thread as, “I imagine so” or “It is likely”; but the cable, the strong tow of our fastened anchor, is the oath and promise of Him who is eternal verity.”

“It is easy to make conscience believe as you will, not as you know.”

“My dear brother be not frightened at the cross of Christ. It is not seen yet what Christ will do for you when it cometh to the words. He will keep his grace till you be at starit, and then bring forth the decreed birth of your salvation. You are an arrow of his own making. Let Him shoot you against a wall of brass, your point shall keep whole.”

“If we had more practice of obedience, we should have more sound light.”

“Slack not your hands in meeting to pray.”

“You say, that you know not what to do… Say, “Pray, Father, save me from this hour”. What course can you take, but pray, and trust Christ’s own comforts? He is not bankrupt, take His Word. “Oh,” say you, “I cannot pray.” I answer, honest sighing is faith breathing and whispering in the ear..”

“Say, ‘I shall rather spoil twenty prayers, than to not pray at all. Let my broken words go up to Heaven; when they come up into the angel’s golden censer, that compassionate Advocate will put together my broken prayers and perfume them,’  Words are but accidents of prayer.”

“Lend Christ your melancholy, for Satan has no right to make chamber in your melancholy.”

“There is no way of quieting the mind, and of silencing the heart of a mother, but godly submission. The readiest way for peace and consolation to clay-vessels is, that it is a stroke of the Potter and Former of all things… It is not safe to be pulling and drawing with the Omnipotent Lord. Let the pull go with him, for he is strong; and say, “Thy will be done on earth, as it is in Heaven.”

“It is the art and sill of faith to read what the Lord writes upon the Cross, and to spell and construct right his sense. Often we miscall words and sentences of the cross, and either put nonsense on his rids, or burden His Majesty with slanders and mistakes, when He minded for us thoughts of peace and love, even to do us good in the latter end.”

Under His sun and by His grace,

Becky Pliego

PC: Aaron Burden via Unsplash