‘Oh, how I love your law!’ (15)

‘Uphold me, and I will be delivered…’
PS 119:117a

C.H.Spurgeon’s ‘The Treasury of David’ continues to provide insights into our experience as Christians more than a century later. Here is a comment on 119:117a by James Vaughan, of Brighton, 1877 as it was included by Spurgeon (except for the spacing).

‘God’s methods of holding his people up are many.

• Sometimes it is by the preacher’s word, when the word comes fitly spoken to the heart and conscience. May God, in his infinite condescension, enable his servants in this church so to hold you up.
• Sometimes it is by the ordained means and sacraments which his grace commanded.
• Sometimes it is by the efficacy of the Holy Scriptures, when some passages in your own room strike the mind, just in season; or the stay of some sweet promise comes in sustainingly to your spirit.
• Sometimes by the simple inworking of the Holy Ghost in a man’s own thoughts, as he will work,-“Uphold me with thy free Spirit.”
• Sometimes by the ministration of angels,-“They shall hold thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone.”
• Sometimes by putting you very low indeed, making you feel that the safe place is the valley. There is no elevation like the elevation of abasement.
• Sometimes by severe discipline to brace up the heart, and strengthen it, and make it independent of external things.
• Sometimes by heavy affliction, which is the grasp of his hand, that he may hold you tighter.
• Sometimes by putting into your heart to think the exact thing that you need,-to pray the very prayer which he intends at the moment to grant.
• Sometimes by appearing to let you go, and forsake you, while at the same time-like the Syro-Phoenecian woman-he is giving you the wish to hold on that he may give you the more at the last.’