A writer that has blessed me as much as almost any other has been Hannah Whitall Smith. She is most famous for her classic, The Christian’s Secret of A Happy Life. It was written in 1875. The Unselfishness of God And How I Discovered It, written in 1903 is basically her testimony. My favorite is The God Of All Comfort, her last book written in 1906 (there is an edited version called Living Confidently In God’s Love). One of the many reasons I appreciate her writing is that she understood the basics and what it took to live the victorious Christian life.
There is one basic that if we do not possess firmly, we will never enter into a life of victory. It is so basic that most Christians overlook it. It is so simple that I hesitate to mention it, but it really is the basis for everything. It is that God is love and He is loving and good to me. You would think that all Christians would know this, but so many that we work with even pastors and missionaries feel that because they have failed to measure up God is somehow not working things out for their good. Do you think that if we really knew that there is nothing that we can do to make God love us more and nothing that we could do to make him love us less, it would change our perspective of life?
In her book The Unselfishness of God she writes,
“But time would fail me to tell of all that my soul discovered when I discovered the goodness and unselfishness of God. To say that He is enough is to give an absolute and incontrovertible answer to every doubt and every question that has arisen or can arise. It may not seem to our consciousness that any prayers are answered or any promises fulfilled, but what of that? Behind every promise, there is God, the bare God, if I may so express it and if He exists at all we must know He must be enough. I had begun to discover that He actually was all I needed; and that, even infinitely more than all, beyond what I could ask or think was stored up for me in Him. In a sense my search after God was ended, for I had discovered that He was enough! I had then reached Himself,–the real God behind all the seemings, and my heart had entered into its rest. I had discovered that nothing else really matters,–neither creeds, nor ceremonies, nor doctrines, nor dogmas. GOD IS; GOD IS UNSELFISH; AND GOD IS ENOUGH!”
MQ
Freedom from Addiction 