God Our Exceeding Joy
Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised. - Psalm 48:1
What a God and Father you have to rejoice in! This is a source of spiritual joy; the loveliest and surest. To have a God to go to in all difficulties, troubles, and fears; a Father to fly to with every stress, every sorrow, every want. His eye is ever hearkening; His hand ever outstretched; His power equal to His goodness; His ability to aid equal to His readiness to aid. Surely, with such a covenant God and such a loving Father as ours, our heart ought to rejoice more in “God (our) exceeding joy” (Psalm 43:4). There is everything in God to make us joyful all day long. All His perfections smile upon us in Christ, and all are pledged to defend us, to provide for us, to supply us, and to bring us through all and out of all the vicissitudes, trials, temptations, and sins of this present life into life eternal.
We rejoice so feebly in God because we are so imperfectly acquainted with Him. And we are so little acquainted with Him because we have so few dealings with Him.
We run to other people, we rest in human wisdom, we rejoice in other people, until the Lord empties, embitters, or removes them; and then we learn that it is better to put confidence in God, even in our own God, than in the greatest ruler.
The disappointment we have found in others has brought God more really, fully, and blessedly into our soul. And we have learned more of Him as our trust, our hope, our joy; more of His condescension, His faithfulness and love; more of Him as our Father and our God, in our earthly disappointment, than we have ever learned in all the fullness of the world’s sufficiency.
Child of God, rouse you to the truth of that, though the depths of your soul’s distress or depression or temporal embarrassments may have never been so profound, too deep for human power to soothe or relieve, yet you may hope and joy in God. God can, God will, and God has promised to help you.
-Octavius Winslow