Lesson 17: Promises Permanence Against All Other Forces
"The world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever" (1 John 2:17).

The light falls in the act of retrospection. Looking back today to the events of years that have passed, we begin to discover their meaning. They are seen to be part of God’s mosaic. The sharp disappointment, the great sorrow, came after all as a necessity out of the past, and hold within themselves the elements that make the present, and color all the future. The present place of service and of blessing could not have been but for the events that seemed to create confusion.

From this distance we see how God was moving in the infinite order of His endless love, and what we thought confusion was but the sign of His progress. What light is flung on the pathway of each day if once this fact is understood. The day is not done with when its sun sets. The deeds of any given hour are not fully comprehended in the passing of its sixty minutes. If the deeds of the days have been those planned by God, then they are days, the full blossoming of which will be found in the perfect light of the everlasting day. It has been said that every flower that decks the sod has its root far back in eternity. So also every human life, in the Will and purpose of God, is linked to the past and to the future, and His laws for it forget no fact of all the ages.

Need anything further be written to prove the wisdom of abandoning life to His Will? See how all other laws fail when placed in comparison with this. The best-loved friend I have cannot talk within the facts of certain knowledge, the events of the next hour. They may advise, but their advice is necessarily tentative. They would go this way if — and how much depends upon the IF. A thousand chances may prove the error of their wisdom, the shortsightedness of their policy.

This is never so with the soul that has no law save that of God’s Will.


The same criticism will apply to self-made programs. One might, possibly, make a program for one's own life for a week if one knew all that could possibly happen within that week. Seeing, however, that such knowledge does not extend to the next minute, the error of a self-governed life becomes apparent. Of course, it is necessary that we should have our program and our plan and our arrangement, but the more necessary thing is that all such should be prefaced by the old-fashioned and almost obsolete words: "IF the Lord wills, we will live, and do this or that... whoever knows the right thing to do good, and fails to do it, for him it is sin" (James 4:14, 17). Thus James states the true attitude of man towards his future and his God. If our plans are made with this reservation, how often we shall have to thank God for their spoiling; how often has He broken up our program in order that His Will should be done, and how true we have found it to be that “God's Will is sweetest to us when It triumphs at our cost."

The restfulness and peace of this attitude of surrender to God’s Will lies in the fact that the Eternal God, who in infinite love has created us, has done so for eternal companionship with Himself; and if He governs the life, He will bring it, no matter all the forces that seem to be against it, to the place of full and undying existence. There is no other law of life that will secure this. From the center of that Will man may look out upon change and decay, upon death and destruction, and know that he is perfectly safe from them all; indeed, master over all.

Let's reflect on, even memorize: "The world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever" ‒ 1 John 2:17