Dear Friends,
I have no doubt that you have striven against your violent temptations, against the carnal enmity of your minds, against the corruptions of your hearts, against your evil tempers and your besetting sins, with all your might; and after all this wearisome toil and labour, matters are still the same, and sometimes rather worse. Then you resolve, and watch, and work with more care, more diligence and more good intention; and the more you labour, the more the stream runs against you. Then you fret, grieve and conclude that your family concerns, and daily and unexpected trials are laid in your way for the purpose of hindering you, and that it is vain for you to strive any more, for you never shall obtain deliverance. All these things are against us. Seeing then, that we gain no ground this way, let us try another. Let us see what looking to Jesus will do. Hear, therefore, what He says: "Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all ye ends of the earth; for I am God, and besides Me there is no Saviour." Here we are to look for salvation, and for all the help we stand in need of. "I will look to the hills, from whence cometh my help? my help cometh from the Lord which made heaven and earth." And what did any one ever get by this looking unto Jesus? Why "they looked unto him and were lightened, and their faces were not ashamed." And is that all? No; for while we look, "as through a glass darkly," we are changed into the same image, from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of God.
Looking can do what labouring will not do. "Let us, therefore," says Paul, "lay aside every weight, and the sin that doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us; looking unto Jesus, the Author and finisher of our faith. Looking implies believing. As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so that all who were bitten by the serpents might live, "so must the Son of Man be lifted up that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have eternal life." Looking implies hope and expectation. God has laid our help upon His dear Son, who is "mighty to save;" and when poor sinners hear of this, they are led by the Holy Spirit to hope for it in Christ, and to expect it from no other quarter.
And don't you know how Jesus is delighted over poor sinners looking to Him? He says, "Let me hear thy voice, let me see thy countenance, for ... thy countenance is comely."
William Huntingdon
