Bones cannot be quickened into life by manipulation. Only the touch of God can give them life.

Some of us must be taught this by bitter experiences of failure. So writes Dr. A. C. Dixon.

“While I was pastor of the Baptist Church in Chapel Hill, the university town of North Carolina, I was made to realize that, as a preacher, I was a dismal failure. Parents all over the state wrote me and requested that I look after the spiritual welfare of their sons in the university. I prepared sermons with the students in mind and was glad to see that they showed their appreciation by attending our Sunday services in large numbers. We appointed a week of prayer and preaching with the single purpose of winning them to Christ, and they attended the evening meetings.

“About the middle of the week their interest seemed to turn into opposition; the spirit of mischief possessed them—one night they tried to put out the lights. As I walked through the grove around the university buildings, I sometimes heard my voice coming from behind a tree: a bright student had caught a part of my sermon the night before, and he was giving it in thought and tone for the benefit of his fellow students, who showed their appreciation by applause and laughter. As I walked before an open window I heard my voice in prayer floating out. I felt I was defeated and was seriously considering resigning the pastorate. Not one had been saved.

“After a restless night I took my Bible and went into the grove and remained there until three o’clock in the afternoon. As I read I asked God to show me what was the matter, and the Word of God searched me through and through giving me a deep sense of sin and helplessness, such as I had never had before.

“That evening the students listened reverently, and at the close two pews were filled with those who had responded to the invitation. The revival continued day after day until more than seventy of the students had confessed Christ.

“Now the practical question is what did it? Certainly not I; I fear it was the I that kept God from doing it for a long time. There came to me out of the day’s experience a clear-cut distinction between influence and power. Influence is made up of many things: intellect, education, money, social position, personality, organization—all of which ought to be used for Christ. Power is God Himself at work unhindered by our unbelief and other sins.

“The word influence occurs but once in the Bible, and that in Job where Jehovah speaks to the old patriarch of the sweet influences of the Pleiades—a good text for a young minister to preach on in the springtime, but not sufficient in dealing with a group of mocking university students.

“The New Testament word power holds the secret, and the power from on high was no other than God the Holy Spirit touching the soul through the living word and giving it a birth from above.

“I had been trusting and testing many other good things, only to fail; the touch of God did in a minute what my best efforts could not do.”

There is nothing that makes the Scriptures more precious to us than a time of “captivity.” The old psalms of God’s Word have sung for us with compassion by our stream at Babel and have resounded with new joy as we have seen the Lord deliver us from captivity and “restore our fortunes, . . . like streams in the Negev” (Psalm 126:4).

A person who has experienced great difficulties will not be easily parted from his Bible. Another book may appear to others to be identical, but to him it is not the same. Over the old and tear-stained pages of his Bible, he has written a journal of his experiences in words that are only visible to his eyes. Through those pages, he has time and again come to the pillars of the house of God and “to Elim, where there were . . . palm trees” (Exodus 15:27). And each of those pillars and trees have become a remembrance for him of some critical time in his life.

In order to receive any benefit from our captivity, we must accept the situation and be determined to make the best of it. Worrying over what we have lost or what has been taken from us will not make things better but will only prevent us from improving what remains. We will only serve to make the rope around us tighter if we rebel against it.

In the same way, an excitable horse that will not calmly submit to its bridle only strangles itself. And a high-spirited animal that is restless in its yoke only bruises its own shoulders. Everyone will also understand the analogy that Laurence Sterne, a minister and author of the eighteenth century, penned regarding a starling and a canary. He told of the difference between a restless starling that broke its wings struggling against the bars of its cage and continually cried, “I can’t get out! I can’t get out!” and a submissive canary that sat on its perch and sang songs that surpassed even the beauty of those of a lark that soared freely to the very gates of heaven.

No calamity will ever bring only evil to us, if we will immediately take it in fervent prayer to God. Even as we take shelter beneath a tree during a downpour of rain, we may unexpectedly find fruit on its branches. And when we flee to God, taking refuge beneath the shadow of His wing, we will always find more in Him than we have ever before seen or known.

Consequently, it is through our trials and afflictions that God gives us fresh revelations of Himself. Like Jacob, we must cross “the ford of the Jabbok” (Genesis 32:22) if we are ever to arrive at Peniel, where he wrestled with the Lord, was blessed by Him, and could say, “I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared” (Genesis 32:30).

Make this story your own, dear captive, and God will give you “songs in the night” (Job 35:10) and will turn your “midnight into dawn” (Amos 5:8). NATHANIEL WILLIAM TAYLOR

Submission to God’s divine will is the softest pillow on which to rest.

It filled the room, and it filled my life,

With a glory of source unseen;

It made me calm in the midst of strife,

And in winter my heart was green.

And the birds of promise sang on the tree

When the storm was breaking on land and sea.