God's chariot for you

"We have to be brought to the place where all other refuges fail us before we can say "He only." We say, "He and - something else," "He and my experience," or "He and my church relationships," or "He and my Christian work"; and all that comes after the "and" must be taken away from us or must be proved useless before we can come to the "He only." As long as visible chariots are at hand, the soul will not mount into the invisible ones.

Let us be thankful, then, for every trial that will help to destroy our earthly chariots and that will compel us to take refuge in the chariot of God which stands ready and waiting beside us in every event and circumstance of life. We are told that "God rideth upon the heavens"; and if we would ride with Him there, we need to be brought to the end of all riding upon the earth.

Joseph had a revelation of his future triumphs and reigning, but the chariots that carried him there looked to the eye of sense like dreadful Juggernaut cars of failure and defeat. Slavery and imprisonment are strange chariots to take one to a kingdom, and yet by no other way could Joseph have reached his exaltation. And our exaltation to the spiritual throne that awaits us is often reached by similar chariots.

The great point, then, is to have our eyes opened to see in everything that comes to us a "chariot of God," and to learn how to mount into these chariots. We must recognize each thing that comes to us as being really God's chariot for us and must accept it as from Him. He does not command or originate the thing, perhaps; but the moment we put it into His hands, it becomes His, and He at once turns it into a chariot for us. He makes all things, even bad things, work together for good to all those who trust Him. All He needs is to have it entirely committed to Him.

When your trial comes, then, put it right into the will of God and climb into that will as a little child climbs into its mother's arms. The baby carried in the chariot of its mother's arms rides triumphantly through the hardest places and does not even know they are hard. And how much more we, who are carried in the chariot of the "arms of God:!

Get into your chariot, then. Take each thing that is wrong in your lives as God's chariot for you. No matter who the builder of the wrong may be, whether men or devils, by the time it reaches your side it is God's chariot for you and is meant to carry you to a heavenly place of triumph. Shut out all the second causes and find the Lord in it. Say, "Lord, open my eyes that I may see, not the visible enemy, but Thy unseen chariots of deliverance."

- Hannah Whitall Smith, (1832 - 1911)