Devotional 29: Of Providence: Every believer who has walked with God for any length of time has known it: a se

The Confession Read

The most wise, righteous, and gracious God doth oftentimes leave, for a season, his own children to manifold temptations, and the corruption of their own hearts, to chastise them for their former sins, or to discover unto them the hidden strength of corruption and deceitfulness of their hearts, that they may be humbled; and, to raise them to a more close and constant dependence for their support upon himself, and to make them more watchful against all future occasions of sin, and for sundry other just and holy ends.

— Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 5, Section 5

Introduction

Every believer who has walked with God for any length of time has known it: a season when the heavens feel like brass overhead, when prayer seems to bounce off a closed door, and when sins we thought long dead stir in their graves with startling vigour. The felt presence of God withdraws. Temptations multiply. And the corruption of the heart, that hidden enemy we prefer not to name, shows itself to have been merely sleeping, not slain. In such seasons the soul cries out with the Psalmist, "Why standest thou afar off, O LORD? why hidest thou thyself in times of trouble?" Psalm 10:1 The question that rises from the depths of such a season is one that has troubled the saints in every age: If God loves me, why has He left me to this? Why does the Father who spared not His own Son sometimes seem to spare His children none of the comfort of His nearness? The Westminster Divines answer this question with a pastoral tenderness that has comforted the church for nearly four centuries. Their answer begins not with an explanation but with a declaration of character: the God who leaves His children is "most wise, righteous, and gracious." The withdrawal is not the act of an indifferent sovereign or an exasperated judge. It is the measured, purposeful pedagogy of a Father who loves His children too wisely to leave them in a condition that would destroy them. This section of the Confession, perhaps more than any other in the chapter on providence, descends from the grand cosmic theatre of God's governance into the intimate chambers of His dealings with His own beloved children. Here we are not asking how God governs kings and nations, comets and sparrows. We are asking why He sometimes seems to withdraw His hand from the very souls He has purchased with the blood of His Son. And the answer the Divines give, drawn from the whole counsel of Scripture, is this: He does it for their eternal good. The season of darkness serves purposes so holy and so loving that, could we see them from the vantage of heaven, we would not wish a single hour of it undone.

Scripture Foundation

The doctrine before us rests upon the consistent testimony of Holy Scripture: not a single proof text but an entire narrative pattern in which God's children are led into darkness, not because He has forgotten them, but precisely because He is perfecting His work in them. The great wilderness narrative sets the pattern. In Deuteronomy 8:2-3, Moses interprets the forty years for a new generation: "And thou shalt remember all the way which the LORD thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments, or no. And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD doth man live." The subject of every verb repays attention: "the LORD thy God led thee." Israel's wilderness was no accident. The same God who parted the Red Sea and drowned Pharaoh's chariots "suffered thee to hunger." He arranged the deprivation. And why? "To humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart." The hunger was diagnostic before it was didactic. God already knew what was in their hearts — but Israel did not. The comfortable years in Egypt had not revealed the depths of their unbelief and ingratitude. The wilderness drew those corruptions to the surface, where they could be confronted and confessed. The ultimate purpose appears in the final clause: "that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD." The hunger was the classroom in which Israel learned that their life depended not upon Egyptian provision but upon the direct, supernatural, daily word of their God. Manna — food they had never seen and could not produce — taught a dependence they would never have learned in the land of plenty. In Deuteronomy 8:16 Moses completes the thought: God fed them with manna "that he might humble thee, and that he might prove thee, to do thee good at thy latter end." The humbling was not punitive for its own sake; it was preparatory and ultimately benevolent. The corporate experience of Israel gives way to the individual testimony of an apostle. In 2 Corinthians 12:7-9, Paul writes with striking candour about his own season of humbling: "And lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure. For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me. And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness." Paul had received revelations so extraordinary — caught up into the third heaven — that he was in mortal danger of spiritual pride. The Greek term skolops (σκόλοψ), translated "thorn," properly denotes a sharpened stake. Paul identifies it as a messenger of Satan, yet the passive construction — "there was given to me" — reveals the divine Agent behind the affliction. What Satan intended for Paul's destruction, God gave for Paul's preservation. When Paul finally receives his answer, it is not the removal he had thrice requested but the sufficiency of grace: "My grace is sufficient for thee." The Greek verb teleitai (τελεῖται), "made perfect," means to reach its appointed end, its full expression. Christ's power achieves its consummate display precisely in Paul's weakness. This is the logic of the wilderness and of every season when God seems to leave His children to themselves: He would rather have us weak and clinging to His strength than strong and independent in our own. The sobering illustration of this doctrine appears in the Gospels. In Luke 22:31-32, our Lord speaks words that every believer who has fallen grievously should write upon the tablet of their heart: "And the Lord said, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: but I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren." Satan desired to sift Peter: to shake him so violently that whatever was genuine would be separated from whatever was chaff, and in the shaking Peter himself would be destroyed. The sovereign architecture of these verses repays attention. Satan had a desire; Christ had a prayer. And Christ's prayer prevailed. "I have prayed for thee" — the pronoun is singular, personal, direct. The Son of God interceded specifically for Simon Peter, and the content of His prayer was not that Peter would be spared the sifting but that in the sifting his faith would not finally fail. More than that: Christ already saw the end from the beginning. "When thou art converted" — not if but when. The fall was certain, but the restoration was more certain still. And the purpose was that Peter, once restored, would "strengthen thy brethren." Through his own experience of humiliation and recovery, Peter would become an instrument for the strengthening of others. The fall that shamed him became the forge in which an apostle was tempered. The author of Hebrews gathers all these narratives into a single theological framework. In Hebrews 12:5-7, 10-11, he writes: "My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him: for whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness. Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby." The Greek word at the heart of this passage is paideia (παιδεία), which the Authorized Version renders "chastening" but which carries a far richer range of meaning — instruction, training, nurture, the entire process by which a child is formed into maturity. When an earthly father disciplines his son, that discipline may be imperfect, even self-interested — "after their own pleasure." But the heavenly Father disciplines "for our profit," with the specific end "that we might be partakers of his holiness." The strokes of His rod are lessons in His school, and the curriculum is nothing less than conformity to the image of His Son. Painful in the present — "no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous" — the Apostle is honest about the cost. But he insists that afterward, for those who are exercised by it, the discipline yields "the peaceable fruit of righteousness." The season of darkness is not the end of the story. Here is a fourfold cord of testimony, drawn from the Law, the Epistles, the Gospels, and the General Epistles, that cannot be broken. God leads His children into the wilderness to humble them and prove them. He gives thorns to prevent worse evils. He permits sifting that produces strengthened brethren. And in it all, He deals with us as sons — chastening us not in wrath but in love, that we might share His holiness.

What the Divines Meant

The Westminster Divines were not writing abstract theology when they framed this section. They were shepherds — many of them pastors of congregations — and they knew the agonies of conscience that afflict believers who fall into sin. They had sat beside men and women who wept over relapses, who doubted their election because of recurring corruptions, who could not reconcile their grievous falls with the doctrine of God's preserving grace. Section 5 is their pastoral answer to the trembling saint. The opening phrase is carefully measured and each adjective answers a particular objection: "The most wise, righteous, and gracious God." He is wise — therefore His purposes, though hidden from us in the moment, are ordered by perfect intelligence toward the best possible ends. When we cannot trace His hand, we may trust His wisdom. He is righteous — therefore the discipline He administers to His children is never disproportionate, never capricious, never unjust. He is gracious — therefore even His withdrawals are acts of favour, not of wrath. The God who leaves His children for a season is not an angry Judge but a loving Father who knows that some lessons can only be learned in the dark. The text says He "doth oftentimes leave, for a season, his own children." Several crucial qualifications attend this statement. First, the subjects are "his own children" — those united to Christ by faith, justified, adopted, and indwelt by the Holy Spirit. This doctrine does not describe God's dealings with the reprobate. If you are outside of Christ, your sin is not a fatherly chastisement; it is a step toward judgment, and every step is a summons to flee to the Saviour while there is yet time. But if you are in Christ, your falls, however grievous, fall within the circle of paternal discipline, and the same hand that wounds will bind up. Second, the leaving is "for a season." It is not permanent. God never finally abandons His children. The withdrawal is measured, bounded, and temporary. A season has a beginning and an end, and though we cannot see the end from the middle, the God who appointed the season's beginning has also appointed its close. As Calvin observed, God "so withdraws His grace for a time that He does not wholly forsake nor cast off His own." Third, it happens "oftentimes." The Christian life is not marked by a single crisis after which one walks in uninterrupted triumph. It is marked by repeated cycles of humbling and restoration, fall and recovery: not because God's grace is insufficient but because our remaining corruption is deep and our need for dependence is lifelong. The Confession then enumerates the ends for which God permits these seasons, and here the pastoral genius of the Divines is evident. They identify five specific purposes, followed by an open acknowledgment that there are "sundry other just and holy ends" beyond what they have named: a humility that marks true theology. The first purpose is chastisement: "to chastise them for their former sins." When a child of God grows careless with sin — when prayer grows cold, the Word grows dull, and the conscience becomes calloused — God sometimes permits a fall to awaken the sleeper. The pain of the fall becomes the instrument by which the soul is recalled to its first love. As the Psalmist discovered, "Before I was afflicted I went astray: but now have I kept thy word" Psalm 119:67. The storm that drove the ship to harbour was a mercy, though it felt like anything but mercy when the waves were breaking over the bow. The second purpose is discovery: "to discover unto them the hidden strength of corruption and deceitfulness of their hearts." The Divines recognised that remaining sin is not merely a surface blemish but a deep-seated corruption whose strength and subtlety we consistently underestimate. Jeremiah's diagnosis stands over every human heart: "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?" Jeremiah 17:9. God answers that question by allowing circumstances that draw the hidden corruption to the surface: not to shame us unto despair but to show us what we are apart from Him, that we might never trust ourselves again. Here the pruning imagery of John 15 illuminates the divine method. "Every branch in me that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit" John 15:2. The Greek verb kathairō (καθαίρω) means to cleanse, to purge, to prune. The vinedresser prunes the living, fruit-bearing branches precisely because they are bearing fruit. The cutting is not punishment; it is cultivation. So it is with the Father's dealings: He cuts away our self-confidence and hidden pride: not to destroy us but to make us more fruitful. The third purpose follows from the second: "that they may be humbled." The New Testament employs the word tapeinoō (ταπεινόω) — to be brought low, to have one's pride dismantled. The believer who has seen the hidden strength of his own corruption cannot remain proud. The man who thought he would never deny his Lord, who boasted that though all others should stumble he would stand firm — that man, after the cock crowed, "went out, and wept bitterly" Matthew 26:75. He was humbled. And in that humbling he became fit for service in a way he had never been before. The fourth purpose is the sweetest: "to raise them to a more close and constant dependence for their support upon himself." God does not humble us to leave us in the dust. He humbles us that we might take hold of Him with a grip we never had before. The soul that has learned its own weakness clings to Christ as a child clings to its father in a crowd. This closer dependence — "more close and constant" — is a greater good than the untested confidence that preceded the fall. A ship that has weathered a storm knows the strength of its anchor in a way the ship that has only known fair weather never can. The fifth purpose is practical: "to make them more watchful against all future occasions of sin." The burned child dreads the fire. The believer who has tasted the bitterness of a fall learns to avoid the paths that led there. Memory of past failure becomes a sentinel against future temptation. In this way, even our sins are made to serve our sanctification: not by the goodness of the sin itself but by the wise and gracious providence of the God who orders even our falls to our ultimate good. Finally, the Divines acknowledge "sundry other just and holy ends" beyond these five. Some reasons for our seasons of darkness will remain hidden until the day when we know even as we are known. For now, we trust the character of the God who has already given us reasons enough to rest in His wisdom. Behind this language lies a historical context the Divines knew intimately. They were writing against perfectionist claims: the notion that a true believer could attain sinless perfection in this life, or that serious falls proved one was never truly regenerate. The Divines answered with biblical realism: the believer still carries the body of death and may fall into grievous transgressions. But these falls are not evidence of reprobation. They are part of the Father's difficult but loving pedagogy, and the same God who permits the fall has already provided the remedy in the blood of His Son.

Theological Depth

Thomas Goodwin's A Child of Light Walking in Darkness treats the subject of spiritual desertion with pastoral sensitivity born of long experience. Goodwin, whose own ministry was marked by deep sympathy for afflicted consciences, distinguished carefully between the judicial desertion of the reprobate (where God abandons the soul eternally in just judgment) and the paternal desertion of the elect, where God withdraws only the sense of His favour, and that for holy ends. In the latter case, Goodwin writes, God departs "not in anger but in wisdom, and as a Father, to make His children know what they are when He leaves them, and what they have when He returns." Goodwin explores the pastoral application further. He observes that God often withdraws His comforting presence when His children have grown presumptuous: when they have begun to take His grace for granted, as though the warmth of His nearness were something they deserved or could command. The withdrawal is a mercy precisely because it cures the presumption. When the Bridegroom departs, the bride learns to mourn His absence, and in mourning she discovers how precious His presence truly is. As the Song of Songs depicts, the beloved must sometimes seek Him whom her soul loves through the streets of the city, asking the watchmen, "Saw ye him whom my soul loveth?" Song of Solomon 3:3. And Goodwin notes that the seeking itself is a grace: the very desire for Christ's presence is evidence that the Spirit has not abandoned the soul, however dark the season may feel. Owen supplies the theological anatomy of what the Confession calls "the hidden strength of corruption and deceitfulness of their hearts." In his treatise on the mortification of sin, Owen argues that remaining sin is never static: it is always either growing or being mortified. One of the reasons God permits strong corruptions to break out in His children is to reveal the presence of an enemy they thought they had conquered. "He that is little in his own eyes," Owen writes, "will not care how little he is in the eyes of others; but he that is great in his own eyes will not bear to be thought little of by others." The discovery of hidden corruption is the demolition of spiritual pride, and that demolition, however painful, is the necessary prelude to genuine growth. Owen's analysis of the deceitfulness of sin repays careful study. The peculiar danger of indwelling sin is its capacity to remain hidden while active: to operate beneath conscious awareness until some circumstance draws it to the surface. The believer who has never been severely provoked may genuinely believe he has conquered his temper, when in truth his temper has simply never been tested. God sometimes arranges the provocation: not to cause the sin but to reveal it. And what is made visible can be confessed and mortified. Richard Sibbes brings warm tenderness to this doctrine. His Bruised Reed, which has comforted wounded consciences for four centuries, reminds us that Christ deals with fallen believers not as a sergeant dragging a prisoner to judgment but as a shepherd binding up a wounded sheep. "There is more mercy in Christ," Sibbes writes, "than sin in us." When Peter fell, Christ looked upon him (that look that sent him out weeping bitterly) but it was a look that brought him to repentance, not despair. After the resurrection, Christ restored Peter with three questions of love corresponding to the three denials John 21:15-17. The same Christ who permitted the sifting is the Christ who prays in the sifting and restores after the sifting. The bruised reed He will not break, and the smoking flax He will not quench Matthew 12:20. Sibbes further observes that God's gentleness with fallen believers is not softness toward sin. He hates the sin infinitely more than we do. But He has already poured out the full penalty upon His beloved Son. The chastisement He administers is not satisfaction for sin (that was accomplished at Calvary) but medicine for the soul, bitter to the taste but healing in its effect.

Puritan Application

Doctrine that stays in the head and never reaches the heart is like a map studied but never used for a journey. Let us bring the truth of this section home to our own souls, for the Confession was written not to adorn a shelf but to guide a pilgrimage. First, when you fall (and fall you will), do not conclude that you are unregenerate. This is the lie the accuser whispers in the ear of every fallen believer: "See? You were never truly converted. Your faith was always counterfeit." The Confession answers with the balm of Gilead. The very fact that God "doth oftentimes leave his own children to manifold temptations" means that grievous falls and seasons of spiritual declension are not incompatible with genuine sonship. David fell into adultery and murder, yet he was a man after God's own heart. Peter denied his Lord with curses, yet Christ had prayed for him before the fall. Jonah fled from the presence of the Lord, yet he was still God's prophet, and God pursued him into the deep. The mark of a child of God is not that he never falls but that he cannot finally fall away, and that when he falls, he rises again by the grace that will not let him go. If the fall has awakened grief, that grief is evidence of life. The dead feel nothing; the living feel pain. Let your sorrow over sin be to you a sign, however faint, that the Spirit has not abandoned you. Second, learn to read your falls backward. The Confession says God chastises His children "for their former sins." The fall is often not the beginning of the story but the end of a process that began long before: in small compromises, in neglected prayer, in Scripture left unread, in the stilling of conscience's voice. Trace the river of your fall upstream to its source, and you will often find that you had been drifting from God for weeks before the break came. This backward reading is not morbid introspection; it is diagnostic wisdom. Ask yourself honestly: What patterns of neglect preceded this season? What warning signals did I ignore? The answers are not chains to bind you in guilt but signposts to guide you in wisdom. Third, let your humbling produce humiliation that leads to Christ, not despair that leads away from Him. There is a sorrow that works repentance unto salvation and a sorrow of the world that worketh death 2 Corinthians 7:10. The godly sorrow looks at the sin and says, "This is what I am apart from Christ. Lord, have mercy upon me, a sinner." It then looks at Christ and says, "His blood is sufficient even for this." The worldly sorrow looks at the sin and says, "There is no hope for me. I have sinned beyond the reach of grace." That second sorrow, however plausible it may feel in the moment, is a greater sin than the first, for it denies the sufficiency of Christ's atonement and the breadth of the Father's mercy. Sibbes reminds us that God regards the least spark of grace in His children. If you can grieve over your sin, however imperfectly, take that grief as evidence of the Spirit's continuing work and let it drive you to the cross, not away from it. The tax collector who beat his breast and would not lift his eyes to heaven went down to his house justified, while the Pharisee who thanked God for his own righteousness did not Luke 18:13-14. Brokenness that looks to Christ is the posture of acceptance. Fourth, let seasons of withdrawal drive you to a more close and constant dependence upon Christ. Here we reach the heart of the matter: the purpose toward which all the humbling tends. God does not leave us to ourselves so that we might learn self-reliance. He leaves us to ourselves so that, finding ourselves utterly insufficient, we might cling to Him with a desperation we never knew before. The soul that has never been brought low may pray with words, but the soul that has tasted its own bankruptcy prays with the depths. It no longer approaches the throne of grace with casual familiarity but with the urgency of a drowning man reaching for the only hand that can save. Practically, this means that when you find yourself in a season of darkness, you must not stop praying. You may feel nothing when you pray; pray anyway. You may feel that your words bounce off the ceiling; pray anyway. Faith does not require feeling; faith requires its object, and its object is Christ. Cry out with the father of the demon-possessed boy, "Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief" Mark 9:24. Cry out with the Psalmist, "Be not far from me; for trouble is near; for there is none to help" Psalm 22:11. The very act of crying out in the darkness is evidence that faith has not died, however faint its pulse may be. Hold fast to the promises when you cannot feel the Promiser. The Word of God is a surer foundation than the shifting sands of your emotions, and His covenant stands firm when all your feelings crumble. Fifth, let the memory of past falls make you watchful against future occasions of sin. The Confession says one end of these seasons is "to make them more watchful against all future occasions of sin." The recovered man does not walk past the place of his former stumbling with the same careless stride. He knows the danger and avoids it. What circumstances, companionships, times of day, what states of mind have preceded your falls? When the temptation returns, call to mind the bitterness of the last fall. Let the memory of the cock's crow warn you when you feel the impulse to warm your hands at the world's fire. Finally, rest in the character of the God who orders even your falls to holy ends. The Confession opens by naming God as "most wise, righteous, and gracious." Your seasons of darkness are not evidence that God has lost control or ceased to love you. They are evidence that He is at work in ways you cannot yet see, toward ends that are holy and good. The wilderness was not a detour from the promised land; it was the appointed road: the only road that would teach Israel to depend upon their God. The thorn was not an accident of nature; it was a gift of preventing grace. And the sifting of Peter was the crucible in which an apostle was forged. You may not see the purpose now. You may walk in darkness and have no light. But the God who has named Himself your Father, who gave His Son to die for your sins, who has sealed you with His Spirit unto the day of redemption — this God does not waste your pain. He is weaving a pattern you cannot see, but the Weaver is wise and the thread is in hands that were pierced for you. "We know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose" Romans 8:28. If all things, then even the falls you weep over. Even the darkness you cannot penetrate. Even the season when heaven seems brass and the heart seems stone. The God who is for you is working in the darkness, and He will bring you through.

Prayer

O most wise, most righteous, and most gracious God, whose providence ordereth all things, even the falls of Thy children, to holy and loving ends: we bow before Thee in the confession of our weakness. Thou knowest the hidden strength of corruption that dwelleth within us, the deceitfulness of our hearts that we cannot fully know, and the manifold temptations that press upon us from without. We acknowledge that apart from Thy sustaining grace we can do nothing but fall, and that every sin we have ever committed has been our own: the fruit of our own hearts, the choice of our own wills. We dare not charge Thee with our evil, for Thou art light and in Thee is no darkness at all. Yet we bless Thee, O Father, that Thou dost not leave us to ourselves forever, but only for a season and for our eternal good. We thank Thee for the wilderness: for the hunger that taught us that man doth not live by bread alone, for the thorn that kept us from pride, for the sifting that revealed what was in our hearts. Though the night of weeping be long, we trust that joy cometh in the morning, for Thy compassions fail not and Thy faithfulness is great. Humble us, we pray, where pride still lingereth. Discover to us the corruptions that lie hidden beneath the surface of our conscious life, that we might confess them, repent of them, and mortify them by Thy Spirit. Make us more watchful against the occasions of sin, that we might not walk again into the snares from which Thou hast delivered us. Grant us the wisdom to avoid the paths that have led to our falls, and the courage to flee temptation when it presseth near. But above all, O Lord, raise us to a more close and constant dependence upon Thyself. Teach us to lean upon Thee, not upon our own strength. Teach us to cling to Christ, not to our own righteousness. When Thou withdrawest the sense of Thy presence, grant us faith to trust Thy word when we cannot feel Thy hand. When the darkness presseth in and we cannot see Thy face, keep us from despair and cause us to cry out with Job: "Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him" Job 13:15. Let the memory of past mercies sustain us in present trials, and let the promise of future glory give us patience in present sorrows. We rest upon the intercession of our great High Priest, who was tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin, and who ever liveth to make intercession for us. He prayed for Peter before the fall; He prayeth for us now, and His prayer cannot fail. Let His intercession prevail over all the malice of the enemy and all the weakness of our own hearts. And grant, O Lord, that when Thou hast restored us we might strengthen our brethren: that our falls, redeemed by Thy grace, might become the instruments by which others are upheld. For we ask all these mercies in the name of Jesus Christ Thy Son, who humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross, and who now sitteth at Thy right hand, our righteousness and our hope. In His precious name we pray. Amen.