Octavius Winslow

“Lord, hear my voice; let thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications.” [Psalm 130:2] 

Sinking, suffering saint, learn the secret of your support! “He prayed more earnestly.” “Who in the days of His flesh, when He offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto Him that was able to save Him from death, and was heard in that He feared.” Go you and do likewise. Pray- pray- PRAY! Out of the depths of your difficulty, your need, your sorrow, cry mightily unto God. There is no ‘depth’ so profound, no darkness so dense, no need so pressing, or perplexity so great, but from it you may cry unto God, the Lord inclining His ear to the softest, faintest breathing of your soul. “For this shall every one that is godly pray unto you in a time when you may be found: surely in the floods of great waters they shall not come near unto him.” Cries out of the depths of soul-distress have a peculiar eloquence and an irresistible success with God just as the plaintive wail of a sick and suffering child reaches and penetrates a parent’s heart more quickly and more deeply than all others. It is a beautiful thought embodied in the Psalmist’s prayer: “My soul hangs upon God. ”
  Look for a moment at the Object upon which the believing, sinking soul thus hangs. It is upon DEITY. The world around is hanging upon every object but God. Some are hanging upon self, some upon their wealth- some upon their intellectual powers-some upon their bodily strength- some upon their long life- some upon the creature- some upon their own righteousness; all are hanging upon some object below Christ and God. How frail and fatal the support! Soon the prop bends- the stirrup breaks- the fulcrum yields- the sands glide away- and great is the fall of him who suspended upon such created and fragile support his happiness in this life, and his hope of the life that is to come.
  But, the believing soul, though a desponding and sinking soul, hangs upon GOD. Listen to the language of David: “O God, you are my God; early will I seek you: my soul thirsts for you, my flesh longs for you in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is.” Again: “Whom have I in heaven but You? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside You.” This is the support of every gracious soul; and he who hangs not upon this divine support, hangs upon air, hangs upon nothing.
  Listen to Jehoshaphat’s prayer in his distress, when the mighty hosts of the Ammonites came against him to battle. See how he hung upon God! “O our God, will you not judge them? for we have no might against this great company that comes against us; neither know we what to do: our eyes are upon You. ” And the Lord delivered them into his hand that day, and all that he did was to stand still and see the salvation of the Lord. And thus was it with Asa. Oppressed by a powerful enemy, too strong for his scanty forces, he thus hung upon God in his extremity. “Lord, it is nothing with you to help, whether with many, or with those who have no power.” And what a “nail in a sure place” is the Lord Jesus Christ, the true, spiritual Eliakim, upon whom the soul may hang its sins, and sorrows, and hope of glory. “I will fasten him,” says the Father, “as a nail in a sure place. . . And they shall hang upon him all the glory of his father’s house …. all the vessels.”

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A well known quote of William Gouge, is this one:”When I look upon myself, I see nothing but emptiness and weakness; but when I look upon Christ, I see nothing but fulness and sufficiency.” — William Gouge

Octavius Winslow in his Soul Depths Soul Heights, also speaks to this subject:

Christ alone is our Redeemer, His righteousness our justification, His blood our pardon, His merits our standing before God; and it is looking to Him in faith, to His mediation, merits, and fullness, that we arrive at any degree of spiritual evidence, fruitfulness, and assurance. Turning within yourself for marks and signs of grace, and finding instead nothing but sin, and darkness, and change, how are you to become a firm believer and a joyful Christian? Looking to your experience, your fitful frames and feelings, and not by faith to Christ, the wind is not more capricious, nor the tide more changeful, than will be your peace and comfort, your holiness and hope.
 But, try the experiment of looking away from yourself to Jesus. Pass by even the cross, the atonement, the gospel, and the sacrament, and rest not until you find yourself face to face, heart to heart, with a PERSONAL, living, loving SAVIOR, -the gracious words breathing in sweetest cadence from His lips- Oh listen to their music, you sin-disturbed, soul-desponding ones!– “Come unto ME, all you that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you REST.” “Look unto ME, all the ends of the earth, and be saved: for I am God, and there is none else.” “I am the door;” “I am the bread of life.” In all these gracious invitations we hear the voice of a Personal- “I AM” -of a Personal Savior.
 Cease, then, to deal with dogmas, feelings and experience, however elevated or depressed, and behold the Lamb of God, contemplate His Person, study His work, feast upon His word, revel in His fulness, bathe in the sea of His love, and let Him be all in all to your soul. Thus turning the eye from yourself and dealing only with the Person of Jesus, the cloud will uplift from your mind, “the winter will depart, and the flowers appear, the time of the singing of birds will come, and the voice of the turtle be heard in the land;” and your soul, thus bursting from its icy fetters, its wintry sterility and gloom, into the beauty and fragrance of its new spring-life of joy, will be “Like the sweet south wind, that breathes upon a bank of violets, Stealing and giving odors.” 

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