Octavius Winslow

“My times are in thy hand.” —Psalm 31:15

Beloved, God has placed us in a school in which He is teaching us to lay our blind reason at His feet, to cease from our own wisdom and guidance, and lean upon and confide in Him as children with a parent. The goodness of God to us, combined with a jealous regard to His own glory, constrains Him to conceal the path along which He conducts us. His promise is, “And I will bring the blind by a way that they knew not; I will lead them in paths that they have not known: I will make darkness light before them, and crooked things straight. These things will I do unto them, and not forsake them” (Isa 42:16)…Dear child of God, your afflictions, your trials, your crosses, your losses, your sorrows—all—all are in your heavenly Father’s hand. They cannot come until sent by Him. Bow that stricken heart, yield that tempest-tossed soul to His sovereign disposal, to His calm, righteous sway, in the submissive spirit and language of your suffering Savior, “Not my will, but thine, be done (Luk 22:42)! My times of sadness and of grief are in Thy hand.”

Times of soul- Times of soul-distress, spiritual darkness, and conflict are in distress, spiritual darkness, and conflict are in His hand. Many such are there in the experience of the true saints of God. Many the hard-fought battle, the fiery dart, the desperate wound, the momentary defeat in the Christian’s life…But it is in the Lord’s hand. No spiritual cloud shades, no mental distress depresses, no fiery dart is launched that is not by Him permitted, and for which there is not a provision by Him arranged. There is nothing that the Lord has taken more entirely and exclusively into His keeping than the redeemed, sanctified souls of His people. All their interests for eternity are exclusively in His hand. In the infinite fullness of Jesus, in the inexhaustible supply of the covenant,⁹⁷ in the exceeding great and precious promises of His Word, He has anticipated every spiritual exigency⁹⁸ of the believer. How precious is your soul to Him Who bore all its sins, Who exhausted all its curse, Who travailed for it in ignominy⁹⁹ and suffering, and Who ransomed it with His own most precious blood. Guarded, also, by His indwelling Spirit is His kingdom of righteousness, joy, and peace within you. Oh, endeavor to realize that, whatever be your mental exercises, spiritual conflicts, doubts and fears, your “times” of soul despondency are in the Lord’s hand.

Lodged there, safe are your spiritual interests. “All His saints are in His hand” (cf. Deu 33:3). And He to Whose care you have confided your redeemed soul has pledged Himself for its eternal security. Of His own sheep He says, “I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My Father, who gave them to me, is greater than all: and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand” (Joh 10:28-29). With like precious faith and humble assurance, you are privileged to exclaim with Paul, “I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day” (2Ti 1:12).

Ah! As soon shall Christ Himself perish, as one bought with His blood. No member of His body, insignificant though it may be, shall be dissevered.¹⁰⁰ No temple of the Holy Spirit, frail and imperfect though it is, shall be destroyed. Not a soul to whom the divine image has been restored and the divine nature has been imparted, upon whose heart the name of Jesus has been carved, shall be involved in the final and eternal destruction of the wicked. Nothing shall perish but the earthly and the sensual. Not one grain of precious faith shall be lost, not one spark of divine light shall be extinguished, not one pulsation of spiritual life shall die!

Oh, think of this, you who have fled all sinful and trembling to Jesus, you who cling to Him…as the ivy to the oak: never shall you lose that hold of faith you have on Christ, and never will Christ lose that hold of love He has on you. You and Jesus are one, indivisibly and eternally one. Nothing shall separate you from His love, nor sever you from His care, nor exclude you from His sympathy, nor banish you from His heaven of eternal blessedness. You are in Christ, the subject of His grace; and Christ is in you, the hope of glory (Col 1:27). All your cares are Christ’s care, all your sorrows are Christ’s sorrow, all your need is Christ’s supply, all your sicknesses are Christ’s cure, all your crosses are Christ’s burden. Your life—temporal, spiritual, eternal—is “hid with Christ in God” (Col 3:3). Oh, the unutterable blessings that spring from a vital union with the Lord Jesus! The believer can exultingly say, “Christ and I are one! One in nature, one in affection, one in sympathy, one in fellowship, and one through the countless ages of eternity! The life I live is a life of faith in Him (Gal 2:20). I fly to Him in the confidence of a loving friend, in the simplicity of a little child, and I reveal to Him my secret sorrow. I confess to Him my hidden sin. I acknowledge my heart backsliding. I make known to Him my needs, my sufferings, my fears. I tell Him how chilled my affection is, how reserved my obedience is, how imperfect my service is—and yet how I long to love Him more ardently, to follow Him more closely, to serve Him more devotedly, to be more wholly and holily His. And how does He meet me? With a hearkening ear, with a beaming eye, with a gracious word, with an outstretched hand with benignity¹⁰¹ and gentleness all like Himself.” Confide, then, dear reader, your spiritual and deathless interests in the Lord’s hand…

To those who, depressed with a painful foreboding at their final dissolution,¹⁰² are all their lifetime subject to bondage, how consolatory¹⁰³ is the reflection that the time of the believer’s death is peculiarly in the Lord’s hand. It is solemnly true that there is a “time to die” (Ecc 3:2). Ah! Affecting thought—“a time to die!”—a time when this mortal conflict will be over; when this heart will cease to feel, alike insensible to joy or sorrow; when this head will ache and these eyes will weep no more! [It will be the] best and holiest of all: a time “when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality” (1Co 15:54), and “we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is” (1Jo 3:2)…If this be so, then, O Christian, why this anxious, trembling fear? Your time of death, with all its attendant circumstances, is in the Lord’s hand. All is appointed and arranged by Him Who loves you and Who redeemed you—infinite goodness, wisdom, and faithfulness consulting your highest happiness in each circumstance of your departure. The final sickness cannot come, the “last enemy” cannot strike until He bids it. All is in His hand. Then calmly, confidingly leave life’s closing scene with Him. You cannot die away from Jesus. Whether your spirit wings its flight at home or abroad, amid strangers or friends, by a lingering process or by a sudden stroke, in brightness or in gloom, Jesus will be with you! Upheld by His grace and cheered with His presence, you shall triumphantly exclaim, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me” (Psa 23:4), bearing your dying testimony to the faithfulness of God and the preciousness of His promises. “My time to die is in your hand, O Lord, and there I calmly leave it”…In whose hand are the believer’s times? In a Father’s hand. Be those times what they may, times of trial, times of temptation, times of suffering, times of peril, times of sunshine or of gloom, of life or death—they are in a Parent’s hand. Is your present path lonely and dreary? Has the Lord seen fit to recall some fond blessing, to deny some earnest request, or painfully to discipline your heart? All this springs from a Father’s love as fully as though He had unlocked His treasury and poured its costliest gifts at your feet…

In a Redeemer’s hand, also, are our times. That same Redeemer Who carried our sorrows in His heart, our curse and transgressions on His soul, our cross on His shoulder, Who died, Who rose again, Who lives and intercedes for us, and Who will gather all His ransomed around Him in glory is your guardian and your guide. Can you not cheerfully confide all your earthly concerns, all your spiritual interests to His keeping and control? “Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you” (1Pe 5:7)? “Oh, yes!” faith replies, “in that hand that still bears in its palm the print of the nail are all my times. ‘I will trust, and not be afraid’ (Isa 12:2).”

Unconverted reader do you ask, “In whose hand are my times?” I answer, “In that Infinite Sovereign’s, ‘times?” the God in whose hand thy breath is, and whose are all thy ways’ (Dan 5:23).” I confront you… with this solemn truth: Your times are in God’s hand. In Him you live, move, and have your being (see Act 17:28). You cannot be independent of God for a single breath, a single thought, or a single step. From His government you cannot break, from His eye you cannot hide, from His power you cannot flee. He holds you responsible for all your endowments, acquirements, and doings, and before long will say to you, “give an account of thy stewardship” (Luk 17:2)…Oh, that this year, your stubborn will, after so long a resistance; your rebellious heart, after its years of closing and hardening against a [calling] Savior, may be sweetly constrained to bow to the despised Gospel of Christ, born of the Spirit, a child of God, an heir of happiness that the revolution of time and the ages of eternity shall never terminate.

Ah! Of how many who read these pages may the decree have already gone forth: “Thus saith the LORD… this year thou shalt die” (Jer 28:16)! Oh, dismal sentence to those who have no union with the Lord Jesus! Dear reader, are you preparing and resolving to spend this year as all the previous years of your life have been spent? What! In hating God, in abusing His mercies, in despising His Son, in neglecting His salvation, in hardening your heart in sin, in living for the world and to yourself, and in treasuring up wrath against the day of wrath? Is such a life worthy of your being? Can you bend the knee…and pray, “Great Author of my being! Father of all my mercies! Righteous Judge of the world! Grant me another year of rebellion and impiety, more time to waste, more mercies to abuse, more means of grace to neglect, more property to squander, more influence to oppose and fight against You”?

You shudder at the thought! You could not for your life breathe such a prayer. Yet…in an unconverted state, are not your thoughts, temper, and resolves always far more expressive than words, insulting God with the spirit of a petition the language of which you dare not utter? Oh, that, gently, persuasively drawn by the Holy Spirit, you may now betake yourself to the Lord Jesus as a self-destroyed, yet humble, repentant sinner. Oh, that this may be the happy hour of your…unreserved surrender to the Lord to be His child, His servant forever!

True happiness, joy, and peace will ever be strangers to your heart until it tastes the love of the Savior. Nor will you be able to give yourself to the high and noble duties of real life or to contemplate death with calmness and the eternity that stretches beyond it with hope, until you are reconciled to God through the “one mediator¹⁰⁴ between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1Ti 2:5)…The atoning work is finished, the great salvation is purchased, the mighty debt is paid, all perfected and secured by the blood of God’s incarnate Son. And now it is His good pleasure and delight to confer this priceless, precious boon¹⁰⁵ upon everyone who is of a “contrite and humble spirit” (Isa 57:15) as an act of most free favor, however vile, undeserving, and poor the recipient might be. “By grace ye are saved” (Eph 2:5). “Therefore it is of faith, that it might be by grace” (Rom 4:16). Before the majesty and splendor of this precious truth, all human glory must fade, all human pride must fall…That proud, rebellious, selfrighteous heart of yours must be laid low in the dust. Enfold¹⁰⁶ yourself believingly in the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be accepted…“Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom 3:24). It is written, “Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight” (Rom 3:20). By the same inspiration, it is also written, “But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness” (Rom 4:5). Then, from this act of most free justification¹⁰⁷ follows this precious, holy result: “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with GOD through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom 5:1). Oh, then, by all the deathless interests that are at stake, by the desire for a holy life, a happy death, and a glorious immortality, cease from yourself ! Relinquish all reliance upon sacraments, religious duties, and charitable works. Under a spiritual, deep conviction of the desperate sinfulness of your fallen and corrupt nature—the plague of your own heart (1Ki 8:38), your condemnation by the Law, your entire inability to save yourself, and your utter unpreparedness to stand before the holy Lord God—flee to Christ! Avail yourself of the great salvation that He has effectually wrought and most freely bestows.

What will be your reception by the Savior? Does it admit of a doubt? Oh, no! Not one. He came into the world to save sinners and He will save you. His compassion inclines Him to save sinners; His power enables Him to save sinners; His promise binds Him to save sinners. “This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” (1Ti 1:15)…It is not great faith, nor deep experience, nor extensive knowledge that are required. The dimmest eye that ever looked to Christ, the feeblest hand that ever took hold of Christ, the most trembling step that ever traveled to Christ has in it present salvation, has in it life eternal. The smallest measure of real faith will take the soul to heaven…Jesus suffered to the uttermost, therefore He is able to “save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him” (Heb 7:25).

Let us, in conclusion, trace the practical influence that this truth should exert upon our minds…Let this precious truth, “My times are in your hand,” divest your mind of all needless, anxious care for the present or the future. Exercising simple faith in God…“Be content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee” (Heb 13:5). Learn to be content with your present lot, with God’s dealings with and His disposal of you. You are just where His providence has, in its [mysterious] but all-wise and righteous decision, placed you. It may be a painful, irksome, trying position, but it is right. Oh, yes! It is right! Only aim to glorify Him in it. Wherever you are placed, God has a work for you to do, a purpose through you to be accomplished, in which He blends your happiness with His glory. And when you have learned the lessons of His love, He will transfer you to another and a wider sphere…

Strive, then [by faith], to live a life of daily dependence upon God. Oh, it is a sweet and holy life! pendence upon God. It saves from many a desponding feeling, from many a corroding care, from many an anxious thought, from many a sleepless night, from many a tearful eye, and from many an imprudent and sinful scheme…Oh, yes! beloved reader, thank God that your times, your interests, your salvation, are all out of your hands, and out of the hands of all creatures, supremely and safely in His. Forward in the path of duty, of labor, and of suffering. Aim to resemble Christ more closely in your disposition, your spirit, your whole life. Soon will it be said, “The Master is come, and calleth for thee” (Joh 11:28)…Patient in endurance, submissive in suffering, content with God’s allotment, zealous, prayerful, and watchful—be found standing in “thy lot at the end of the days” (Dan 12:13). Trust God implicitly for the future. No sorrow comes but shall open some sweet spring of comfort…No affliction befalls but shall be attended with the Savior’s tenderest sympathy…Let your constant prayer be “Hold thou me up, and I shall be safe” (Psa 119:17). Let your daily precept be “Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you” (1Pe 5:7). And then leave God to fulfill, as most faithfully He will, His own gracious, precious promise, “As thy days, so shall thy strength be” (Deu 33:25). Thus walking with God through this valley of tears until you exchange sorrow for joy, suffering for ease, sin for purity, labor for rest, conflict for victory, and all earth’s checkered,¹⁰⁸ gloomy scenes for the changeless, cloudless happiness and glory of heaven.

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97. covenant – a reference to the Covenant of Grace (see p.15, Note 8).
98. exigency – urgent need; unforeseen crisis.
99. ignominy – public shame or disgrace.
100. dissevered – separated.
101. benignity – kindness.
102. foreboding…dissolution – fearfully anticipating their death.
103. consolatory – comforting.
104. mediator – a go-between. It pleased God in His eternal purpose, to choose and ordain the Lord Jesus His only begotten Son, according to the covenant made between them both, to be the Mediator between God and man; the Prophet, Priest and King; Head and Savior of His Church, the heir of all things, and judge of the world: unto Whom He did from all eternity give a people to be His seed, and to be by Him in time redeemed, called, justified, sanctified, and glorified. (1689 London Baptist Confession 8.1)
105. boon – a thing freely and graciously bestowed.
106. enfold – wrap up, as with a garment.
107. justification – Justification is an act of God’s free grace, wherein He pardons all our sins and accepts us as righteous in His sight only for the righteousness of Christ, imputed to us and received by faith alone. (Spurgeon’s Catechism, Q. 32)
108. checkered – constantly changing.

From My Times in God’s Hand, New York: A.D.F. Randolph, 1868.

Octavius Winslow (1808-1878): Nonconformist pastor, ordained 1833 in New York, but later moved to England; born in London, England.

Courtesy of Chapel Library