What a blessing to come to the end of ourselves, to rest in His every provision and in His loving care.

“…We may learn for our use, first, to admire this wisdom and goodness of God who will thus have us know and experientially feel what we are—even creatures, poor, beggarly, indigent, miserable, and helpless as to ourselves. We know not, neither do we consider, what goodness lies wrapped up in our necessities, distresses, miseries, wants and hardships. But we are ready to complain and quarrel with the Most High.

We consider not how the Lord is thereby driving us to our thrift, giving us new proofs and documents of our being indigent creatures and new convictions of the necessity of constant living in dependence on the Lord our maker, and of hanging on Him and waiting at His door for constant supplies of all. And oh, what a blessed life is this to be under this happy necessity of depending for all our wants, small and great, on God! What a rich trade is this, that we are made to drive with heaven and the all-sufficient and gracious heavenly benefactor, the God of the whole earth!

How well might Paul on this account glory in his infirmities, seeing thereby he had so often occasion to experience that the power of Christ did rest on him (2 Cor. 12:9), and when he found that the strength of God was made perfect in his weakness? How should we, on this account, be satisfied with our necessities and infirmities, that we are driven thereby out of ourselves, as convinced of nothing but poverty, emptiness, and misery within us, and made to turn our course for supply heavenward and to look up thither, and thence receive new and fresh supplies of all our wants, new and fresh experiences of God’s goodness, kindness, tenderness, faithfulness, and all-sufficient fullness, and also new confirmations of an absolute necessity of placing our confidence and hope only in God and not in ourselves!”

–John Brown of Wamphray, Godly Prayer and Its Answers. Soli Deo Gloria, 2016, p. 19.