This week's
"thought" comes to you from one of my regular (and favorite)
contributors -- Charles
Spurgeon. It is
found in one of the best daily devotionals I've ever purchased -- Beside Still Waters,
Words of Comfort for the Soul.
His words are based on James 1:3 where we
read, "Consider it pure joy,
brethren, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the
testing of your faith produces perseverance."
If you happen to be going
through one of those times of trial or testing right now, I pray
Spurgeon's words might bring new courage and spiritual resolve to your
heart. Enjoy.
The Testing of Your Faith
"The safest part of a
Christian's life is during a trial. How we pray in adversity! At
those times we cannot live without prayer. We carry our burden to the
mercy seat again and again.
When we are depressed, we
read our Bibles. We do not care for deceiving light literature. We want the
solid promise, the strong meat of God's kingdom.
In adversity we
listen. We do not care for flowers and fine bits of rhetoric. We want the
Word. We want the naked doctrine. We want Christ. We cannot be fed on whims and
fancies now. We care less about theological speculation and ecclesiastical
authority. We want to know something about the eternal love, everlasting
faithfulness, and the dealings of the Lord of hosts with the souls of His
people. We walk lightly in the world and hold it with a loose grip because in
the pain of trials it loses its attraction. I greatly question if we ever grow
in grace unless we are in the furnace.
This is the way it should
be: the joys and blessings that God gives in this life should make us increase
in grace and gratitude. These joys should be sufficient motivation for the
highest form of consecration. As a rule, however, most of us are only driven
closer to Christ in a storm. There are blessed and favored exceptions, but most
of us need the rod of correction. We do not seem to learn obedience except
through the Lord's chastening."
Spurgeon's take on
suffering grates against some schools of modern theology, yet his
words are echoed by many wise believers of the past. Flannery O'Connor
said it well when she wrote: "One
of the tendencies of our age is to use children's suffering to discredit the
goodness of God... In this popular pity we mark our gain in sensibility and our
loss in vision. If other ages felt less, they saw more."
She's right. In a culture
where people run on feelings far more than they should, they become
short-sighted and find it hard (or nearly impossible) to look beyond
their present sufferings and view them in light of God's good and eternal
purposes.
They lose hold, so to speak, of the interpretive lens through which one must gaze in order to rightly understand many portions of Scripture and countless aspects of our earthly sojourn.
They lose hold, so to speak, of the interpretive lens through which one must gaze in order to rightly understand many portions of Scripture and countless aspects of our earthly sojourn.
"When I was in
distress," says the psalmist, "I sought the Lord; at night I stretched
out untiring hands..."
(Ps. 77:2). His agony or distress drove him to pursue God with an
untiring earnestness. Likewise, Psalm 119:67 reads: "Before I was afflicted I went astray, but
now I obey your word." Affliction brought about obedience.
That's why he can follow
that statement up with these words in v. 72: "It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn your
decrees." Certain portions of
God's Word and His sovereign decrees in providence cannot be understood apart
from the experience of suffering. Struggle and suffering are
necessary ingredients in the soil from which certain spiritual fruits
grow, like patience, empathy, compassion, and so forth. Some of the most
godly people are those who have suffered much.
St. John of the Cross (1578) wrote: "Suffering out of love for God is better than working
miracles." Martin Luther (1535)
wrote: "God builds out of
nothing. Therefore, until a man is nothing, God can make nothing out of
him." Henri Amiel (1882)
wrote: "Suffering was a curse
from which man fled, now it becomes a purification of the soul, a sacred trial
sent by Eternal Love, a divine dispensation meant to sanctify and ennoble us,
an acceptable aid to faith, a strange initiation into happiness." And Anne Lindbergh
(1973) adds this helpful reminder: "I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone
taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must
be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness, and the willingness
to remain vulnerable."
I would add to her
words those of Peter Abelard (1125)
who encouraged us not to grow bitter toward God under suffering, but see by
faith that we, "may not doubt that
these things (our sufferings) have happened to us by divine dispensation." As with Job, no sufferings can
come our way lest they pass through the providential filter of
the Sovereign One who loves His people with such
a profound love it is beyond the limits of the human mind
to fully search it out or understand its unfathomable depths.
In His Service, Pastor Jeff
