"Your afflictions may only prove that you are more immediately under the Father's hand. There is no time that the patient is such an object of tender interest to the surgeon, as when he is bleeding beneath his knife. So you may be sure if you are suffering from the hand of a reconciled God, that His eye is all the more bent on you."
Then he says in another place...
"[Affliction is sometimes] sent for the conversion of the soul. Sometimes in health the Word does not touch the heart. The world is all. Its gaieties, its pleasures, its admiration, captivate your mind. God sometimes draws you aside into a sickbed, and shows you the sin of your heart, the vanity of worldly pleasures and drives the soul to seek a sure resting-place for eternity in Christ. O happy sickness that draws the soul to Jesus (Job 33, Psalm 107)!"
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True, Brad (just as long as we're careful not to wear our suffering as a Badge of Honor ;o) Though, it seems easier (safer?) to resolve to count my various trials as joy when they DO come, rather than to beg God to bring them on (after all, He promises enough trouble to His followers...:o) Psalm 119:75 became my mantra during one particularly difficult trial of my own:
ReplyDelete"I know, O LORD, that your rules are righteous, and that in faithfulness you have afflicted me." I can bear suffering more thankfully when I remember that my Father's faithfulness is bound up in His willingness to train me through affliction (esp in light of verse 67).
Great thoughts Jen. I think a good way to say this is: "God glorify yourself in me, whatever it takes." I don't see Biblically where the idea of praying for suffering is encouraged/normative. Christians aren't masochists. We don't go looking for pain, but be don't shy away from it. We pray for the glory of God and the advance of the Gospel, whatever the cost to us personally.
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