Let Trials Bless

I read this this morning and was encouraged. It's challenging though. I love the part about how grace changes the outcome of those tribulations...our patience instead of our getting annoyed and upset. It's through difficult circumstances that we are refined or perhaps burned up depending on where we are with God. I pray we can look to our tribulations as tools in the hand of our loving Father, who does not want us to continue to be spoiled children, but rather desires us to mature in His ways so He can use us to reach others with His love.
~Rose

Faith's Checkbook by C.H. Spurgeon

Friday September 21, 2007

Let Trials Bless

Knowing that tribulation worketh patience. (Romans 5:3)

This is a promise in essence if not in form. We have need of patience,
and here we see the way of getting it. It is only by enduring that we
learn to endure, even as by swimming men learn to swim. You could not
learn that art on dry land, nor learn patience without trouble. Is it not
worth while to suffer tribulation for the sake of gaining that
beautiful equanimity of mind which quietly acquiesces in all the will of God?

Yet our text sets forth a singular fact, which is not according to
nature but is supernatural. Tribulation in and of itself worketh petulance, unbelief, and rebellion. It is only by the sacred alchemy of grace
that it is made to work in us patience. We do not thresh the wheat to lay
the dust: yet the rail of tribulation does this upon God's floor. We do
not toss a man about in order to give him rest, and yet so the Lord
dealeth with His children. Truly this is not the manner of man but
greatly redounds to the glory of our all-wise God.

Oh, for grace to let my trials bless me! Why should I wish to stay
their gracious operation? Lord, I ask Thee to remove my affliction, but I
beseech Thee ten times more to remove my impatience. Precious Lord
Jesus, with Thy cross engrave the image of Thy patience on my heart.