Trials and Pain<\/p>\n
The devil, things and people being what they are, it is necessary for God to use the hammer, the file and the furnace in His holy work of preparing a saint for true sainthood. It is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until He has hurt him deeply.<\/p>\n
The Root of the Righteous, 157.
\n________________________________________<\/p>\n
Trials and Pain: We May Expect Troubles<\/p>\n
These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In
\nthe world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have
\novercome the world.
\n–John 16:33<\/p>\n
We are all idealists. We picture to ourselves a life on earth
\ncompletely free from every hindrance, a kind of spiritual Utopia
\nwhere we can always control events, where we can move about as
\nfavorites of heaven, adjusting circumstances to suit ourselves.
\nThis we feel would be quite compatible with the life of faith and
\nin keeping with the privileged place we hold as children of God.<\/p>\n
In thinking thus we simply misplace ourselves; we mistake earth for
\nheaven and expect conditions here below which can never be realized
\ntill we reach the better world above. While we live we may expect
\ntroubles, and plenty of them. We are never promised a life without
\nproblems as long as we remain among fallen men….<\/p>\n
What then are we to do about our problems? We must learn to live
\nwith them until such time as God delivers us from them. If we
\ncannot remove them, then we must pray for grace to endure them
\nwithout murmuring. Problems patiently endured will work for our
\nspiritual perfecting. They harm us only when we resist them or
\nendure them unwillingly.
\nOf God and Men, pp. 121-122<\/p>\n
“Lord, I’m so homesick for heaven. But until You allow me to come
\nhome, I do indeed ‘pray for grace to endure [problems] without
\nmurmuring.’ Amen.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Trials and Pain The devil, things and people being what they are, it is necessary for God to use the hammer, the file and the furnace in His holy work of preparing a saint for true sainthood. It is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until He has hurt him deeply. The Root…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"twitterCardType":"","cardImageID":0,"cardImage":"","cardTitle":"","cardDesc":"","cardImageAlt":"","cardPlayer":"","cardPlayerWidth":0,"cardPlayerHeight":0,"cardPlayerStream":"","cardPlayerCodec":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2837\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}