Tag Archives: Trials
All God’s Promises Will Be Fulfilled
God’s sovereignty means the good he intends for his children will not be deterred. This means we can face anything. All his promises to us will be fulfilled.
Confidence in the Sovereignty of God
Confidence in the sovereignty of God in all that affects us is crucial to our trusting Him. If there is a single event in all of the universe that can occur outside of God’s sovereign control, then we cannot trust Him. His love may be infinite, but if His power is limited and His purpose can be thwarted, we cannot trust Him. You may entrust to me your most valuable possessions. I may love you and my aim to honor your trust may be sincere, but if I do not have the power or ability to guard your valuables, you cannot truly entrust them to me.
Sweet Comfort in Suffering
Would you have sweet comfort in suffering and trial? Then keep in constant view your Savior’s humanity. He is the man Christ Jesus, who lay on the bosom of the Virgin Mary, as a little infant, and knows the heart of a man. He can be touched with the feeling of your infirmities. He has Himself experienced Satan’s temptations. He has endured hunger. He has shed tears. He has felt pain. Trust Him at all times with all your sorrows. He will not despise you. Pour out all your heart before Him in prayer, and keep nothing back. He can sympathize with His people.
J.C. Ryle, Expository Thoughts on Matthew
HT: Reformed Quotes
The Measure of Christ’s Torment
Biblically faithful Christianity does not present itself as a nice religious structure that makes happier parents and well-ordered children and good taxpaying citizens. It may produce better parents and taxpaying citizens, but the issues at stake in biblical Christianity have to do with eternity: heaven and hell, matters of the utmost significance, your relationship to your Maker, what God has provided in Christ, what the cross is about, the resurrection.
At the end of the day, what hell measures is how much Christ paid for those who escape hell. The measure of his torment (in ways I do not pretend to begin to understand) as the God-man is the measure of torment that we deserve and he bore. And if you see that and believe it, you will find it difficult to contemplate the cross for very long without tears.
The Banquet House
Christ is not only a remedy for your weariness and trouble, but he will give you an abundance of the contrary, joy and delight. They who come to Christ, do not only come to a resting-place after they have been wandering in a wilderness, but they come to a banqueting-house where they may rest, and where they may feast. They may cease from their former troubles and toils, and they may enter upon a course of delights and spiritual joys.
Sorrow Is a Minister
Sorrow is a minister, creating character for those who dwell in the Will of God; for such, sorrow is turned into joy.
The Depth of a Christian’s Joy
The depth of a disciple’s joy in the Lord may well be measured by the degree of his participation in the sufferings of the Lord. It is still true that those who pay a great price in suffering to remain true to Christ know a deep measure of this Spirit-wrought joy in their lives. Perhaps our Christian lives are so lacking in this joy because our Christian profession costs us so little.
D. Edmond Hiebert, The Thessalonian Epistles (Chicago: Moody Press, 1982), 60.
Liquid Prayers
Let us learn to think of tears as liquid prayers, and of weeping as a constant dropping of importunate intercession which will wear its way right surely into the very heart of mercy, despite the stony difficulties which obstruct the way.
Charles H. Spurgeon, The Treasury of David, notes on Psalm 6.8
Christ Who Suffered in Our Place
My thoughts and prayers are with the grieving families in Newtown, CT. The Christmas season was the beginning of the life of the one who can best identify with them, being the one who Himself is a man of sorrows and well-acquainted with grief. Jesus knows and understands, and He is present with those who suffering at this time. God bless them all!
Sometimes it is when we suffer, when we observe the universality of death’s decree, when we are debilitated, when we observe an extraordinarily barbaric bit of cruelty, when we are sidelined by a chronic illness, that we are impelled to pause and reflect on the love of God to sinners and rebels such as we are. We serve the Lord Christ, who suffered in our place, who learned obedience through the trials that he suffered. The trinkets and baubles that otherwise capture so much of our attention fade away, and the eternal things assume their rightful place. Then we know what it means to confess that God’s love is ‘as shoreless and endless as eternity.’
D. A. Carson, A Call to Spiritual Reformation (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1992), 194.
Life Is Worship 