AFFLICTION
WORKS RESULTS
BREAD
2 Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face
trials of many kinds, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith
develops perseverance. 4 Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be
mature and complete, not lacking anything. James 1:2-4 (NIV)
12 Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because
when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has
promised to those who love him. James
1:12 (NIV)
12 “Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said. “Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have
not withheld from me your son, your only son.” 13 Abraham
looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed
it as a burnt offering instead of his son. 14 So Abraham called that place The LORD Will Provide.
And to this day it is said, “On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided.” 15 The angel of the LORD called to Abraham from heaven a
second time 16 and said, “I swear by myself, declares the LORD, that
because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, 17 I
will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the
sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of
the cities of their enemies, 18 and through your offspring all nations on earth will
be blessed, because you have obeyed me.”
Genesis 22:12-18 (NIV)
16 Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we
are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. 17 For
our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far
outweighs them all. 18 So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is
unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. 2 Corinthians
4:16-18 (NIV)
3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through
the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 and
into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade--kept in heaven for
you, 5 who through faith are shielded by God's power until
the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. 6 In
this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to
suffer grief in all kinds of trials. 7 These have come so that your faith--of greater worth
than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire--may be proved genuine
and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. 8 Though
you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now,
you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, 9 for
you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls. 1 Peter 1:3-9 (NIV)
17 Join
with others in following my example, brothers, and take note of those who live
according to the pattern we gave you. 18 For,
as I have often told you before and now say again even with tears, many live as
enemies of the cross of Christ. 19 Their destiny is destruction, their god is their
stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things. 20 But
our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the
Lord Jesus Christ, 21 who, by the power that enables him to bring everything
under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like
his glorious body. Philippians 3:17-21
(NIV)
12 Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in
prayer. Romans 12:12 (NIV)
BUTTER
“Do not think when we are suffering
in the fiery furnace He does not care.
Do not think that He sits lofty in the heavenlies paying us no
mind. Our Master knows the intensity of
the heat and the exact longevity of all our trials and tribulations designed to
bring about His divine purposes of unmingled good and blessedness for every
heir of mercy. Our Savior suffered with
a magnitude we know nothing of so that heaven’s doors would be open to us. If on our way to our true home we undergo the
arrows of Satan’s quiver, take heart my friend and do not lose your hope or
joy. Many have traversed this same path
and received the warmest of welcomes home.
Weeping may endure for the night but joy, yes joy, comes in the
morning.” BHY
“The sorest afflictions never appear
intolerable, except when we see them in the wrong light.” Brother
Lawrence
“The
Lord gets His best soldiers out of the highlands of affliction.” Charles
H. Spurgeon
“Only in the hot furnace of affliction do
we as Christians let go of the dross to which, in our foolishness, we ardently
cling.” David Kingdon
“Afflictions work for good, as they
are the means of loosening our hearts from the world. When you dig away the earth from the root of
a tree, it is to loosen the tree from the earth; so God digs away our earthly
comforts to loosen our hearts from the earth.”
Thomas Watson
“Every affliction comes with a
message from the heart of God.” Alexander Maclaren
“That one’s sorrows are actually
working for the faithful believer is predicated upon the faith that the unseen
is the ultimate and supreme reality and that the present and visible are only
relative and ephemeral…..‘Our affliction,’ properly accepted, is actually
creating or producing for us an ‘eternal weight of glory’ far beyond all
proportion to the pain of the affliction.
Therefore it should be cherished and not wasted by resistance and
rebellion.” Paul E. Billheimer
“We don’t
normally like being on the bottom. It’s
just not the position we generally pick.
It goes against our flesh. Yet,
in the Bible’s economy you stoop to rise, you lower and God elevates. Therefore, rock bottom appears the perfect
place to simply look up and the perfect time to begin building upon the solid
foundation of the Rock of Christ. Often
stripped of our dearest Delilah’s we are not too dissimilar to the returning
prodigal. We have nothing but our will
to bring – do we really ever have anything else? And Jesus says tenderly, ‘Come’. On Him you can depend. On Him you can count. On Him you can trust. He turns away no one. He will never let the righteous fall or blow
away for that matter. His grip is firm
and secure. Much akin to a young mother
grabbing her two year old in busy traffic and yet so infinitely more. He dearly loves His children and He always
causes them to stand because He is faithful and able to cause us to stand – no
matter what wind blows.” BHY
“You exist because God wanted you to exist and you are who you are, what you are, how you are, where you are, and when you are because God made you (John 1:3), wove you in your mother’s womb (Psalms 139:13), called you to be his own (John 10:27); (Romans 8:30), and assigned you a life to live (1 Corinthians 7:17). And this infuses your entire life — its good and evil, its sweet and bitter, it’s health and affliction, its prosperity and poverty, its comfort and suffering — with an unfathomable dignity, purpose, and glory.” Jon Bloom
HEART SAVOR
·
God never
allows something in the life of the Believer that is not for their ultimate
good and His glory – never one surpassing the other.
·
Afflictions
demonstrate our humanness, our lack of ultimate control, our desperate need for
Someone greater. They are orchestrated
by God to show our dependence upon Him.
Who can add a single hour to their lives or minute for that matter? Who can transform a human heart and give it
an entirely different leaning? Who can
create ex-nihilo (out of nothing)? Only
the One Who makes known the end from the beginning, from ancient times what is
yet to come, Whose purpose stands and Who does all that He pleases. He is God and there is no other.
·
We do not
lose heart because “our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an
eternal glory that far outweighs them all.”
