Disappointment
"It is through many tribulations that we shall enter the kingdom of God (Acts 14:22). God has intended that it will never be any other way. You yourself may currently [like Nehemiah and Wm. Carey] need to pick yourself up and go back into battle for him. Twice in 2 Corinthians 4, Paul comments that 'we do not lose heart'. How was he sustained? Paul reminded himself that he held his ministry by the mercy of God. When he thought of God's undeserved favour towards him in placing him in the ministry, he was much encouraged and enabled to continue on. Paul was also realistic. He knew that his outer nature was wasting away--he was getting older and slower. But he also knew that his inner nature was being renewed day by day. Here we can learn from the apostle. To the world both being one of the aged and dealing with older people can be a nuisance. But to Paul, the fact that he was getting older meant that God was working longer in him to perfect him.
"Sometimes God can use very simple and human menas to encourage his people. Paul said that in Macedonia he had been afflicted at every turn, but that God had comforted him through the arrival of Titus. Charles Spurgeon, who at one time was in the midst of a time of plague, was very downcast. Then he read a verse from Scripture on a piece of paper in a shoemaker's window. This single verse encouraged him to press on in the Lord's work.
"Disappointments must come our way. This world is invariably disappointing. We ourselves are disappointing. To know that disappointments are part of God's plan to try, and test, and perfect his people is the key to coping with them. In 1649 William Bridge commented that 'Affliction is a bag of gold given unto the people of God; though it seems a leathern bag without, yet there is gold within.' William Carey might not have seen that immmediately in 1812 [when fire destroyed his work], nor might Nehemiah as he arrived in Jerusalem for his second stint as governor [to find that the people had returned to all their old sinful ways].
"You yourself may not see it in the midst of a present disappointment. But those who look to the Lord find, in the words of Ezra, that the joy of the Lord is their strength (Neh. 8:10)."
--Peter Barnes "Coping with Disappointment" The Banner of Truth, Issue 505, October 2005
"Sometimes God can use very simple and human menas to encourage his people. Paul said that in Macedonia he had been afflicted at every turn, but that God had comforted him through the arrival of Titus. Charles Spurgeon, who at one time was in the midst of a time of plague, was very downcast. Then he read a verse from Scripture on a piece of paper in a shoemaker's window. This single verse encouraged him to press on in the Lord's work.
"Disappointments must come our way. This world is invariably disappointing. We ourselves are disappointing. To know that disappointments are part of God's plan to try, and test, and perfect his people is the key to coping with them. In 1649 William Bridge commented that 'Affliction is a bag of gold given unto the people of God; though it seems a leathern bag without, yet there is gold within.' William Carey might not have seen that immmediately in 1812 [when fire destroyed his work], nor might Nehemiah as he arrived in Jerusalem for his second stint as governor [to find that the people had returned to all their old sinful ways].
"You yourself may not see it in the midst of a present disappointment. But those who look to the Lord find, in the words of Ezra, that the joy of the Lord is their strength (Neh. 8:10)."
--Peter Barnes "Coping with Disappointment" The Banner of Truth, Issue 505, October 2005
posted by Compleat Mom at 8:20 AM
1 Comments:
"If man's tribulations, however, grow in frequency and as a result he frequently turns to God and is frequently freed by God, must he not end, even though he had a heart of stone in a breast of iron, by realizing that it is God's grace which frees him and come to love God not for his own advantage, but for the sake of God? Man's frequent needs oblige him to invoke God more often and approach him more frequently. This intimacy moves man to taste and discover how sweet the Lord is. Tasting God's sweetness entices us to more pure love than does the urgency of our own needs."
--On Loving God, Bernard of Clairvoux
I love you! I read this passage recently and it really struck a chord. Keep fighting the good fight! Your service is valuable to the kingdom and precious to the King.
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