The Ordering of Those Afflictions

When Providence frowns upon you and blasts your outward comforts, then look to your heart; keep it with all diligence from repining against God or fainting under His hand. For troubles, though sanctified, are troubles still.

Jonah was a  good man, and yet how fretful was his heart under affliction!  Job was the mirror of patience, yet how was his heart decomposed by trouble!  You will find it hard to get a composed spirit under great afflictions.  Oh, the hurries and tumults which they occasion even in the best hearts.  Let me show you, then, how a Christian under great afflictions may keep his heart from repining or desponding under the hand of God…

One method for keeping the heart from sinking under the afflictions is to call to mind that your own Father has the ordering of those afflictions.  Not a creature moves hand or tongue against you but by His permission.  Suppose the cup is bitter, yet it is the cup which your Father has given you; can you suspect poison in it?  Foolish man, put home the case to your own heart.  Can you give anything to your children  that would ruin him? No!  You would as soon hurt yourself as him. “If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children,” how much more does God.  The very consideration of His nature as a God of love, pity, and tender mercies – or of His relation to you as a father, husband, and friend—would be security enough if He had not spoken a word to quiet you in this case.  And yet you have His word, too, by the prophet Jeremiah:  “I will do you no hurt.”  You lie too near His heart for him to hurt you; nothing grieves Him more than your groundless and unworthy suspicions of His designs..  Would it not grieve a faithful, tender-hearted physician, when he had studied the case of his patient and prepared the most excellent medicines to save his life, to hear him cry out, “Oh!  He has undone me;  he has poisoned me!” because it pains him in the operation?

God respects you as much in a low condition as in a high condition; therefore it need not so much trouble you to be made low.  No, He manifests more of His love, grace, and tenderness in the time of affliction than in time of prosperity.  As God did not at first choose you because you were high, He will not now forsake you because you are low…

Though your condition is changed, your father’s love is not changed.

--from Keeping the Heart, John Flavel

photo from Thistledown Cards