December: 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 of the Righteous, 157.
December 6
Trials and Pain: Faultfinders
But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of
the power may be of God and not of us. We are hard-pressed on every
side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair;
persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed.
--2 Corinthians 4:7-9
Nowhere else in the entire New Testament is the humanity of the
great apostle [Paul] seen so clearly as when he staggers under the
cruel attacks of the anti-Paul bloc in the Corinthian church. His
sufferings are there the most poignant and nearest to the sufferings
of Christ because they are inward and of the soul. For always the
soul can suffer as the body cannot....
But from Paul and his afflictions we may learn much truth, some of
it depressing and some altogether elevating and wonderful. We may
learn, for instance, that malice needs nothing to live on; it can
feed on itself. A contentious spirit will find something to quarrel
about. A faultfinder will find occasion to accuse a Christian even
if his life is as chaste as an icicle and pure as snow. A man of
ill will does not hesitate to attack, even if the object of his
hatred be a prophet or the very Son of God Himself. If John comes
fasting, he says he has a devil; if Christ comes eating and
drinking, he says He is a winebibber and a glutton. Good men are
made to appear evil by the simple trick of dredging up from his own
heart the evil that is there and attributing it to them.
We Travel an Appointed Way, pp. 79-80
"Deliver me today from faultfinders and those of a contentious
spirit. Satan has used these so often to discourage and attempt to
defeat me. Silence them today, for Your glory. Amen."