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 23
Trials and Pain: Happiness is Not the Goal
You therefore must endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.
No one engaged in warfare entangles himself with the affairs of this
life, that he may please him who enlisted him as a soldier.
--2 Timothy 2:3-4
That we are born to be happy is scarcely questioned by anyone. No
one bothers to prove that fallen men have any moral right to
happiness, or that they are in the long run any better off happy.
The only question before the house is how to get the most happiness
out of life. Almost all popular books and plays assume that personal
happiness is the legitimate end of the dramatic human struggle.
Now I submit that the whole hectic scramble after happiness is an
evil as certainly as is the scramble after money or fame or
success....
How far wrong all this is will be discovered easily by the simple
act of reading the New Testament through once with meditation. There
the emphasis is not upon happiness but upon holiness. God is more
concerned with the state of people's hearts than with the state of
their feelings. Undoubtedly the will of God brings final happiness
to those who obey, but the most important matter is not how happy we
are but how holy. The soldier does not seek to be happy in the field;
he seeks rather to get the fighting over with, to win the war and get
back home to his loved ones. There he may enjoy himself to the full;
but while the war is on his most pressing job is to be a good
soldier, to acquit himself like a man, regardless of how he feels.
Of God and Men, pp. 48-49
"Oh Lord, redirect my focus. Help me today to be a 'good soldier of
Jesus Christ.' Amen."