“Often it is simply the answers to our prayers that cause many of the difficulties in the Christian life.
“We pray for patience, and our Father sends demanding people our way who test us to the limit, ‘because…suffering produces perseverance’ (Romans 5:3). …
“We pray to be unselfish, and God gives us opportunities to sacrifice by placing other people’s needs first and by laying down our lives for other believers. …
“We pray to the Lord, as His apostles did, saying, ‘Increase our faith!’ (Luke 17:5). Then our money seems to take wings and fly away; our children become critically ill; an employee becomes careless, slow, and wasteful; or some other new trial comes upon us, requiring more faith than we have ever before experienced.
“We pray for a Christlike life that exhibits the humility of a lamb. Then we are asked to perform some lowly task, or we are unjustly accused and given no opportunity to explain….
“We pray for gentleness and quickly face a storm of temptation to be harsh and irritable.
“We pray for quietness, and suddenly every nerve is tested to its limit with tremendous tension so that we may learn that when He sends His peace, no one can disturb it.
“We pray for love for others, and God sends unique suffering by sending people our way who are difficult to love and who say things that get on our nerves and tear at our heart. …
“The way to peace and victory is to accept every circumstance and every trial as being straight from the hand of our loving Father.” —Lettie Cowman
This is a weekly series with things I’m reading and pondering from Oswald Chambers. You can read the original seed thought here, or type “Thursdays With Oswald” in the search box to read more entries.
Why Does God Bring Clouds?
It is not true to say that God wants to teach us something in our trials. In every cloud He brings, God wants us to un-learn something. God’s purpose in the cloud is to simplify our belief until our relationship to Him is exactly that of a child. God uses every cloud which comes in our physical life, in our moral or spiritual life, or in our circumstances, to bring us nearer to Him, until we come to the place where our Lord Jesus Christ lived, and we do not allow our hearts to be troubled.
Christianity does not add to our difficulties, it brings them to a focus, and in the difficulties we find Jesus Himself. We must get out of the habit of misinterpreting God by saying He wants to teach us something, it is not a New Testament idea, but an idea that is as unlike the God whom Jesus revealed as could be. God is all the time bringing us to the place where we un-learn things. … In everything that happens we should be un-learning that which keeps us from a simple relationship to God. …
There are no such things as “calamities” or “accidents” to God’s children—“all things work together for good.”
From God’s Workmanship
Futurist Alvin Toffler wrote that the illiterate of this age are those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. God wants to do the same thing for us. God doesn’t want us to be spiritually illiterate, so there are times to learn and times to un-learn.
The next time you are going through some clouds in your spiritual walk, pause to ask the Holy Spirit, “What do I need to un-learn from this?” And then follow through on what He shows you.
“O tested soul, perhaps the Lord is sending you through this trial to develop your gifts. You have some gifts that would never have been discovered if not for trials. Do you not know that your faith never appears as great in the warm summer weather as it does during a cold winter? … Afflictions are often the dark settings God uses to mount the jewels of His children’s gifts, causing them to shine even brighter. …
“For how can you know if you have faith, until your faith is exercised? You can depend upon the fact that God often sends trials so our gifts maybe discovered and so we may be certain of their existence. And there is more than just discovering our gifts—we experience real growth in grace as another result of our trials being sanctified by Him.
“God trains His soldiers not in tents of ease and luxury but by causing them to endure lengthy marches and difficult service. He makes them wade across streams, swim through rivers, climb mountains, and walk many tiring miles with heavy backpacks.
“Dear Christian, could this not account for the troubles you are now experiencing? Could this not be the reason He is dealing with you?” —Charles Spurgeon
Commenting on one of the opening passages in Paul’s second letter to the church at Corinth, Horatius Bonar shares ten benefits to Christians who will cling to God during times of suffering.
“The meaning and use of trial:
Yesterday I posted a review on an innovative book The Surprising Imagination Of C.S. Lewis. Truly this man’s literary output during his lifetime, and his works’ staying power after his lifetime, is amazing. Here are a few quotes from this prolific author.
“We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walks everywhere incognito. And the incognito is not always hard to penetrate. The real labor is to remember, to attend. In fact, to come awake. Still more, to remain awake.” —C.S. Lewis
“Humanity does not pass through phases as a train passes through stations: being alive, it has the privilege of always moving yet never leaving anything behind. Whatever we have been, In some sort we are still.” —C.S. Lewis
“God saw the Cross in the creation of the first nebulae.” —C.S. Lewis
“Nothing can deceive unless it bears a plausible resemblance to reality.” —C.S. Lewis
“The real way of mending a man’s taste is not to denigrate his present favorites, but to teach him how to enjoy something better.” —C.S. Lewis
“Coming to understand anything we must reject the facts as they are for us in favor of the facts as they are.” —C.S. Lewis
“The terrible thing, the almost impossible thing, is to hand over your whole self—all your wishes and precautions—to Christ. But it is far easier than what we are all trying to do instead. For what we are trying to do is to remain what we call ‘ourselves,’ to keep personal happiness as our great aim in life, and yet at the same time be ‘good.’ We are all trying to let our mind and heart go their own way—centered on money or pleasure or ambition—and hoping, in spite of this, to behave honestly and chastely and humbly. And that is exactly what Christ warned us you could not do.” —C.S. Lewis
“The real problem of the Christian life comes where people do not usually look for it. It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back; in listening to that other Voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in. And so on, all day.” —C.S. Lewis
“‘Be ye perfect.’ I think He meant ‘The only help I will give is help to become perfect. You may want something less: but I will give you nothing less.’” —C.S. Lewis
“That is why we must not be surprised if we are in for a rough time. When a man turns to Christ and seems to be getting on pretty well (in the sense that some of his bad habits are now corrected) he often feels that it would now be natural if things went fairly smoothly. When trouble comes along—illnesses, money troubles, new kinds of temptation—he is disappointed. These things, he feels, might have been necessary to rouse him and make him repent in his bad old days; but why now? Because God is forcing him on, or up, to a higher level: putting him into situations where he will have to be very much braver, or more patient, or more loving, than he ever dreamed of being before. It seems to us all unnecessary: but that is because we have not yet had the slightest notion of the tremendous thing He means to make of us.” —C.S. Lewis
I previously posted quotes from C.S. Lewis here, here, and here.
“satan is real and may have a hand in our calamities, but not the final hand, and not the decisive hand. James makes clear that God had a good purpose in all Job’s afflictions: ‘You have heard of the steadfastness of Job, and you have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful’ [James 5:11]. So satan may have been involved, but the ultimate purpose was God’s, and it was ‘compassionate and merciful.’” —John Piper
“God’s will is determined by His wisdom which always perceives, and His goodness which always embraces, the intrinsically good.” —C.S. Lewis
“Let us never suppose that there is any lack of charity in speaking of hell. Let us rather maintain that it is the highest love to warn men plainly of danger, and to beseech them to ‘flee from the wrath to come.’ It was satan, the deceiver, murderer, and liar, who said to Eve in the beginning, ‘You shall not surely die.’ (Genesis 3:4.) To shrink from telling men, that except they believe they will ‘die in their sins,’ may please the devil, but surely it cannot please God.” —J.C. Ryle
“You aren’t the only person with your skill. But you are the only person with your version of your skill.” —Max Lucado
“There is nothing natural about the Christian life. It is all supernatural. It’s a life dependent upon miracles from the very beginning (including your conversion). And it simply can’t be lived without faith in the supernatural.” —David Wilkerson
It is time for science to detach itself from an atheistic worldview. Douglas Rushkoff states, “By starting with Godlessness as a foundational principle of scientific reasoning, we make ourselves unnecessarily resistant to the novelty of human consciousness, its potential continuity over time, and the possibility that it has a purpose.”
Detroit Tigers fans (like me!) will love this: an interactive map that shows where every Tiger has been born.
John Stonestreet asks, “Why is pop music so angry?” Check out his answer in Bad Blood.
[VIDEO] John Maxwell challenges us to find someone we can inspire this weekend—
This is a periodic series with things I’m reading and pondering from Oswald Chambers. You can read the original seed thought here, or type “Thursdays With Oswald” in the search box to read more entries.
Thursdays With Oswald—Seeing The Light In The Darkness
Oh, the unspeakable benediction of the ‘treasures of darkness’! But for the night in the natural world we should know nothing of moon or stars, or of all the incommunicable thoughtfulness of the midnight. So spiritually it is not the days of sunshine and splendor and liberty and light that leave their lasting and indelible effect upon the soul but those nights of the Spirit in which, shadowed by God’s hand, hidden in the dark cleft of some rock in a weary land, He lets the splendors of the outskirts of Himself pass before our eyes. It is such moments as these that insulate the soul from all worldliness and keep it in an ‘other-worldliness’ while carrying on work for the Lord and communion with Him in this present evil world. ‘Even the darkness hideth not from Thee, but the night shineth as the day; the darkness and the light are both alike to Thee’ [Psalm 139:12].
From The Place Of Help
I know from my life, there has been a ‘light’ God has revealed to me in some really, really dark places, that I wouldn’t have seen in any other way.
If your life is in a dark place right now, hang on to this: God sees you, God loves you, and God wants to show you something. Someday you will look back on this and be grateful for what God has revealed in the darkness.