Affliction comes to us all: not to make us sad but sober; not to make us sorry but to make us wise; not to impoverish us but to enrich us! We are always in the forge or on the anvil. By trials, God is shaping us for nobler things.
No physician ever weighed out medicine to his patients with half so much care and exactness, as God weighs out every trial to us. Not one grain too much, does He ever permit to be put in the scale!
The troubles and worries of life may be as stumbling blocks in our way or we may make them stepping-stones to a nobler character and to Heaven. Troubles are often the tools by which God fashions us for better things!
[Henry Ward Beecher]
Hebrews 12:7-11 … If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons. Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live? For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness. Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby. ❤
