Teaching By Trials

I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.

Romans 8:18 NIV

Affliction can be a means of refining and of purification. Many a life has come forth from the furnace of affliction more beautiful and more useful. We might never have had the songs of Fanny Crosby had she not been afflicted with blindness. George Matheson would never have given the world his immortal song, “O Love That Will Not Let Me Go,” had it not been for his passing through the furnace of affliction. The “Hallelujah Chorus” was written by Handel when he was poverty-stricken and suffering from a paralyzed right side and right arm.

Job, who was called upon to suffer as few men have suffered, said, “But he knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold” (Job 23:10).

Affliction may also be for our strengthening and Christian development.

Some time ago a doctor told me that the man who had fought disease all of his life would be better able to resist it than the man who had never been sick a day in his life. “It’s the fellows who have never been sick who die in a hurry,” he said.

David said, “Before I was afflicted I went astray: but now have I kept thy word” (Psalm 119:67). We learn through the trials we are called upon to bear.

Our Father and our God, thank You for the trials and troubles of my life, for I know they make me strong and more useful to You. Help me suffer with grace and patience. Give me courage and faith in the face of my many frustrations and stresses. Through Christ I pray. Amen.

Billy Graham, Unto the Hills: A Daily Devotional (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2010).