19
of which never happened.” Borrowing trouble
from tomorrow is an all too common habit, but
it is a bad habit, because it unfits one for
dealing wisely with today’s trouble. An anxious
patient asked his doctor, “How long shall I
have to lie here and suffer?” Kindly and wisely
the doctor replied, “Just one day at a time.”
That is more than merely
human counsel, it is
also our mandate from
heaven. In essence, it
corresponds with Matthew
6:34, “Take therefore no
thought for the morrow,
for the morrow shall take
thought for the things of
itself. Sufficient unto the
day is the evil (trouble)
thereof.” This is our
Lord’s way of telling us to
leave the future to Him
and be prepared for the
present.
• View trouble as God’s
school - view trouble as a
school in which God wants
to train His children. It
has been observed that whenever God has
needed some choice human instrument for a
particularly difficult role, He nearly always
puts him through some school of hardship. It
appears as though God has lessons to teach
that can be learned nowhere but in the school
of suffering. He wants to build into our char-
acter qualities that evidently can be acquired
nowhere else. Justification for this view of
suffering and these claims is found in 1 Peter
5:10: “But the God of all grace, who hath
called us unto his eternal glory by Christ
Jesus, after that ye have suffered a little
while, perfect, establish, comfort and settle
you.” In the light of this revelation, it might
even be permissible to liken suffering to God’s
post-graduate training school, where those
who have attended His
other schools are further
perfected.
Through His servant the
Psalmist, God warns us,
“Be ye not as the horse,
or the mule, which have
no understanding; whose
mouth must be held in
with bit and bridle”
(Psalm 32:9). The typical
young, unbroken horse
is stubborn and uncooper-
ative. Consequently, it
suffers a great deal with
little gain – a waste of
pain. The point of the
passage is that with us
it ought to be different.
Possessing God-given
understanding, we ought to be co-operative so
that God, by various means, including trouble,
can break us, make us, and conform us to the
image of His Son. While attending this school,
you will receive further training in the best
ways to respond to hardship. On the negative
side, you will be taught, “Despise not thou the
chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou
art rebuked of Him.” (Hebrews 12:5).
King Saul attempts to kill David
with his javelin
T
o the thoughtful mind the greatest argu-
ment for the resurrection of Christ must
always be the fact that Christianity rose with
its founder.
Nothing but Resurrection can explain the
transformation of the men we saw running in
panic from Gethsemane into the fearless
evangelists of the Acts of the Apostles. These
cowed, despondent men stood forth in the city
they dreaded and faced rulers and people
alike, indicting them for slaying their Lord,
announcing his resurrection, and baptizing
thousands of repentant Jews who trembled at
their words. Before they had been in mortal
fear of arrest; now they were to go forth
boldly facing imprisonment, persecution and
death, and they were to go forth gloriously,
counting it joy to suffer for his sake.
Fearless Evangelists
| Bro Melva Purkis, from his book ‘A Life of Jesus’