Or it may be, dear Christian worker, that of late you have met with a great many discouragements. You seem to have labored in vain, and spent your strength for nought. Ask then, in prayer, and act accordingly, that the more you are defeated the less you may be disposed to yield; but rather that you may be endowed with fresh energy for the service, and strive with increased assurance for the victory. When you feel “I am foiled in that point,” say, “Nevertheless, I cannot be beaten: I belong to a seed that cannot be vanquished. If I did not belong to the house of Israel, I might have been destroyed and overcome; but none can stand against the Hebrew race, against true Israelites—they must win the day.” Therefore, settle it in your mind that if you do not win souls one day, you will another; and if you cannot press into your enemies’ territory in one part you will in another; and if he defeats you at any time, then multiply your efforts to do good. Always take revenge on Satan if he defeats you, by trying to do ten times more good than you did before. It is in some such way that a dear brother now preaching the gospel, whom God has blessed with a very considerable measure of success, may trace the opening of his career to a circumstance that occurred to myself. Sitting in my pulpit one evening, in a country village, where I had to preach, my text slipped from my memory, and with the text seemed to go all that I had thought to speak upon it. A rare thing to happen to me; but I sat utterly confounded. I could find nothing to say. With strong crying I lifted up my soul to God to pour out again within my soul of the living water that it might gush forth from me for others; and I accompanied my prayer with a vow that if Satan’s enmity thus had brought me low, I would take so many fresh men whom I might meet with during the week, and train them for the ministry, so that with their hands and tongues I would avenge myself on the Philistines. The brother I have alluded to came to me the next morning. I accepted him at once as one whom God had sent, and I helped him, and others after him, to prepare for the service, and to go forth in the Savior’s name to preach the gospel of the grace of God. Often when we fear we are defeated, we ought to say, “I will do all the more. Instead of dropping from this work, now will I make a general levy, and a sacred conscription upon all the powers of my soul, and I will gather up all the strength I ever had in reserve, and make from this moment a tremendous life-long effort to overcome the powers of darkness, and win for Christ fresh trophies of victory.” After this fashion you will have an easier time of it, for if you do more good the more you are tempted, Satan will not so often tempt you. When he knows that all the more you are afflicted so much the more you multiply, very likely he will find it wiser to let you alone, or try you in some other method than that of direct and overt opposition. So whenever you have a trial, take it as a favor; whenever God holds in one hand the rod of affliction, he has a favor in the other hand; he never strikes a child of his but he has some tender blessing in store. If he visits you with unwonted affliction, you will have unusual delight; the Lord will open new windows for you, and show his beauty as he shows it not to others recording as your tribulations abound, so also shall your consolations abound in Christ Jesus. In the deeper waters you shall find him nearer, for he has said, “When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee.” He will be with you always, but he has promised to come to you specially and peculiarly, and, as it were, by appointment, when you are driven out into the wilderness, or harassed by the foe. He comforteth those that are cast down. Rejoice, therefore, in your afflictions, if so be you have faith to believe that they shall be blessed for your good.
What is all this to the unconverted? Ah, sirs! while the men of God flourish in adversity, the men of this world are ruined by their prosperity. Even the cup of pleasure and sensual enjoyment, of which ye delight to drink, has its bitter dregs which ye shall be compelled to swallow. Yet even now all your days are not passed in sunshine. You have your troubles; but you have no God to resort to. You will have many sorer plagues than you have ever yet been visited with; but if you continue in unbelief, you will still have no God to trust in. Perhaps you go to some friends in any emergency now, but no friend can help you in the dying hour. No brother can go with you through the swellings of Jordan. O friendless one, O Christless sinner! dost thou not want God to be thy helper, and Christ to be thy friend? If thou dost, then on the cross behold the Savior. Turn to him thine eye: penitently trust him: rely upon him, and he is ours, and then henceforth the Lord of Hosts shall be with you, and God of Jacob shall be your refuge, and your afflictions also shall work your good. May God bless each one of you, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.
“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”
