Monday, June 22, 2015

The Lord's Attitude To His Children In Adversity # 2

The Nature of the Adversity (continued)

Naturally, this is how it was with Israel - shut in, narrowed down, pent up, straightened so far as many things in this world were concerned. Because they were the Lord's people they could not do this nor have that. There was a whole realm of things cut off from them' naturally, in the soul, it was straightness.

Adversity No Proof That the Lord Is Our Adversary

When you and I begin to feel that - and there are days when the pure, unsullied joy of the Lord Himself and of heavenly things becomes clouded and veiled and remote, and we seem to be far more sensitive to the straightness of our lives and ow we are shut up - how quickly the enemy comes in and says, "The Lord is against you! This is not the goodness of the Lord, this is not the boundifulness and graciousness of the Lord, this kind of lie really is not the life that the Lord promised you." In our hearts and minds he tried to turn the Lord to be our adversary because of the consciousness of the present situation of difficulty. He misrepresents the Lord; he gives to the Lord the color of our trial, of our difficulty, and says, "The Lord is like that, He is a hard master to serve; this Christian life is not all that it was represented to be; the Lord has deceived you, He has failed you; and so on. He twists the whole thing to malign the Lord.

What the word here is saying is quite definitely this - in all that straightness, that privation, that pent-up-ness the Lord was not against them; however it seemed, the Lord really was not against them. Then we must find some other explanation. The facts are very real, these conditions are very true. Adversity, trial, suffering are very real, and if they do not mean that the Lord is against us, what is the explanation?

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(continued with # 3 - (The Lord's Intention of Good)

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