HAVING considered many reasons why Christians may suffer from spiritual depression, we come to the particular reason with which the Apostle Peter deals in this section. There can be no question but that his only object in writing this letter was to deal with this very state. So he starts by reminding these people of certain things, and then he comes at once to his theme. He introduces the matter by talking about the great salvation: ‘Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ which according to His abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. To an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that fadeth not away . . . Wherein’, he then says, ‘ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season if need be ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations’. That is his description of these people. They ‘greatly rejoice’ in this blessed hope, and yet they are ‘in heaviness through manifold temptations’. Here again, as we have found in so many instances, the description seems to be quite contradictory. He is describing people who at one and the same time are greatly rejoicing and yet are in heaviness. But we have seen, again so often, that there is nothing contradictory about this. You may if you like call it paradoxical, but it is not contradictory. Indeed the condition of the Christian as described in the New Testament seems always to include these two elements and at one and the same time we find that these Christian people of whom the apostle writes are ‘greatly rejoicing’ and are also ‘in heaviness’.
This is something about which we must be very clear before we proceed any further. There is a superficial view of Christianity which would regard this as quite impossible, the kind of view of the Christian life which simply says that all the problems have gone and now ‘I am happy all the day’. Such people cannot accept Peter’s description for a moment and would say of any Christian who is ‘in heaviness’ that it is doubtful whether he is a Christian at all. There is that teaching concerning the Christian life which gives the impression that once one has arrived at a decision, or once one has been converted, there are no more troubles, no ripples on the sea of life. Everything is perfect and there are no problems whatsoever. Now the simple answer to that view is that it is not New Testament Christianity. That is the kind of thing which the cults have always offered and which modem psychology is also offering. There is nothing for which one should thank God so much as the honesty of the Scriptures. They give us the simple truth about ourselves and about our life in this world.
We have to start therefore by realizing that this is something which is postulated of the Christian. Now let us make no mistake about this word ‘heaviness’. Heaviness means to be grieved, it means we are troubled. It is not merely that we have to suffer certain things, but that the suffering of these things does grieve us. We are troubled by them and are really made unhappy by them. So Peter describes these people as showing these two characteristics at one and the same time, a great rejoicing and yet being grieved. You will find that so frequently in the Scriptures. Take as a perfect example of it the series of paradoxes which the apostle uses to describe himself in 2 Corinthians 4. ‘We are troubled on every side and yet not distressed; we are perplexed but not in despair; persecuted but not forsaken; cast down but not destroyed; always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus’—and so on. These statements appear to be mutually exclusive at first, but they are not. They are just a part of the paradox of the Christian life. This is the amazing thing about the Christian that at one and the same time he does experience these two things. ‘If that is so,’ says someone, ‘where is the problem?’ The problem lies here, that we fail to maintain the balance and that we tend to allow this heaviness, this grief to overwhelm us and really cast us down. The danger is not merely that we are temporarily upset by it, but that it really may become a prevailing mood which we can never get rid of, and that, as a result, people looking at us are more conscious of this ‘grievous heaviness’ than they are of the ‘great rejoicing’.
What we are really saying and what we have to realize and to remember is that the Christian is not one who has become immune to what is happening round and about him. We need to emphasize this truth because there are certain people whose whole notion and conception of the Christian life makes the Christian quite unnatural. Grief and sorrow are something to which the Christian is subject, and there is a sense in which I am prepared to argue that the absence of a feeling of grief in a Christian in certain circumstances is not a recommendation for the Christian faith. It is unnatural, it goes beyond the New Testament, it savours more of the stoic or of the psychological state produced by a cult rather than of Christianity. There is nothing which is more instructive and encouraging as you go through the Scriptures than to observe that the saints of God are subject to human frailties. They know grief and sorrow, they know what it is to feel lonely, they know what it is to be disappointed. There are abundant examples of this in the Scriptures. You see it in the life of the Apostle Paul perhaps more than in anyone else. He was subject to these things and he does not conceal that fact. He was still a very human person though he had such amazing faith and though he had had such wonderful experiences in his communion with his blessed Lord. Very well, these things may be found at one and the same time, and the Christian must never regard himself as one who is exempt from natural feelings. He has something that enables him to rise above these things, but the glory of the Christian life is that you rise above them though you feel them. It is not an absence of feeling. This is a most important dividing line.
Having laid down that postulate let us consider why it is that a Christian should thus be in heaviness and in this condition of grief. The answer is, of course, these ‘manifold temptations’. The word translated temptations really means ‘trials’. These people were like this because they were passing through manifold trials. Now that is an interesting word, the Greek word here translated ‘manifold’. It is obviously a favourite word of the Apostle Peter, and he uses it later on to describe the grace of God. It means ‘many-coloured’, like the various colours in the spectrum. The poet Shelley had the same idea when he wrote:
‘Life like a dome of many-coloured glass
Stains the white radiance of eternity’.
That is the meaning of the word used here, and the apostle says that they were troubled because they were experiencing these manifold trials. They come in different ways and colours, in different shapes and forms and there is no end to the variety.
What are these trials? In this Epistle Peter makes it quite clear what he has in mind. Many of these Christians were being persecuted. In the second chapter we read: ‘I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul; having your conversation honest among the Gentiles: that, whereas they speak against you as evildoers, they may by your good works which they shall behold, glorify God in the day of visitation’. The Christian, because he is a Christian, is subject to this kind of thing in the world. Because he is a new man, because he is born again, he is inevitably bound to be misunderstood. He is a pilgrim and he is like a stranger in a strange land. He lives a different type of life, he has different ideas and customs. The other people looking on, notice the difference and they do not like it, in fact they make it very plain that they dislike it. These early Christians were subject to persecution and trials that came in that way.
We get many accounts of these trials in the Bible, and the saints of God have always had to meet this kind of thing. The Apostle Paul, indeed, in writing to Timothy (2 Timothy 3.12) goes so far as to say: ‘Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution’. It is a law, according to the Scriptures that the more we approximate to the Lord Jesus Christ in our life and living, the more likely we are to meet troubles in this world. Look at Him. He did no evil, neither was any guile found in His mouth. He spent His time in healing people, doing good and preaching; and yet look at the opposition, look at the trials He had to endure. Why? Because He was what He was. The world in its heart of hearts hates Christ and it hates the Christian, because such holy living condemns it. The man of the world does not like it because it makes him feel uncomfortable. The apostle knew what these people were experiencing at the hands of evildoers, and he goes on in the fourth chapter to put it still more specifically: ‘For the time past of our life may suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles, when we walked in lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, revellings, banquetings, and abominable idolatries; wherein they think it strange that ye run not with them to the same excess of riot, speaking evil of you’. The world was annoyed with these people because they had given up that sort of life and were living the Christian life. As soon as they became Christian they got into trouble with the world. People who had been friendly before now began to ignore them and to criticize them and to speak unkindly—and worse—about them to others.
That was one of the things that was causing them grief. They were in heaviness because of this, and it is something the Christian has had to endure throughout the centuries. Nothing is more trying than this misunderstanding on the part of other people, and it becomes still more difficult if it happens to be someone who is near and dear to you. How trying it is when a Christian finds himself, perhaps, the only Christian in a family. This kind of trial does happen, and for a Christian never to meet it in some shape or form suggests that there is something radically wrong with his Christianity. The Apostle Paul experienced this constantly. You remember how he says, ‘Demas hath forsaken me.’ That was not a light thing to Paul; he was troubled by it. He had to stand his trial absolutely alone; people on whom he thought he could rely suddenly ran away from him, and there he was, alone. ‘No man stood with me.’ That is the kind of thing that grieves a Christian, and you have but to read the lives of the saints to find this kind of thing constantly. Read the journals of John Wesley and you will find he was frequently in this condition because of misunderstandings. This, on a big scale, is to be found in the life of Charles Haddon Spurgeon in connection with the famous ‘Down grade’ controversy. Men whom he had regarded as friends, and some of whom he had trained in his own college at his own expense, suddenly fell away from him. You have but to read his account of it to see how he was hurt and grieved. He was in heaviness because men whom he thought he could rely on suddenly failed him. It undoubtedly shortened his life. I was reading in the journals of George Whitefield recently, an account of this very thing, Whitefield had had a season of exceptional nearness to Christ and he was rejoicing in it, but he makes a note in his journal to remind himself of the fact that in some strange way such experiences were often followed by grievous trials, and, no doubt, he says: ‘I shall be subject to that again’. He knew it, it was his experience, it is almost an inevitable law in the life of the man of God in a world of sin.
Here, then, were these Christians suffering manifold trials. The term is comprehensive, it means anything in this life that tends to trouble you, something that touches you in the most sensitive and delicate part of your being, in your heart, in your mind, the things that tend to cast you down. How does the apostle deal with the situation? It is most interesting, and it is what you and I must do if we are to maintain this two-fold aspect of our Christian life. If we are to go on rejoicing in spite of the things that grieve us, we must approach them and face them all in the way in which the apostle instructs us.
What is his teaching? The first thing he does is to lay down a great principle, which is that we must understand why these things happen to us. That is the first thing and how often do we need to say this to ourselves and to one another. I sometimes think that the whole art of the Christian life is the art of asking questions. Our danger is just to allow things to happen to us and to endure them without saying anything apart from a groan, a grumble or a complaint. The thing to do is to discover, if we can, why these things are taking place. To try to discover the explanation, and in this connection the apostle uses the following terms. ‘Wherein,’ he says, ‘ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season if need be. . . .’ ‘If need be!’ Ah, that is the secret. What does he mean by that phrase? There is no uncertainty about the answer to that. It is a conditional statement, which you can translate if you like: ‘though now for a season if such proves needful’. ‘If such proves needful.’ It is not merely a general statement to the effect that in a world like this these things must happen. It is much stronger than that. He does not say: ‘Well, you are greatly rejoicing in this blessed hope though in a world like this you may have to endure certain things’. That is all right, that is perfectly true; but the apostle does not merely leave it at that. His is a positive statement. He says: ‘You are at the moment enduring this grief, because it has proved needful for you that you should do so’. Now, there then, is our principle; there is a definite purpose in all this. This does not happen accidentally, this is not something that just takes place because of the whole organization of life. That does come into it, but it is not the main reason. These things happen, says the apostle, because they are good for us, because they are part of our discipline in this life and in this world, because—let me put it quite plainly—because God has appointed it.
That is the apostle’s doctrine as it is the doctrine of the whole of the New Testament, and as it certainly is the doctrine of the saints of the centuries. In other words, we must look at the Christian life in this way. We are walking through this world under the eye of our Heavenly Father. That is the fundamental thing, the Christian must think of himself as in a pecular relationship to God. This is not true of any one who is not a Christian. There is a very definite plan and purpose for the whole of my life, God has looked upon me, God has adopted me and put me into His family. What for? In order that He may bring me to perfection. That is His objective—‘that ye may be made (more and more) conformable to the image of His dear Son’. That is what He is doing. The Lord Jesus Christ is bringing many sons unto God, saying: ‘Behold I and the children that Thou hast given me’. If we do not start with that fundamental conception of ourselves as Christians, we are bound to go astray, and we are certain to misunderstand these things.
The doctrine of the Scriptures is, at the very lowest, that God permits these things to happen to us. I go further, God at times orders these things to happen to us for our good. He may do it sometimes in order to chastise us. He chastises us for our slackness and for our failure. We were looking in the previous chapter at the failure of the Christian to discipline himself. Peter exhorts the Christians to discipline themselves, to add to their faith, to furnish out their faith, not merely to be content with a bare minimum but to let it be a full-orbed faith. We may not pay heed to that exhortation, we may persist in our slackness and in our indolence. Well, as I understand the New Testament doctrine, if we do that we must not be surprised if things begin to happen to us. We must not be surprised if God begins to chastise us. The argument in Hebrews 12 is as strong as this: ‘Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth’. If you have not known chastisement I doubt whether you have ever been a Christian. If you can say that since you have believed you have never had any trouble at all, your experience is probably psychological and not spiritual. There is a realism about Christianity, as I said at the beginning and it goes so far as to teach that God, for our good, will chastise us if we pay no heed to the exhortations and the appeals of the Scripture. God has other methods also. He does not do these things to those who are outside the family, but if they are His children He will chastise them for their own good. So we may be experiencing manifold trials as a part of our chastisement. I am not saying it is inevitable, I say it may be so.
But then sometimes God does this to us to prepare us for something. It is a rule of the Scriptures, and a rule which is confirmed by and exemplified in the long history of the Church and her saints, that when God has a particularly great task for a. man to perform, He generally does try him. I care not which biography you pick up, you may take the life of any man who has been signally used by God and you will find that there has been a severe time of testing and of trial in his experience. It is as if God would not dare to use such a man unless He could be certain and sure of him. So one may have to pass through this kind of experience because of some great task ahead. Look at Joseph, and at the things that happened to him. Can you imagine a more dismal kind of life. Everybody seemed to be against him. His own brethren were jealous of him and got rid of him. He was taken to Egypt and there people turned against him. He had done nothing wrong but because he was what he was things went against him. But in all this God was only preparing the man for the great position that He had in store for him. And it is the same with all the great men of the Bible. Look at the suffering of a man like David. Indeed look at any one of them and you will find that their lives were full of trials and difficulties. The Apostle Paul was no exception. Look at the list of his sufferings and trials in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, chapters 11 and 12. It has always happened like that.
It seems also from the teaching of the Scriptures and the lives of saints, that God sometimes prepares a man for a great trial in this way. I mean that He prepares him for a great trial by giving him some lesser trials. It is there that I see the love of God shining out so gloriously. There are certain great trials that come in life, and it would be a terrible thing for people suddenly to be plunged into a great trial from the undisturbed and even tenor of their ways. So God sometimes, in His tenderness and love, sends lesser trials to prepare us for the greater ones. ‘If need be’—if such proves needful, if God, in looking upon us as our Father, sees that this is just what we need at that moment. So we start with this great principle, that God sees and knows what is best for us and what is needful. We do not see, but God always does, and, as our Heavenly Father, He sees the need and He prescribes the appropriate trial which is destined for our good.
But let us come to the second principle which is the precious character of faith. Peter says in the seventh verse that these things had happened—these manifold temptations—in order ‘that the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ’. How important this is—the precious character of faith. He brings that out in his comparison with gold. Look at gold, he says in effect, Gold is precious but not as precious as faith. How does he establish that? He shows that gold is something that ultimately is going to vanish. It is only temporary, there is nothing permanent about it, though it is wonderful and very precious. But faith is eternal. Gold perishes but faith does not. Faith is something that is everlasting and eternal. The thing by which you live, says the apostle, is the thing which accounts for your being in the Christian life. You are in this faith position and you do not realize, he continues, what a marvellous and wonderful thing it is. We walk by faith, the whole of our life is a matter of faith, and you see, says the apostle, this is so precious in the sight of God, it is so marvellous, it is so wonderful that God wants it to be absolutely pure. You purify your gold by means of fire. You get rid of the alloy and all the impurities by putting gold in the crucible and applying great heat to it, and so these other things are removed and the gold remains. His argument, therefore, is that if you do that with gold that perishes, how much more does it need to be done with faith. Faith is this extraordinary principle which links man to God; faith is this thing that keeps a man from hell and puts him in heaven; it is the connection between this world and the world to come; faith is this mystic astounding thing that can take a man dead in trespasses and sins and make him live as a new being, a new man in Christ Jesus. That is why it is so precious. It is so precious that God wants it to be absolutely perfect. That is the apostle’s argument. So you are in these manifold temptations because of the character of faith.
But let me put that in a slightly different form. Our faith, we see, needs to be perfected. There must therefore be degrees of faith. There are differences in the quality of faith. Faith is many-sided. There is generally at the beginning a good deal of admixture in what we call our faith; there is a good deal of the flesh that we are not aware of. And as we begin to learn these things, and as we go on with the process, God puts us through His testing times. He tests us by trials as if by fire in order that the things which do not belong to the essence of faith may fall off. We may think that our faith is perfect and that we can stand up against anything. Then suddenly a trial comes and we find that we fail. Why? Well that is just an indication that the trust element in our faith needs to be developed; and God develops the trust element in our faith by trying us in this way. The more we experience these things, the more we learn to trust God. We naturally trust Him when He is smiling on us, but a day comes when the clouds are blackening the heavens and we begin to wonder whether God loves us any longer and whether the Christian life is what we thought it to be. Ah, our faith had not developed the element of trust, and God so deals with us in this life as to bring us to trust Him in the dark when we can see no light at all, and to bring us to the point where we can confidently say:
‘When all things seem against us,
To drive us to despair,
We know one gate is open
One ear will hear our prayer’.
That is true faith, that is real trust. Look at a man like Abraham. God had so dealt with him that he could ‘hope against hope’. He trusted God absolutely when every appearance was to the contrary. And that needs to be developed in us. We do not start like that, but as we go through these experiences we find that ‘behind a frowning providence He hides a Father’s face’, and the next time the trials come we remain calm and collected. We can say: ‘Yes, I know, I do not see the sun but I know it is there. I know that behind tire clouds the Face of God is looking upon me’. It is by means of these trials that that element of trust is developed.
It is exactly the same with the element of patience or patient endurance, the sheer capacity to go on and to keep on in spite of discouragement. That is one of the greatest tests a Christian can ever have. We are not patient by nature. We start as children in the Christian life and we want everything at once, and if it does not come, we become impatient and grumble, we complain and we sulk like children. That is because we are lacking in patience and patient endurance. There is nothing more emphasized in the New Testament Epistles than this quality of just keeping on whether things go well with us or not. We are to go on saying: ‘God knows what is best for me, I will trust in God’. ‘Even though He slay me yet will I trust Him.’ That is patient endurance, keeping on, and it is as we are tried and tested that all these other elements which go to furnish out our faith become developed and are perfected.
Let me then put it in a final general principle in this form. These trials are essential, says Peter, in order to show the genuineness of our faith. His actual phrase is—‘that the trial of your faith’. Now ‘trial’ there means ‘the attestation of it’. The picture he has in his mind is of a test being applied to something, and then after it has been tested a certificate is given. For instance the report on a ring might be, ‘Yes, it is 18 carat gold’. That is what is meant by trial. He is not interested in the process as such; trial is the certificate of attestation, declaring the genuineness of our faith. The approved character of our faith is thus manifested. That is why these things happen to us.
Surely this is quite obvious. It is the way in which we endure trials that really certifies our faith. You remember how our Lord, in the parable of the sower depicts the seed falling amongst thorps. There seemed to be a marvellous harvest coming but it did not come because these other things choked the Word. Our Lord interprets that as being comparable to the way in which trials come and crush and choke the Word so that it never comes to fruition. At first it seems so wonderful, but it does not last. The trials prove that it was a spurious faith, that it was not a real faith, not a genuine faith. There is nothing which so certifies the genuineness of a man’s faith as his patience and his patient endurance, his keeping on steadily in spite of everything. That is the teaching of our Lord, and it is the teaching of the whole of the New Testament.
There is nothing that is so wonderful in the life of the greatest saints as just that, the way in which they stood like rocks when others fell away round and about them. It is the glorious story of the Martyrs and the great Confessors. They had trials, but they just stood on what they knew to be God’s truth without regard to the consequences, and they went on with their faith shining out gloriously. Now these things are happening to you, says Peter, that the genuineness of your faith may be perfectly evident to all. Christians that fall away are no recommendation; those who start well but who do not continue disgrace the faith. The thing that shows the difference between the spurious and the real is the capacity to stand the test ‘All that glitters is not gold’. How do you prove it? You put your material in a crucible and you put a flame underneath. You find that dross will burn while the gold remains, and is purer than it was before. These things happen to us in order that the genuineness of our faith may be revealed. That is the most important thing after all.
Let me add just a word on what Peter says for our encouragement. Let me remind you of it. What is the consolation? It is that although these things happen to us, yet they only happen ‘for a season’. ‘Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season if need be.’ Do not get the impression that I am teaching that this state of trial is the perpetual condition of the Christian. It is not. These things come and go as God deems fit. We shall never be tried and tested except it be for our good, and as we respond to the teaching, God will withdraw the test. He does not keep us permanently under trial. As Whitefield said, these things alternate, and God knows exactly how to send them and when. And we can be sure with the Apostle Paul, that: ‘There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape that ye may be able to bear it’ (1 Corinthians 10.13). He is your loving Father, He knows how much you can take and stand. He will never send too much for you. He knows the right amount, and He will give the right amount, and when you have responded He will withdraw it. It is only ‘for a season’. Do these words come to some downcast, heavy-laden Christian? Does all seem blackness and darkness? Are you not having the liberty you once had in prayer? Have you almost lost the faith you once had? Do not be troubled. You are in the hand of your Father. There may be a glorious period coming for you, He may have some unusual blessing for you, He may have some great work for you to do. Do not be downcast, it is only ‘for a season’. You are in the hands of your loving Father, so trust Him and go on. Keep on and say: ‘I am content only to be in Thy hands. “Only to do Thy will, my will shall be”.’
The second thing is this. As you are experiencing this heaviness, remind yourself also of the things ‘wherein ye greatly rejoice’. Now that is something you and I have to do. The trouble is that when these trials come we tend to see nothing but the trials, or nothing but clouds. At such a time just go back to the third verse of this chapter. When you can see nothing at all just open your Scriptures and start reading this. Though you see nothing but darkness at the moment, read this and say: ‘ “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ”. I know that is always true’. ‘Which according to His abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time’. Remind yourself of that and say: ‘Yes, these things are happening, these trials are falling around me thick and fast. They are coming from all directions, but I will not sit down under them and say “alas, alack”, I will stand up rather and say: “I know God is good, I know Christ died for me, I know I belong to God, I know my inheritance is in heaven, I cannot see it now but I know it is there, I know God is keeping it and that no one will ever take it out of His mighty hands”.’ Say that to yourself. Remind yourself of the things in which you greatly rejoice, though now for a season if need be you are in manifold temptations.
Then go on to the ultimate statement which is this—‘That the trial of your faith being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ’. It is coming, I know not when, but I know it is coming—‘the day of Jesus Christ’—and I shall be there. I know therefore that all that happens to me in this life and world has that as its ultimate objective. It is going to be a ‘great day’. You remember how Paul in writing about preachers—himself and Apollos and others in 1 Corinthians 3 says that every man is building upon a foundation. Some are building with hay and wood and stubble; others are building very carefully with solid material and, says Paul, ‘the day will declare it’. Every man’s work shall be tried and tried by fire. There is a great deal that is going to go up in smoke. ‘The day will declare it.’ ‘The day’ will declare who has been building solidly and who has been rushing up his building with shoddy material. ‘It is all right,’ says Paul, ‘with me it is a very small things that I am judged of you or of any man’s judgment, yea, I judge not my own self’. He has committed the judgment to God and he knows that a declaration will be made on the day of the revelation of Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 4.1-5).
That, says Peter, that is the thing to look forward to. When the great day comes, the genuineness of your faith will be made manifest. There will be praise and honour and glory. Your little faith, the faith you think is so little, will stand out as something tremendous. It has stood the test and it is going to minister unto ‘praise and honour and glory’. Whose honour and praise and glory? First of all His. I have used the quotation already. The Lord Jesus Christ says: ‘Here am I and the children that Thou hast given Me’. He will stand at that great day and look with a sense of satisfaction at Christian people, those whom He called. They have passed through great tribulation, but they have stood the test, they have not faltered, He will look at them and He will be proud of them. They will be to His glory and praise and honour at the great day that is coming.
But it will also be to our honour and glory and praise, yours and mine. We shall share in that glory, and we shall hear Him praising us and saying: ‘Well done, thou good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord’. He will clothe us with His own glory and we shall spend our eternity enjoying it with Him: and the greater and the more genuine our faith the greater will our glory be. ‘We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ and give an account of the deeds done in the body’ (2 Corinthians 5.10). There is to be a judgment of rewards, and it is according to our faith, and the way it has stood the test, that we shall be rewarded.
We may be in heaviness through many temptations and trials at this present time, and we may be weeping as we go along. It does not matter. We are promised that the day will come when ‘the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne . . . shall lead us unto living fountains of water’ and that God Himself ‘shall wipe away all tears from our eyes’, and we shall be with Him in glory everlasting,
That is the Christian way of facing trials. Thank God we are in His hands. It is His way of salvation and not ours. Let us submit ourselves to God, let us be content to be in His hands, and let us say to Him: Send what Thou wilt, our only concern is that we may ever be well-pleasing in Thy sight.