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Let them that suffer according to the will of God commit the keeping of
their souls to Him in well-doing. 1 Peter 4:19
To choose to suffer means that
there is something wrong; to choose God’s will even if it means suffering is
a very different thing. No healthy saint ever chooses suffering; he chooses
God’s will, as Jesus did, whether it means suffering or not. No saint dare
interfere with the discipline of suffering in another saint.
The saint who satisfies the
heart of Jesus will make other saints strong and mature for God. The people
who do us good are never those who sympathize with us, they always hinder,
because sympathy enervates. No one understands a saint but the saint who is
nearest to the Saviour. If we accept the sympathy of a saint, the reflex
feeling is—"Well, God is dealing hardly with me." That is why Jesus
said self-pity was of the devil (see Matthew 16:23). Be merciful to God’s
reputation. It is easy to blacken God’s character because God never answers
back, He never vindicates Himself. Beware of the thought that Jesus needed
sympathy in His earthly life; He refused sympathy from man because He knew
far too wisely that no one on earth understood what He was after. He took
sympathy from His Father only, and from the angels in heaven. (Cf. Luke
15:10)
Notice God’s unutterable waste of saints.
According to the judgment of the world, God plants His saints in the most
useless places. We say—"God intends me to be here because I am so useful."
God puts His saints where they will glorify Him, and we are no judges at all
of where that is.
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