Courage To Go Forward No Matter What

“We also boast in tribulations, knowing that tribulation works endurance; and endurance, experience; and experience, hope; and hope does not make ashamed, because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit” (Romans 5:3-5).

To boast in tribulations we must take them from God’s hand as positive occasions of blessing, knowing that every trial comes from One who loves us, and that He loves us individually just as if each one monopolized all His love. We “keep [ourselves] in the love of God” (Jude 21) by realizing that these tribulations bring us a tide of blessing from Him.

Just think, if God had delivered the three Hebrew children before they were put into the fiery furnace, what should they have missed! One “like a son of God” walked with them there! (Dan. 3:25). Did they not then boast in that fiery trial? We too shall be able to boast in Him in that eternal day, for all that we have passed through with Him.

God teaches us that tribulations work endurance, but He would not have us to go through them with mere stoical endurance, without Him, trying to bear them by ourselves. He would have us sense that He has measured out the cup and will give us the power to drink it. He would teach us that the power to bear the burden of a trial is just as real a deliverance as if the burden were taken away!

When we successfully go through tribulation with God, there is a preciousness in this experience; we experience having felt His helping hand, and thus the reality of it. Surely this experience is worth the cost of the furnace!

The experience of His helping hand gives us a new ground for hope, and that hope is unlike any which rests upon the creature. Learning the heart of God toward us thus, we will have the courage to go forward no matter what happens.

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