“Now thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ” (2 Cor. 2:14).

God gets His greatest victories out of apparent defeats. Very often the enemy seems to triumph for a little, and God lets it be so; but then He comes in and upsets all the work of the enemy, overthrows the apparent victory, and as the Bible says, “turns the way of the wicked upside down.” Thus He gives a great deal larger victory than we would have known if He had not allowed the enemy, seemingly, to triumph in the first place.

The story of the three Hebrew children being cast into the fiery furnace is a familiar one. Here was an apparent victory for the enemy. It looked as if the servants of the living God were going to have a terrible defeat. We have all been in places where it seemed as though we were defeated, and the enemy rejoiced. We can imagine what a complete defeat this looked to be. They fell down into the flames, and their enemies watched them to see them burn up in that awful fire, but were greatly astonished to see them walking around in the fire enjoying themselves. Nebuchadnezzar told them to “come forth out of the midst of the fire.” Not even a hair was singed, nor was the smell of fire on their garments, “because there is no other god that can deliver after this sort.”

This apparent defeat resulted in a marvelous victory.

Suppose that these three men had lost their faith and courage, and had complained, saying, “Why did not God keep us out of the furnace!” They would have been burned, and God would not have been glorified. If there is a great trial in your life today, do not own it as a defeat, but continue, by faith, to claim the victory through Him who is able to make you more than conqueror, and a glorious victory will soon be apparent. Let us learn that in all the hard places God brings us into, He is making opportunities for us to exercise such faith in Him as will bring about blessed results and greatly glorify His name.
–Life of Praise

The following is written by Ray Pritchard, of Keep Believing Ministries: A friend asked for my thoughts on living with no regrets. To me it’s all about direction. A few years ago the Lord gave me a set of  sayings that I call the First Law of Spiritual Progress:

I can’t go back.
I can’t stay here.
I must go forward.

In truth, there is no such thing as a life lived with no regrets in the literal sense because we all fall short in many ways. Only Jesus truly could say “It is  finished” and know that he had perfectly completed all that God had for him to do. The rest of us will struggle with a sense of failure, of jobs left undone, of projects uncompleted, of dreams unfulfilled, of steps not taken, or roads not traveled, or decisions made that now seem like wrong choices. I see no way to escape this. 

The question then becomes, what will we do with our failures? If we let them shape us, our failures will dominate us forever. Or we can resolve to believe that in Jesus Christ, we can always make a new start with the Lord.

So the key is to say, “I won’t go back. I’m not going to live in the past. I won’t let my yesterdays define who I  am today. And I can’t stay here because life is like a river that rolls ever onward. By God’s grace, I will go forward, one day at a time, one  step at a time, trusting God to lead me, following the Lord to best  of my ability, believing that with Christ, the  best is always yet to come.”

In the spiritual life, direction makes all the  difference. It’s not where we’ve been but where we’re going that matters.

“And there arose a great storm” ( Mark 4:37 ).

Some of the storms of life come suddenly: a great sorrow, a bitter disappointment, a crushing defeat. Some come slowly. They appear upon the ragged edges of the horizon no larger than a man’s hand, but, trouble that seems so insignificant spreads until it covers the sky and overwhelms us.

Yet it is in the storm that God equips us for service. When God wants an oak He plants it on the moor where the storms will shake it and the rains will beat down upon it, and it is in the midnight battle with elements that the oak wins its rugged fibre and becomes the king of the forest.

When God wants to make a man He puts him into some storm. The history of manhood is always rough and rugged. No man is made until he has been out into the surge of the storm and found the sublime fulfillment of the prayer: “O God, take me, break me, make me.”

A Frenchman has painted a picture of universal genius. There stand orators, philosophers and martyrs, all who have achieved pre-eminence in any phase of life; the remarkable fact about the picture is this: Every man who is pre-eminent for his ability was first pre-eminent for suffering. In the foreground stands that figure of the man who was denied the promised land, Moses. Beside him is another, feeling his way — blind Homer. Milton is there, blind and heart-broken. Now comes the form of one who towers above them all. What is His characteristic? His Face is marred more than any man’s. The artist might have written under that great picture, “The Storm.”

The beauties of nature come after the storm. The rugged beauty of the mountain is born in a storm, and the heroes of life are the storm-swept and the battle-scarred.

You have been in the storms and swept by the blasts. Have they left you broken, weary, beaten in the valley, or have they lifted you to the sunlit summits of a richer, deeper, more abiding manhood and womanhood? Have they left you with more sympathy with the storm-swept and the battle-scarred? –Selected –From Streams in the Desert

And immediately the spirit driveth him into the wilderness.-Mark 1:12   It seems a strange proof of Divine favor that this would happen. Notice the word “immediately”. Immediately after what? After the opened heaven, the dove-like peace, and the voice of the Father saying,”Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” But, that isn’t an abnormal experience. Often our deepest depression comes just moments after our greatest blessings. One moment we are like the song-bird singing heartily to greet the new day, the next moment we think God has forgotten us.   As strange as it seems, the very suddenness of this change is a proof of God’s constant care for us. The word “immediately” is used for a reason. We wonder why the burden comes so soon after the blessing, so God shows us it is the sequel to the blessing. God shines His blessings on us to prepare us for the tough places, as Christ faced Gethsemane and Calvary. God lifts us up so we may receive strength to go further down. He illuminates us so He might send us into the darkness of night, that we may help the helpless.   We are prepared for the wilderness of difficulty only after we have experienced the blessing that comes from surrendering ourself to the Father’s will. It is only after we behold the favor of God, shown to us on behalf of Christ, that we are ready to tackle the trials and temptations that come our way.   NOTE: This article is a crude adaptation of an article written by George Matheson, in old English, many long years ago. H.D.S.

That no man should be moved by these afflictions: for yourselves know that we are appointed thereunto. For verily, when we were with you, we told you before that we should suffer tribulation; even as it came to pass, and ye know. (1 Thessalonians 3:3,4)

Here is a statement that is a little hard for any of us to swallow. Paul says that we should not be disturbed by “these afflictions,” that is, pressures and tensions. Then he makes the amazing statement that “we are appointed thereunto.” We know that we are going to go through storms. They will be temporary, but we cannot escape them. We are going to have trouble down here; the Word of God makes that very clear. Paul wants the Thessalonians to stand for the Lord in the midst of afflictions.

There are other passages of Scripture that teach this same truth. The Lord Jesus said, “These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). Tribulation is the trouble that all of us are going to have. There is no way around it. Yet the Lord Himself tells us to be of good cheer even in the midst of trouble.

If you are a believer, you are not going to escape trouble. To accept Christ does not mean to take out an insurance policy against suffering. The fact of the matter is that you will have trouble after you become a child of God, even if you haven’t had any trouble before. He has never promised that we would miss the storm, but we will go through all the storms of life. What He does say very definitely and dogmatically is that He will go with us through the storms and that we will reach the harbor. Any boat that He is in will not go to the bottom of the Sea of Galilee but will reach the other side. You and I are in the process of going to the other side.——-

I remember hearing about a congregation where the pastor asked for some favorite verses of Scripture. One man got up and said his favorite verse was, “And it came to pass.” He sat down, and everyone looked puzzled. The pastor asked him how in the world that could be his favorite passage. He answered, “When I get in trouble, I turn to where it says, ‘It came to pass,’ and I know my troubles came to pass. They didn’t come to stay.” God will bring us through the storms. We will finally be rid of all our troubles. How wonderful that is. (By J. Vernon McGee)