“Is it well with thy husband? Is it well with the child? And she answered, It is well” (2 Kings 4:26).
Life is tough and our suffering can be great, but our God is more than able to keep us going. One of the best resources we have is the precious promises found in God’s Word. They can change our perspective and lift our spirits like nothing else can do. But, there is another source that is helpful— the testimony of the saints can be used of God to remind us of His greatness. Listen to these words from George Mueller:
For sixty-two years and five months I had a beloved wife, and now, in my ninety-second year I am left alone. But I turn to the ever present Jesus, as I walk up and down in my room, and say, “Lord Jesus, I am alone, and yet not alone–Thou art with me, Thou art my Friend. Now, Lord, comfort me, strengthen me, give to Thy poor servant everything Thou seest he needs.” And we should not be satisfied till we are brought to this, that we know the Lord Jesus Christ experimentally, habitually to be our Friend: at all times, and under all circumstances, ready to prove Himself to be our Friend.
The key to bearing up under adversity is submission. The more we resist and resent the difficulties that come our way the worse it gets. But, when we yield to the pressure we are better able to endure the suffering. Henry Ward Beecher wrote:Afflictions cannot injure when blended with submission.Ice breaks many a branch, and so I see a great many persons bowed down and crushed by their afflictions. But now and then I meet one that sings in affliction, and then I thank God for my own sake as well as his. There is no such sweet singing as a song in the night. You recollect the story of the woman who, when her only child died, in rapture looking up, as with the face of an angel, said, “I give you joy, my darling.” That single sentence has gone with me years and years down through my life, quickening and comforting me.
This little poem for Streams in the Desert helps put things in proper perspective:
“E’en for the dead I will not bind my soul to grief;
Death cannot long divide.
For is it not as though the rose that climbed my garden wall
Has blossomed on the other, side?
Death doth hide,
But not divide;
Thou art but on Christ’s other side!
Thou art with Christ, and Christ with me;
In Christ united still are we.”
