Being Satisfied in God

Excerpted from the "Me and Brooks" blog, as a reflection upon the following quote from Puritan Thomas Brooks...

all (our) afflictions, troubles, and trials shall work for (our) good ...  That scouring and rubbing, which frets others, shall make them shine the brighter; and that weight which crushes and keeps others under, shall but make them, like the palm tree, grow better and higher; and that hammer which knocks others all in pieces, shall but knock them the nearer to Christ, the corner stone.  Stars shine brightest in the darkest night; torches give the best light when beaten; grapes yield most wine when most pressed; spices smell sweetest when pounded; vines are the better for bleeding; gold looks the brighter for scouring; juniper smells sweetest in the fire; chamomile, the more you tread it the more you spread it...”

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"The question for us in trials is then, is this ‘good’ something we actually want? Do we actually want to be more righteous?

One of the ways our trials increase our righteousness is that troubles take away the gifts so we can better appreciate the Giver.  Afflictions rob us of our comfort, our ease, our peace, our health, our wealth and even our sense of security, but they never rob us of God.  They do us good by showing us that our existence is not as much about enjoying the benefits of God as it is about enjoying God Himself.  In a way, our lives are an unending, recurring replay of the second half of Romans 1.  We struggle to place more value on God than we do on the gifts that God gives us. We constantly slip into placing more worth on the creation than the Creator. When God brings afflictions into our lives it is precisely the opposite of the judgement of God ‘giving us up’ to our own way. Our troubles bring us back to face the question: is God alone enough for us?

When we are ‘scoured’ what gets rubbed off is only those things that should be. Our desires for the creation over the Creator get left in the rubble so that we will be rock solid in our satisfaction with God alone.  Afflictions lead us toward greater degrees of righteousness because afflictions lead us toward greater degrees of closeness to God. What this means is that the bedrock question is not, “Do we want to be more righteous?” but rather, “Do we want more of God?”  It will help us to want the ‘good’ that afflictions bring if we remember that righteousness is the path to enjoying more of God. In this way our afflictions are a way that God walks us away from the broken cisterns where we try to quench our thirst in vain and to the fountains of living water (Jeremiah 2:13). In this way our troubles are used to remove the scales from our eyes so that we can see the glory of the living God (Hebrews 12:14).

When you are under afflictions and find yourself grumbling, remind yourself that these afflictions are ‘good for you’... because they will be used by God to give you what is most valuable; that is, God himself.

"...men of the world, whose portion is in this life, And whose belly You fill with Your treasure... As for me, I shall behold Your face in righteousness; I will be satisfied with Your likeness when I awake."  [Psalm 17:15]"

[The entire post may be found here.]