The Beauty of Adversity
“But it ought to be a very encouraging truth regarding the characteristics of God, the attributes of God, for the believers to realize that there's no moment in our past that God hasn't been there. There will be no moment in our future that God will not be there. The truth that Christ promised us, ‘I'll never leave you nor forsake you,’ is true because God is eternal.”
— Anthony Mathenia, Behold Your God: The Weight of Majesty
John Flavel (1627–1691) was an English Puritan pastor, theologian, and author who faithfully preached and lived out the gospel. He was a vigorous and voluminous writer. Flavel wrote, “Either Christ will be to us all in all, or nothing at all.” Christ was truly ‘all’ to Flavel.
In John Flavel’s book, Keeping the Heart, he writes on how a Christian ought to keep his heart in a time of adversity:
When Providence frowns upon you, and blasts your outward comforts, then look to your heart; keep it with all diligence from repining against God, or fainting under his hand. For troubles, though sanctified, are troubles still. Jonah was a good man, and yet how fretful was his heart under affliction! Job was the mirror of patience, yet how was his heart discomposed by trouble! You will find it hard to get a composed spirit under great afflictions. O, the hurries and tumults which they occasion even in the best hearts. Let me show you, then, how a Christian under great afflictions may keep his heart from repining or desponding, under the hand of God.
I will here offer several helps to keep the heart in this condition:
By these cross providences, God is faithfully pursuing the great design of electing love upon the souls of his people, and orders all these afflictions as means sanctified to that end.
Afflictions come not by casualty, but by counsel. By this counsel of God they are ordained as means of much spiritual good to saints. “By this shall the iniquity of Jacob be purged,” and “But he for our profit,” and “All things work together for good,” etc. They are God’s workmen upon our hearts, to pull down the pride and carnal security of them. And being so, their nature is changed. They are turned into blessings and benefits. “It is good for me that I have been afflicted,” says David. Surely then thou hast no reason to quarrel with God, but rather to wonder that he should concern himself so much in thy good as to use any means for accomplishing it. Paul could bless God if by any means he might attain the resurrection of the dead.
“My brethren,” says James, “count it all joy when you fall into diverse temptations.” ‘My Father is about a design of love upon my soul, and do I well to be angry with him? All that he does is in pursuance of, and in reference to some eternal, glorious ends upon my soul. It is my ignorance of God’s design that makes me quarrel with him.’ He says to thee in this case, as he did to Peter, “What I do, thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter.”
Though God has reserved to himself a liberty of afflicting his people, yet he has tied up his own hands by promise never to take away his loving kindness from them.
Dost thou well to be discontent, when God has given thee the whole tree, with all the clusters of comfort growing on it, because he suffers the wind to blow down a few leaves?
Not a creature moves hand or tongue against thee but by his permission. Suppose the cup be bitter, yet it is the cup which thy Father hath given thee; and canst thou suspect poison to be in it? Foolish man, put home the case to thine own heart; canst thou give thy child that which would ruin him? No! thou wouldst as soon hurt thyself as him. “If thou then, being evil, knowest how to give good gifts to thy children,” how much more does God! The very consideration of his nature as a God of love, pity, and tender mercies or of his relation to thee as a father, husband, friend, may be security enough, if he had not spoken a word to quiet thee in this case. And yet you have his word too, by the prophet Jeremiah: “I will do you no hurt.” You lie too near his heart for him to hurt you; nothing grieves him more than your groundless and unworthy suspicions of his designs. Would it not grieve a faithful, tender-hearted physician, when he had studied the case of his patient, and prepared the most excellent medicines to save his life, to hear him cry out, ‘O he has undone me! he has poisoned me!’ because it pains him in the operation? O when will you be ingenuous?
God respects you as much in a low as in a high condition, and therefore it need not so much trouble you to be made low. Nay, he manifests more of his love, grace and tenderness in the time of affliction than in the time of prosperity.
As God did not at first choose you because you were high, he will not now forsake you because you are low. Men may look shy upon you, and alter their respects as your condition is altered; when Providence has blasted your estate, your summer-friends may grow strange, fearing you may be troublesome to them; but will God do so? No, no: “I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.” says he. If adversity and poverty could bar you from access to God, it were indeed a deplorable condition: but, so far from this, you may go to him as freely as ever. “My God will hear me,” says the church. Poor David, when stripped of all earthly comforts, could encourage himself in the Lord his God; and why cannot you? Suppose your husband or son had lost all at sea, and should come to you in rags; could you deny the relation, or refuse to entertain him? If you would not, much less will God. Why then are you so troubled?
Though your condition be changed, your Father’s love is not changed.
If you could but see how God in his secret counsel has exactly laid the whole plan of your salvation, even to the smallest means and circumstances; could you but discern the admirable harmony of divine dispensations, their mutual relations, together with the general respect they all have to the last end; had you liberty to make your own choice, you would, of all conditions in the world, choose that in which you now are.
Providence is like a curious piece of tapestry made of a thousand shreds, which, single, appear useless, but put together, they represent a beautiful history to the eye.