Acts 14:22

TRIAL, A HELP HEAVENWARD

‘That we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God.’

Acts 14:22

There are few things in the spiritual history of the child of God more really helpful heavenward than sanctified trial. He treads no path in which he finds aids more favourable to advancement in the Divine life, circumstances which more contribute to the development and completeness of Christian character—the teaching, the quickening, the purifying—than the path of hallowed sorrow—sorrow which a covenant God has sent, which grace sanctifies, and which knits the heart to Christ.

I. Trial is a time of spiritual instruction, and so a help heavenward. It is not blindly, but intelligently, that we walk in the ways of the Lord, and are travelling home to God. Great stress is laid by the Holy Ghost in the writings of the Apostle upon the believer’s advance in spiritual knowledge. St. Paul ‘counted all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus his Lord.’ Now the school of trial is the school of spiritual knowledge.

(a) We grow in a knowledge of ourselves, learning more of our superficial attainments, shallow experience and limited grace. We learn, too, more of our weakness, emptiness, and vileness, the ploughshare of trial penetrating deep into the heart, and throwing up its veiled iniquity.

(b) Trial, too, increases our acquaintance with Christ. We know more of the Lord Jesus through one sanctified affliction than by all the treatises the human pen ever wrote. Christ is only savingly known as He is known personally and experimentally. Books cannot teach Him, sermons cannot teach Him, lectures cannot teach Him; they may aid our information and correct our views, but to know Him as He is, and as we ought, we must have personal dealings with Him.

II. Trial quickens us in prayer, and so effectually helps us heavenward. God often sends affliction for the accomplishment of this one end—that we might be stirred up to take hold of Him. To whom in sorrow do we turn, to whom in difficulty do we repair, to whom in want do we fly but to the Lord? If in prosperity we have ‘grown fat and kicked,’ if when the sun has shone upon us we have walked independently and proudly and distantly, now that affliction has overtaken us we are humbled and prostrate at His feet; retrace our steps, return to God, and find a new impulse given to, and a new power and meetness and soothing in, communion with God.

III. Trials are necessary to wean us from the world.—Perhaps nothing possesses so detaching, divorcing an effect in the experience of the Christian as affliction. The world is a great snare to the child of God. Its rank is a snare, its possessions are a snare, its honours are a snare, its enterprises are a snare, the very duties and engagements of daily life are a snare, to a soul whose citizenship is in heaven. When the heart is chastened and subdued by sorrow, when the soul is smitten and humbled by adversity, when death bereaves, or sickness invades, or resources narrow, or calamity in one of its many crushing forms lights heavily upon us, how solemn, earnest, and distinct is the voice of our ascended Redeemer, ‘If ye be risen with Me, seek those things which are above, where I sit at the right hand of God. Set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth. I am your Treasure, your Portion, your All.’

IV. The moral purity of heart which chastened trial produces must have a distinct and prominent place in this enumeration of helps heavenward. Holiness, as it is an essential element of heaven, becomes an essential element in our spiritual meetness for its enjoyment. To this end let us welcome God’s purifying agent—sanctified trial. When He causes us to walk in the midst of trouble, let us be submissive, humble, obedient. Resignation to the Divine will secures the end God intends to accomplish—our personal and deeper holiness.

—Rev. Dr. Octavius Winslow.

Illustration

‘Jesus,’ tis my aim divine,

Hence to have no will but Thine;

Let me covenant with Thee,

Thine for evermore to be:

This my prayer, and this alone,

Saviour, let Thy will be done!

Thee to love, to live to Thee,

This my daily portion be;

Nothing to my Lord I give,

But from Him I first receive:

Lord, for me Thy blood was spilt,

Lead me, guide me, as Thou wilt.

All that is opposed to Thee,

Howsoever dear it be,

From my heart the idol tear,

Thou shalt have no rival there;

Only Thou shalt fill the throne:

Saviour, let Thy will be done.

Wilt Thou, Lord, in me fulfil

All the pleasure of Thy will;

Thine in life, and Thine in death,

Thine in every fleeting breath,

Thou my hope and joy alone:

Saviour, let Thy will be done.’