MANY books have been written and many sermons have been preached and much discussion has taken place upon the subject of the afflictions and trials of those who truly fear the name of the Lord. And no doubt profit, edification and relief have been afforded the children of God thereby, in many cases, by the divine blessing. Of course, all doctrine, teaching, counsel, direction and encouragement of a Gospel and spiritual nature, which ministers comfort and relief to a believer in trouble, is based upon and derived from the Word of God, of which David writes: “This is my comfort in my affliction: for thy Word hath quickened me” (Psalm cix. 50). This subject of the child of God in trouble is wide, varied and complex as we survey the experiences of such throughout the Holy Scriptures; and truly, “Many are the afflictions of the righteous” (Psalm xxxiv. 19).
Now among the many afflictions to which they are liable is a falling into doubt and questioning as to whether they, after all, possess a spiritual and saving relationship to the Lord, which they humbly thought they had.
This is indeed a severe, heavy and trying trouble which may take hold of an exercised and sensitive Christian, as in the case of Heman the Ezrahite, who records in the 88th Psalm his experience as follows: “Let my prayer come before thee: incline thine ear unto my cry; For my soul is full of troubles; and my life draweth nigh unto the grave. I am counted with them that go down into the pit: I am as a man that hath no strength. . . . Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the deeps. Thy wrath lieth hard upon me, and Thou hast afflicted me with all thy waves. Selah.” (v. 2-7.) And Heman writes much more to the same effect in this same Psalm, “containing a grievous complaint.” He further asks one sad question after another of the Lord, such as, “Lord, why castest thou off my soul?” (v. 14). But we see that Heman however full of trouble in soul and exercised
with many questions regarding his relationship to the Lord, has his face set toward the Lord, whom he addresses as the “God of my salvation,” and to whom he cries and prays in his anguish. The same was true of Jonah, who found himself in his experience in the belly of hell, with all the Lord’s billows and waves passing over him, and he himself crying to the Lord, “I am cast out of thy sight” (Jonah chap. 2), and he relates that his soul fainted within him (v. 7). Yet Jonah in the midst of desolation, darkness and distress, in his affliction, reveals the life of grace in his soul, inasmuch as that he “remembered the Lord,” and resolved, “I will look again toward thy holy temple,” and he says, “I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the Lord.” And so, however desperate Jonah’s case and felt experience was for a time, he ultimately declares his faith in these words “Salvation is of the Lord” (chap. 2); and these are not the words of a hypocrite or a reprobate, but of a child of God, albeit Jonah had been a disobedient prophet.
What may occasion the child of God experiencing such trouble is a relevant and pertinent question. There is the matter of backsliding, even in the heart; the powerful temptations of Satan; the fear of man which bringeth a snare; and a being unwatchful and restraining prayer, etc. And the Lord corrects his people with rods, spiritual rods at times; and in other cases when He sends or permits temporal afflictions, under these, the child of God may fall into questioning his interest in the love of God in Christ, by despising or lacking proper appreciation of the nature and value of the chastening of the Lord, who declares, “As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten; be zealous therefore and repent” (Rev. iii. 19).
But whatever trouble, trial or temptation the children of God may experience, the Lord will not leave them to be afflicted more than they are able to bear. “But God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.” (I. Cor. x. 13.) The fact is, from the holy doctrine of the Word of God and the Gospel of Christ and salvation, that they who have once tasted that the Lord is gracious, by faith in the redeeming blood of Jesus Christ, are embraced in the declaration of their Redeemer and Lord who says: “I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any pluck them out of my hand. My Father which gave them me, is greater than all, and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand.” (John x. 28, 29.) Nothing can separate them from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord; although hardness of heart, unbelief and Satan are capable of depriving them of the sensible enjoyment of the consolation which belongs to the child of God, in Christ and His love, fellowship and bowels of mercy, for periods here in the world. Thus, what need the believer has of being “kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” (I. Peter i. 5.)