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This month I would like to share something that has been heavy on my heart for the past several weeks. It has to do with suffering. Recently I finished two DVDs for the late Roger Bennett and with that came much reflecting over the times I have shared with him through the past nine years. Roger was sick for 11-1/2 years. I simply cannot put myself in his position and understand what he and his family had to deal with. Although, I am no stranger to pain and I doubt anyone that is reading this is.

I read the following writing by Oswald Chambers for the first time on the hardest day in my life to date. It was June 25, 2004. It is taken from My Utmost For His Highest:

RECEIVING ONE'S SELF IN THE FIRES OF SORROW
"What shall I say? Father, save me, from this hour? But for this cause came I unto this hour. Father, glorify Thy name." John 12:27-29 (R.V.)

My attitude as a saint to sorrow and difficulty is not to ask that they may be prevented, but to ask that I may preserve the self God created me to be through every fire of sorrow. Our Lord received Himself in the fire of sorrow, He was saved not from the hour, but out of the hour.

We say that there ought to be no sorrow, but there is sorrow, and we have to receive ourselves in its fires. If we try and evade sorrow, refuse to lay our account with it, we are foolish. Sorrow is one of the biggest facts in life; it is no use saying sorrow ought not to be. Sin and sorrow and suffering are, and it is not for us to say that God has made a mistake in allowing them.

Sorrow burns up a great amount of shallowness, but it does not always make a man better. Suffering either gives me my self or it destroys my self. You cannot receive your self in success, you lose your head; you cannot receive your self in monotony, you grouse. The way to find yourself is in the fires of sorrow. Why it should be so is another matter, but that it is so is true in the Scriptures and in human experience. You always know the man who has been through the fires of sorrow and received himself, you are certain you can go to him in trouble and find that he has ample leisure for you. If a man has not been through the fires of sorrow, he is apt to be contemptuous, he has no time for you. If you receive yourself in the fires of sorrow, God will make you nourishment for other people.

Reader Comments

That was beautiful.To bad God didn't heal Roger.We'll miss him.
Skull

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