WHY GOD ALLOWS SICKNESS & WEAKNESS IN HIS MINISTERS
Mysterious are the visitations of sickness. When the Lord is using a man for His glory, it is remarkable that He should suddenly smite him down and suspend his usefulness. It must be right, but the reason for it does not lie near the surface.
The sinner whose every act pollutes the society in which he moves is frequently permitted year after year to spend unabating vigor infecting all who approach him. No sickness removes him even for an hour from his deadly ministry. He is always at his post, energetic in his mission of destruction.
How is it that a heart eager for the welfare of men and the glory of God should find itself hampered by a sickly frame, and limited from its best usefulness by attacks of painful disease? We may ask the question (as long as we do so without murmuring), but who shall answer it for us?
Would it be good for us to have all things so ordered by God that we could see the reason for His every arrangement? Could the scheme of divine love be so supremely, infinitely, wise if we could measure it with our limited powers of reasoning? And would we not be as foolish and conceited as spoiled and over-petted children, if all things were arranged according to our judgment of what would be right and proper?
Ah, it is good to be thrown out of our depth and made to swim in the sweet waters of mighty love! We know that it is supremely blessed to be compelled to cease from self, to surrender both desire and judgment, and to lie passive in the hands of God.
It is of the utmost importance to us to be kept humble. Self-consciousness and self-importance make a hateful delusion, but one into which we fall as naturally as weeds grow on a dunghill. We cannot be used of the Lord, but that we also dream of personal greatness. We think ourselves almost indispensable to the church; pillars of the cause, and foundations of the temple of God!
We are nothings and nobodies, but that we think otherwise is very evident, for as soon as we are put on the shelf, we begin anxiously to enquire, 'How will the work go on without me?' The fly on the coach wheel may just as well enquire, 'How will the mails be carried without me?'
Far better men have been laid in the grave without the Lord's work having been brought to a standstill, and shall we fume and fret, because for a short season, we must lie upon the bed of languishing? If we were laid aside only when it was obvious that our services could be spared, then there would be no jolt to our pride, but to weaken our strength at the precise moment when our presence seems most needed is the surest way to teach us that we are not essential to God's work, and that even when we are most needed, He can easily do without us. If this be the practical lesson, the rough schooling may be easily endured, for surely it is desirable beyond all things that self should be kept low and the Lord alone magnified.
May not severe discipline fall to the lot of some to qualify them for their office of under-shepherds? How can we speak with consoling authority to a situation which we have never known? The complete pastor's life will be an epitome of the lives of his people, and they will turn to his preaching, as men do to David's psalms, to see themselves and their sorrows, as in a mirror. Their needs will be the reason for his griefs.
As in the case of the Lord Himself, perfect equipment for His work came only through suffering, and so must it be for those who are called to follow Him in binding up the broken-hearted, and loosing the prisoners.
Souls still remain in our churches to whose deep and dark experiences we shall never be able to minister till we also have been plunged in the abyss where all Jehovah's waves roll over our heads. If this be the fact - and we are sure it is - then may we heartily welcome anything which will make us fitter channels of blessing. For the elect's sake, it shall be joy to endure all things, and to bear a part of - 'that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for His body's sake, which is the church'.
It may be, alas, that there are different and far more humiliating causes for our bodily afflictions! The Lord may see in us that which grieves Him and provokes Him to use the rod. 'Show me wherefore Thou contendest with me', should be the prompt petition of the believer's heart. 'Is there not a cause?'
It can never be superfluous to humble ourselves and institute self-examination, for even if we walk in our integrity and can lift up our face without shame in this matter concerning great sin, yet our shortcomings and omissions must cause us to blush. How much holier we out to have been, and might have been! How much more prevalently we might have prayed! With how much more unction we might have preached! Here is endless room for tender confession before the Lord.
Yet it is not good to attribute each sickness and trial to some actual fault, as though we were under the law, or could be punished again for those sins which Jesus bore in His own body on the tree. It would be ungenerous to others if we looked upon the greatest sufferer as necessarily the greatest sinner. Everyone knows that it would be unjust so to judge our fellow-Christians, and therefore we shall be very unwise if we apply so erroneous a rule to ourselves and morbidly condemn ourselves when God condemns not.
Just now, when anguish fills the heart, and the spirits are bruised with sore pain and travail, it is not the best time for forming a candid judgment of our own condition, or of anything else. Let the judging faculty yield to good sense, and let us with tears of loving confession throw ourselves upon our Father's bosom, and looking up into His face believe that He loves us with all His infinite heart. 'Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him,' shall be our one unvarying determination, and may the eternal Spirit work in us a perfect acquiescence in the whole will of God, whatever that may be.
--by C.H. Spurgeon, edited by Bert Craft, taken from an article entitled, "Laid Aside--Why?," out of the book, "The Suffering Letters of C.H. Spurgeon," published by Wakeman Trust, London.
The sinner whose every act pollutes the society in which he moves is frequently permitted year after year to spend unabating vigor infecting all who approach him. No sickness removes him even for an hour from his deadly ministry. He is always at his post, energetic in his mission of destruction.
How is it that a heart eager for the welfare of men and the glory of God should find itself hampered by a sickly frame, and limited from its best usefulness by attacks of painful disease? We may ask the question (as long as we do so without murmuring), but who shall answer it for us?
Would it be good for us to have all things so ordered by God that we could see the reason for His every arrangement? Could the scheme of divine love be so supremely, infinitely, wise if we could measure it with our limited powers of reasoning? And would we not be as foolish and conceited as spoiled and over-petted children, if all things were arranged according to our judgment of what would be right and proper?
Ah, it is good to be thrown out of our depth and made to swim in the sweet waters of mighty love! We know that it is supremely blessed to be compelled to cease from self, to surrender both desire and judgment, and to lie passive in the hands of God.
It is of the utmost importance to us to be kept humble. Self-consciousness and self-importance make a hateful delusion, but one into which we fall as naturally as weeds grow on a dunghill. We cannot be used of the Lord, but that we also dream of personal greatness. We think ourselves almost indispensable to the church; pillars of the cause, and foundations of the temple of God!
We are nothings and nobodies, but that we think otherwise is very evident, for as soon as we are put on the shelf, we begin anxiously to enquire, 'How will the work go on without me?' The fly on the coach wheel may just as well enquire, 'How will the mails be carried without me?'
Far better men have been laid in the grave without the Lord's work having been brought to a standstill, and shall we fume and fret, because for a short season, we must lie upon the bed of languishing? If we were laid aside only when it was obvious that our services could be spared, then there would be no jolt to our pride, but to weaken our strength at the precise moment when our presence seems most needed is the surest way to teach us that we are not essential to God's work, and that even when we are most needed, He can easily do without us. If this be the practical lesson, the rough schooling may be easily endured, for surely it is desirable beyond all things that self should be kept low and the Lord alone magnified.
May not severe discipline fall to the lot of some to qualify them for their office of under-shepherds? How can we speak with consoling authority to a situation which we have never known? The complete pastor's life will be an epitome of the lives of his people, and they will turn to his preaching, as men do to David's psalms, to see themselves and their sorrows, as in a mirror. Their needs will be the reason for his griefs.
As in the case of the Lord Himself, perfect equipment for His work came only through suffering, and so must it be for those who are called to follow Him in binding up the broken-hearted, and loosing the prisoners.
Souls still remain in our churches to whose deep and dark experiences we shall never be able to minister till we also have been plunged in the abyss where all Jehovah's waves roll over our heads. If this be the fact - and we are sure it is - then may we heartily welcome anything which will make us fitter channels of blessing. For the elect's sake, it shall be joy to endure all things, and to bear a part of - 'that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for His body's sake, which is the church'.
It may be, alas, that there are different and far more humiliating causes for our bodily afflictions! The Lord may see in us that which grieves Him and provokes Him to use the rod. 'Show me wherefore Thou contendest with me', should be the prompt petition of the believer's heart. 'Is there not a cause?'
It can never be superfluous to humble ourselves and institute self-examination, for even if we walk in our integrity and can lift up our face without shame in this matter concerning great sin, yet our shortcomings and omissions must cause us to blush. How much holier we out to have been, and might have been! How much more prevalently we might have prayed! With how much more unction we might have preached! Here is endless room for tender confession before the Lord.
Yet it is not good to attribute each sickness and trial to some actual fault, as though we were under the law, or could be punished again for those sins which Jesus bore in His own body on the tree. It would be ungenerous to others if we looked upon the greatest sufferer as necessarily the greatest sinner. Everyone knows that it would be unjust so to judge our fellow-Christians, and therefore we shall be very unwise if we apply so erroneous a rule to ourselves and morbidly condemn ourselves when God condemns not.
Just now, when anguish fills the heart, and the spirits are bruised with sore pain and travail, it is not the best time for forming a candid judgment of our own condition, or of anything else. Let the judging faculty yield to good sense, and let us with tears of loving confession throw ourselves upon our Father's bosom, and looking up into His face believe that He loves us with all His infinite heart. 'Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him,' shall be our one unvarying determination, and may the eternal Spirit work in us a perfect acquiescence in the whole will of God, whatever that may be.
--by C.H. Spurgeon, edited by Bert Craft, taken from an article entitled, "Laid Aside--Why?," out of the book, "The Suffering Letters of C.H. Spurgeon," published by Wakeman Trust, London.
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