Suffer Gently

    The quickest way to get out of great trouble, or suffering, is to so yield ourselves up to God that we suffer with a patient and gentle spirit.

    We are living in a world where sorrow and suffering and trouble are indigenous, and sprout like the weeds everywhere. We must go through much trouble and suffering of various kinds, and if it does not spring from one source it will from another.

    Now, if we are rebellious and fretful, and are constantly chafing our souls under trials and laying the blame on other people, and murmuring against God, and always fighting with our circumstances, we only bruise our own spirits, and add to the troubles, and postpone the period of our deliverance.

    Your case is a peculiar one, of course, and so is every other case as peculiar as yours. You are tempted to lay the blame of your great trials on this or that person, or you recriminate yourself, and lash your own feelings into a tempest for ever getting yourself in the fix you are in.

    Or Satan tries to make you curse God and die, as he attempted with Job; or you are disposed to think God does not love you, and is dealing with peculiar severity in your life.

    Then you think of how many people there are who could give you relief from your suffering, or could easily change your circumstances in life, and you wonder why they do not do it. Many suggestions come to your mind of what might have been, or what might be.

Sink in God

    If you will put yourself utterly into the hands of God, and in your heart detach yourself from persons, and places and things, and plans, and gently sink into the Holy Spirit, and ask Him to so flood you with gentleness and love and faith that you can bear all things in God’s will, you will soon find the Lord beginning to work blessed changes both in your inner life and in outer circumstances.

    The very things you are suffering, and that seem to be a wreck and ruin in your life, you will see in the end were the very instruments best adapted to perfectly subdue every part of your will and heart to Jesus.

    In all your suffering, if you lay the blame on others, or allow your mind to dwell upon the fortunate circumstances of other people, or allow yourself to pine and chafe, you will delay the blessed purpose of your Heavenly Father, and cripple your faith and becloud the operations of your mind.

    Suffer gently. Sink quietly into the invisible arms of God. Cling to Jesus. Love the blessed Holy Spirit and talk constantly with Him. Do not try to break the chains of trouble that seem to bind you, but put them in the gentle hands of Jesus.

    Do not be anxious to have your troubles come to an end, but keep asking God that the suffering may produce in you a perfect fitness of heart and mind to fulfill your life mission. Be like a lamb that bears without bleating.

    Rest assured that just as soon as the Lord gets your soul into the very place He wants it, He can and will quickly alleviate many a trouble, and bring you out into a large place where you will praise Him for everything He has allowed to come into your life.

    "And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to His purpose" (Rom. 8:28).