Entering Into Fellowship With Our Suffering Saviour

    There is a danger of fainting when we are rebuked of God. Be not discouraged or cast down as if the chastening were too heavy, more than you deserved, or are able to bear. Beware, above everything in your Christian life, of casting away your boldness, of becoming impatient, of losing courage.

    It is trial and vexation, care and anxiety, persecution or reproach that often causes this. Learn today the secret of never suffering loss in the soul by the sufferings of life. Yea, rather, of always making them your greatest gain. Link your sufferings to God and to Jesus.

    It is God who permits them. He sends them to you in the same love and will make them your highest gain. Receive every inward and outward trouble, every disappointment, pain, uneasiness, temptation, darkness, desolation, with both your hands, as a true opportunity and blessed occasion of dying to self, and entering into a fuller fellowship with your self-denying, suffering Saviour.

    "My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of Him: for whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth" (Heb. 12:5-6).