“It was good for me to be afflicted so that I could learn Your statutes. Instruction from Your lips is better for me than thousands of gold and silver pieces.” – Psalm 119:71-72

When God sent Moses to speak to the most powerful man in the known world, He purposefully chose someone who had trouble speaking, because He wanted Moses to be certain that it was the words of God and not his own powerful speech that would break Pharaoh’s heart and rescue the people. God injured Jacob’s hip so that, as he leaned on his crutch, he would be always conscious of the need to lean on God instead of his own cunning. The Lord blinded the Apostle Paul in order to bring him out of darkness and into the Light of Jesus Christ.

The great Scottish preacher Robert Murray McCheyne once said, “Affliction brings out graces that cannot be seen in a time of health. It is the treading of the grapes that brings out the sweet juices of the vine; so it is affliction that draws forth submission, weanedness from the world, and complete rest in God. Use afflictions while you have them.”

The highest goal of our life here on earth is not comfort, or wealth, or even health. God’s greatest goal for us is to know Him more intimately each and every day. And He will work in all the circumstances and seasons of His children’s lives in order to accomplish this in us. Why? Because intimacy with God, though foreign to the desires of this world, actually fits us perfectly and completely for the world to come and life in eternity.

In Christ’s Service,

Pastor Shane Cannon <><