“After that ye have suffered awhile, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you.” — 1 Peter 5:10
You have seen the arch of heaven as it spans the plain: glorious are its colours, and rare its hues. It is beautiful, but, alas, it passes away, and lo, it is not. The fair colours give way to the fleecy clouds, and the sky is no longer brilliant with the tints of heaven. It is not established. How can it be? A glorious show made up of transitory sun-beams and passing rain-drops, how can it abide? The graces of the Christian character must not resemble the rainbow in its transitory beauty, but, on the contrary, must be stablished, settled, abiding. Seek, O believer, that every good thing you have may be an abiding thing. May your character not be a writing upon the sand, but an inscription upon the rock! May your faith be no “baseless fabric of a vision,” but may it be builded of material able to endure that…
awful fire which shall consume the wood, hay, and stubble of
the hypocrite. May you be rooted and grounded in love. May your
convictions be deep, your love real, your desires earnest. May your whole
life be so settled and established, that all the blasts of hell, and all the
storms of earth shall never be able to remove you. But notice how this
blessing of being “stablished in the faith” is gained. The apostle’s words
point us to suffering as the means employed — “After that ye have
suffered awhile.” It is of no use to hope that we shall be well rooted if no
rough winds pass over us. Those old gnarlings on the root of the oak tree,
and those strange twistings of the branches, all tell of the many storms that
have swept over it, and they are also indicators of the depth into which the
roots have forced their way. So the Christian is made strong, and firmly
rooted by all the trials and storms of life. Shrink not then from the
tempestuous winds of trial, but take comfort, believing that by their rough
discipline God is fulfilling this benediction to you.
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Producer: Todd Adkins
Voice Artist: Ian Cullen