Octavius Winslow | Bonnie's Prayer Affair

BENEFITS OF TRIALS

“Why did Jesus send his disciples into that storm? [Mark 6:45-52] He did it for the same reason he sometimes sends you into storms—because he knows that sometimes you need the storm in order to be able to see the glory. For the believer, peace is not to be found in ease of life. Real peace is only ever found in the presence, power, and grace of the Savior, the King, the Lamb, the I am. That peace is yours even when the storms of life take you beyond your natural ability, wisdom, and strength. You can live with hope and courage in the middle of what once would have produced discouragement and fear because you know you are never alone. The I am inhabits all situations, relationships and locations by his grace. He is in you. He is with you. He is for You. He is your hope” Paul David Tripp (ref#190, Feb 26^th).

Welcome Cross

Trials must and will befall;

But with humble faith to see

Love inscribed upon them all,

This is happiness to me.

Trials make the promise sweet;

Trials give new life to prayer;

Trials bring me to his feet,

Lay me low and keep me there.

William Cowper (ref#224, song #282).

“You may be walking in darkness, or in light; you may be mourning in the valley, or rejoicing on the mount; now conquering, now foiled; now weeping, now rejoicing; yet it is still well with you as a pardoned, justified, saved sinner. Nothing can touch your interest in the Savior” Octavius Winslow (ref#135, Feb 27^th).

“Awake, O north wind, and come, O south wind! Blow upon my garden, let its spices flow” (Song 4:16 ESV). “Anything is better than the dead calm of indifference. He makes both affliction and consolation draw forth the grateful fragrances of faith, love, patience, hope, resignation, joy, and the other fair flowers of the garden” Charles Spurgeon (ref#34, March 1^st AM).

“Even though on the outside it often looks like things are falling apart on us, on the inside, where God is making new life, not a day goes by without his unfolding grace. The things we see now are here today, gone tomorrow. But the things we can’t see now will last forever” (2 Cor 4:16-18 MSG).

“The straight way of the Lord is this: Not only has God changed me profoundly in this crucible of affliction, but He is also going to deliver me in His time and way” Bob Sorge (ref#197, p16).

“All outward distress, to a mind at peace, is but as the rattling of the hail upon the tiles to him that sits within at a sumptuous feast” Robert Leighton (ref#333, p188).

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AFFLICTION IS DISGUISED BLESSINGS

“[So Paul] wouldn’t get a big head, I was given the gift of a handicap to keep me in constant touch with my limitations. Satan’s angel did his best to get me down; what he in fact did was push me to my knees. No danger then of walking around high and mighty! At first I didn’t think of it as a gift, and begged God to remove it. Three times I did that, and then he told me, My grace is enough; it’s all you need. My strength comes into its own in your weakness. Once I heard that, I was glad to let it happen. I quit focusing on the handicap and began appreciating the gift. It was a case of Christ’s strength moving in on my weakness. Now I take limitations in stride, and with good cheer, these limitations that cut me down to size—abuse, accidents, opposition, bad breaks. I just let Christ take over! And so the weaker I get, the stronger I become” (2 Cor 12:7-10 MSG).

“When we see that you’re just as willing to endure the hard times as to enjoy the good times, we know you’re going to make it, no doubt about it” (2 Cor 1:6-7 MSG).

“[T]he love of God changes the aspect of everything! Afflictions are then seen to be ‘disguised blessings’; trials [as] proofs of divine faithfulness” Octavius Winslow (ref#256, p32).

“[M]y Lord Jesus has fully recompensed my sadness with His joyS, my losses with His own presence. I find it a sweet and rich thing to exchange my sorrows with Himself” Samuel Rutherford (ref#225, Dec 30^th).

“In the middle of domestic trials, family changes, thwarted designs, and shattered hopes, God has made an everlasting covenant with you in the hands of Jesus, its Surety and Mediator. [U]ncertainty is a fundamental component of everything temporal. Let, then, the covenant be your comfort and your stay, your anchor in the storm” Octavius Winslow (ref#135, April 30^th).

“Scripture praises the saints for their patience when they are severely afflicted by their adversities, but not broken and overcome by them; when they are bitterly distressed, but nevertheless filled with spiritual joy; when they are weighed down by anxiety and become exhausted, and yet leap for joy because of the divine consolation” John Calvin (ref#313, p61-62).

“[Y]our suffering, losses, and persecution will be a platform from which you can witness for Christ Jesus even more vigorously, and with greater power. Study your great Exemplar, and be filled with His Spirit” Charles Spurgeon (ref#34, Nov 7^th PM).

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FAITH IN SUFFERING

“Discouragement focuses more on the broken glories of creation than it does on the restoring glories of God’s character, presence, and promises. [The Israelites heading for the promise land] had been promised a land of their own, but what they got was a place filled with people who didn’t want them there. What they saw as being in the way of God’s plan was actually part of his plan; what caused their faith to weaken was actually God’s tool to build their faith. He knows just how he will use what makes you afraid in order to build your faith. He is not surprised by the troubles you face, and he surely has no intention of leaving you to face those things on your own. He stands with you in power, glory, goodness, wisdom and grace. He can defeat what you can’t, and he intends these troubles to be not enemies that finish you but tools of grace that transform you” Paul David Tripp (ref#190, June 25^th).

“[L]et those also who suffer according to the will of God entrust their souls to a faithful Creator” (1 Pet 4:19 NASB).

“I did not know I was so unbelieving until the Lord tried my faith. I never imagined that I was so impatient, self-willed, and restless until God led me to wear the yoke and wait His will. I never supposed that my strength was so small until the Lord laid the burden on me. Little did I know how limited was my knowledge of Christ, how deficient was my acquaintance with divine truth, and how far my heart was from true prayer, until the affliction of my God set me examining my resources to meet it. Then I discovered how shallow was my experience, and how low and meager was my Christianity” Octavius Winslow (ref#135, Feb 26^th).

“[It] would be a very sharp and trying experience to me to think that I have an affliction which God never sent me, that the bitter cup was never filled by his hand, that my trials were never measured out by him, not sent to me by his arrangement of their weight and quantity. If you drink of the river of affliction near its outfall, it is brackish and offensive to the taste, but if you will trace it to its source, where it rises at the foot of the throne of God, you will find its waters to be sweet and health-giving” Charles Spurgeon (“The Anguish and Agonies of Charles Spurgeon” [Christian History, Issue 29], p25).

“[W]here there is faith in the Lord Jesus, there is love; and where there is love, there is obedience; and where there is obedience, there is happiness; and where there is happiness, the soul can rejoice even in tribulation and sit and sing sweetly and merrily in adversity. [A]ll things in your history are for your good, and this calamity, this affliction, this loss, is among those things” Octavius Winslow (ref#135, Sept 21^st).

“Rejoice in the LORD always; again I will say, rejoice. [B]y prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God” (Phil 4:4, 6 ESV).

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TESTS OF FAITH

“If you possess real faith, even in the smallest degree, expect faith’s conflict and trial. The existence of faith seems to necessarily imply the endurance of suffering—not because of an intrinsic defeat in faith, but in consequence of impurity of the heart in which that faith is lodged. The trials and temptations, therefore, with which God visits His people are designed as tests of faith” Octavius Winslow (ref#135, March 26^th).

“You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don’t try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way” (James 1:2-4 MSG).

GOD constrains us but that doesn’t mean the thing will be easy to do. We’ll have to be very sensitive to the situations He puts in our lives to bolster our faith enough that we will be willing to do the thing.

[A] person because of the conscious sense of his relation to God bears up under pain, suffering unjustly. [T]o this very thing were you called [namely, to patient endurance in the case of unjust punishment], because Christ also suffered on your behalf, leaving behind for you a model to imitate, in order that by close application you might follow in His footprints” (1Peter 2:19, 21 Wuest).

“[F]or a little while [I have been] grieved by various trials so that the tested genuineness of [my] faith may be found to result in praise and glory and honor” (1 Pet 1:6-7 ESV).

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GOING THROUGH AFFLICTION SPIRIT LED

“Without [God] all within me is terror and dismay, in him every accusation is charmed into joy and peace” The Valley of Vision (ref#76, p158).

“Suffering brings discouragements, because of our impatience. But if God brings us into the trial he will be with us in the trial, and at length brings us out, more refined. We shall lose nothing but dross (Zech 13:9). From our own strength we cannot bear the least trouble, but by the Spirit’s assistance we can bear the greatest. The Spirit will add his shoulders to help us to bear our infirmities. The Lord will give his hand to heave us up (Ps 37:24)” Richard Sibbes (ref#311, p54-55).

“If we do a thing in order to overcome depression, we deepen the depression; but if the Spirit of God makes us feel intuitively that we must do the thing, and we do it, the depression is gone” Oswald Chambers (ref#7, Feb 17^th).

“You carry a hell around with you. Although you are regenerate, there is much of the old man in the new man. [O]ne reason why God has left original sin in us, so that it can be a thorn in our side to humble us. Under our silver wings of grace are black feet. Let the sense of this make us daily look up to heaven for help. Beg Christ’s blood to wash away the guilt of sin, and His Spirit to mortify the power of it. Beg further degrees of grace. [T]hough grace cannot make sin not to be, yet it makes it not to reign; though grace cannot expel sin it can repel it” Thomas Watson (ref#225, Aug 1^st).

“”[T]he Spirit sanctifies the soul through the medium of God’s afflictive dispensations. They deepen the work of grace in the heart, awaken the soul from its spiritual drowsiness, empty it, humble it, and lay it low, and thus lead to prayer, to self-examination, and to the atoning blood once more. In this way, and by these means, the believer advances in holiness ‘through sanctification of the Spirit.’ [W]e are being made perfect through suffering. The heart has been emptied of its self-confidence. The affections that were seduced from God have returned to their rest; the ties that bound us to the vanities of a world, perishing in its very use, have become loosened; the engagements that absorbed our sympathies and secularized our minds have lost their fascination and their power; the beguiling and treacherous enjoyments that wove their spell around us have grown tasteless and insipid. And thus by all these blessed and hallowed results of our trial, the image of the earthly has become more entirely effaced and the image of the heavenly more deeply engraved and more distinctly legible” Octavius Winslow (ref#135, Dec 8^th).

“All praise to the God and Father of our Master, Jesus the Messiah! Father of all mercy! God of all healing counsel! He comes alongside us when we go through hard times. We have plenty of hard times that come from following the Messiah, but no more so than the good times of his healing comfort—we get a full measure of that, too” (2 Cor 1:3-5 MSG).

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COMFORT FOR THE CAST DOWN

“Give ear to my words, O LORD, consider my groaning. Give attention to the sound of my cry, my King and my God, for to you do I pray. O LORD, in the morning you hear my voice; in the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch” (Ps 5:1-3 ESV).

“How does God comfort those who are cast down? His methods are various. He adapts the comfort to the sorrow. He first writes the sentence of death on any comfort other than Himself. He suspended all human channels of comfort to prepare you for the fulfillment of His own exceeding great and precious promise: ‘I even I, am he that comforteth you’ (Isa 51;12). Be sure that it is God and not man who comforts you—that your consolation is divine, and not human. It may be the duty of your minister and privilege of your friend to speak a promise to your ear, and to spread out before you the riches of divine comfort in the Word; but it is the prerogative of the Holy Spirit alone to apply the promise and to give a heartfelt possession of those comforts. Let no one comfort you except God Himself” Octavius Winslow (ref#135, May 22^nd).

“[T]he commandment is a lamp and the teaching a light, and the reproofs of discipline are the way of life” (Prov 6:23 ESV).

“Divinely loved ones [divinely love by God], stop thinking that the smelting process which is [operating] among you and which has come to you for the purpose of testing [you], is a thing alien to you, but insofar as you share in common with the sufferings of Christ, be rejoicing, in order that also at the time of the unveiling of His glory, you may rejoice exultingly. In view of the fact that you have cast in your teeth, as it were, revilings because of the Name of Christ, spiritually prosperous [are you], because the Spirit of the Glory, even the Spirit of God, is resting with refreshing power upon you” (1 Pet 4:12-14 Wuest).

Overwhelming affliction

Insurmountable problems

Revel in them, revel

Revel, I say, revel.

For surely they will end

Then surely I will say,

“It was not by my own hand (Jud 7:2)”

But the LORD that helped me stand.

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OVERWHELMED WITH GRIEF

Safety in God

“When, overwhelmed with grief,

My heart within me dies,

Helpless and far from all relief,

To heaven I lift my eyes.

O lead me to the Rock

That’s high above my head.

And make the covert of thy wings

My shelter and my shade!

Within thy presence, Lord,

For ever I’d abide;

Thou art the Tower of my defense,

The Refuge where I hide. Isaac Watts (ref#224, song #140).

“Turn every loss of creature-good into an occasion for greater nearness to Christ. The dearest and liveliest creature is only a cistern of inferior and limited good. If it contains any sweetness, the Lord put it there. If, instead of leading you to, it draws you from the Fountain, the Lord will, in unerring wisdom, tender mercy, and faithful love, break it so that you can learn that, while no creature can substitute for Him, He Himself can substitute for all creatures. Thus His friendship, His love, and His presence are frequently the sweetest and most fully enjoyed when He has taken everything else away. Jesus loves you far too much to allow another, however dear, to eclipse and rival Him” Octavius Winslow (ref#135, March 21^st).

“The LORD is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble; he knows those who take refuge in him” (Nahum 1:7 ESV).

“When you pass through the waters, [He] will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. For [He is] the LORD your God” (Isa 43:2-3 ESV).

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GOD’S COMFORT IN AFFLICTION

“No test or temptation that comes your way is beyond the course of what others have had to face. All you need to remember is that God will never let you down; he’ll never let you be pushed past your limit; he’ll always be there to help you come through it” (1 Cor 10:13 MSG).

“Tried soul, go to this unfailing spring of comfort. God speaks to you in it. It is the unsealing of the heart of Jesus; it is the still small voice of the Spirit. It speaks to you. It bids you ‘cast thy burden upon the LORD, and he shall sustain thee’ (Ps 55:22). Call on Him in the day of trouble, and He will answer you (Ps 86:7). It assures you that, amid all your confusing cares, ‘He careth for you’ (1 Pet 5:7). It promises you that, for your difficult path, your ‘shoes shall be iron and brass; and as thy days, so shall thy strength be’ (Deut 33:25)” Octavius Winslow (ref#135, Dec 13^th).

“If [you are] journeying to the heavenly kingdom, [your] path lies through much tribulation. [I]f [your] sufferings abound, much more so do [your] consolations” Octavius Winslow (ref#135, Jan 28^th).

“Our soul waits for the LORD; he is our help and our shield. For our heart is glad in him, because we trust in his holy name” (Ps 33:20-21 ESV).

“[T]he more we are afflicted with adversity, the surer we are made of our fellowship with Christ” John Calvin (ref#113, p458).

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IN GRIEF, JESUS PITIES

“For all whom the Lord has chosen and received into the society of his saints, ought to prepare themselves for a life that is hard, difficult, laborious, and full of countless griefs. It is the will of their heavenly Father to try them in this manner that he may test them. He began with Christ his firstborn son and he pursues this manner with all his children” John Calvin (ref#313, p45).

“Christ is exceedingly ready to pity us. His arms are open to receive us. He delights to receive distressed souls who come to Him and to protect them. He would gather them as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings; it is a work that He exceedingly rejoices in because He delights in act of love, and pity, and mercy” Jonathan Edwards (ref#229, p106).

“And you that are mourning over those that have been lately taken from you, Jesus pities you. Jesus wept, he sympathizes with your tears. He will dry them and give you consolation. ‘He was moved with compassion.’” Charles Spurgeon.

“Christ, ‘is inclined from his own heart and affections to give us help and relief and he is inwardly moved during our sufferings and trials with a sense and fellow-feeling of them.’” (John Owen) If you are in Christ, you have a Friend who, in your sorrow, will never lob down a pep talk from heaven. He cannot bear to hold himself at a distance. Nothing can hold him back. His heart is too bound up with yours” Dane Ortlund (ref#382, p49-50).

“Grief never ends, but it changes. It is a passage, not a place to stay. Grief is not a sign of weakness, nor a lack of faith, it is the price of love” Darcie Sims.

“Oh, what glory is brought to Jesus by a life of faith! Who can fully measure it? Taking to Him the corruption as it is discovered, the guilt as it rises, the grief as it is felt, the cross as it is experienced, the wound as it is received—indeed, simply following the example of John’s disciples, who, when their master was slain, took up his headless body, buried it, and then went and poured their grief in Jesus’ ear and laid their deep sorrow on His heart” Octavius Winslow (ref#135, July 14^th).

“It is lawful to wish we were well; it is natural to groan, being burdened; but still [God] must and will take his own course with us; and, however dissatisfied with ourselves, we ought still to be thankful that he has begun his work in us, and to believe that he will also make an end. Therefore while we mourn, we should likewise rejoice; we should encourage ourselves to expect all that he has promised; and we should limit our expectations by his promises” John Newton (ref#322, p180).

“Honestly facing your lack of sovereignty over your own life produces either anxiety or relief. In all of those moments when life is out of your control, it is not out of his control” Paul David Tripp (ref#190, Mar 13^th).

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IN AFFLICTION, LET THE REDEEMER BE GLORIFIED IN YOU

“Be watchful against everything that would mar the simplicity of your faith, and so dim the glory of Jesus; especially guard against the adoption of unlawful or doubtful measures intended to disentangle you from present difficulties” Octavius Winslow (ref#135, July 14^th).

“We are quick to think that our hardships merit a time of peace and ease. But we can see from the apostles’ example that this is not the case at all. Submitting to hardships is so often difficult; let us pray for God’s grace so that we might be spurred on to new and radical obedience by the trials we face” John Calvin (ref#164, July 22^nd).

“The believer should never fail to remember that the present is, by the appointment of God, his state of affliction. It is God’s ordained, revealed will that His covenant children here should be afflicted. When called by grace, they should never take into their account any other state. They become the disciples of the religion of the cross, become the followers of a crucified Lord, put on a yoke, and assume a burden: they must, then, expect the inward cross and the outward cross. To escape it is impossible. To pass to glory without it is to go by a way other than God’s ordering, and in the end to fail to arrive there. The gate is strait and the way is narrow that leads to life, and a man must become nothing if he would enter and be saved. He must deny himself; he must become a fool that he may be wise, and receive the sentence of death in himself that he should not trust in himself” Octavius Winslow (ref#135, June 29^th).

“If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rest upon you” (1 Pet 4:14 ESV).

“In the face of opposition, envy, and prejudice [the apostles] went on with their work, ‘speaking boldly in the Lord’” Ellen G. White (ref#331, p177).

“Believer suffering for Christ, rejoice that you are counted worthy to suffer shame for His sake. What distinction is awarded you! What honor is put on you! What a favored opportunity you have to bring glory to His name; to illustrate His sustaining grace, upholding strength, almighty power, infinite wisdom, and comforting love! By the firm yet mild preservation of your principles, by the dignified yet gentle spirit of forbearance, by the uncompromising yet kind resistance to temptation, let the Redeemer by glorified in you” Octavius Winslow (ref#135, July 14^th).