Contentment in Affliction

January 8, 2009

In The Art of Divine Contentment, Watson gives numerous arguments for why the believer should always be content. One argument is, “the consideration that all God’s providences, how cross or bloody soever, shall do a believer good.”

He then moves explain seven reasons why afflictions work for the good of the believer in Christ.

1) Afflictions are disciplinary; they teach us. ‘God makes our adversity our university.’ He uses afflictions to teach us humility, repentance, and prayer. Why then should we be discontent in our afflictions?

2) Afflictions are probatory. They expose the genuineness (or lack thereof) of our faith.

3) Afflictions are expurgatory, “these evils work for our good, because they work out sin, and shall I be discontented at this? What if I have more trouble, if I have less sin?”

4) Afflictions do both exercise and increase our grace. “Everything is most in its excellency when it is most in its exercise.”

Afflictions do increase grace; as the wind serves to increase and blow up the flame, so doth the windy blasts of affliction augment and blow up our graces; grace spends not in the furnace, but it is like the widow’s oil in the cruise, which did increase by pouring out. The torch, when it is beaten burns brightest, so doth grace when it is exercised by sufferings. Sharp frosts nourish the good corn, so do sharp afflictions grace. Some plants grow better in the shade than in the sun, as the bay and the cypress; the shade of adversity is better for some than the sun-shine of prosperity. Naturalists observe that the colewort thrives better when it is watered with salt water than with fresh, so do some thrive better in the salt water of affliction; and shall we be discontented at that which makes us grow and fructify more?

Three more arguments remain. I will post them sometime later.

Posted by Joe | Filed Under Quotes, Seeking Him 

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