by Kevin Burton
I just created my 32nd set of memory verses. On a good day I can recite most of the verses on the first try. But today my mind is on one I would rather forget.
Acts 14:22 is the fourth verse in the set I have on index cards with a green stripe across the top. In the KJV it reads, “Confirming the souls of the disciples, and exhorting them to continue in the faith, and that we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God.
Of course it’s the tribulation part that turns me sideways, especially since the passage reads “much tribulation.”
The word gospel is derived from the Anglo-Saxon term god-spell, meaning “good story,” a rendering of the Latin evangelium and the Greek euangelion, meaning “good news” or “good telling,” according to britanica.com.
Maybe “good news” is not the first thing that leaps to mind in the midst of your frustrations, disappointments, pain and sorrows. But tribulation has always been part of God’s plan. Today we get a reminder of that fact from Alistair Begg, speaker on the Truth For Life radio ministry.
“ God’s people have their trials. It was never God’s plan, when He chose His people, that they should be untested,” Begg writes. “They were chosen in the furnace of affliction; they were never chosen for worldly peace and earthly joy.”
“Freedom from sickness and the pains of mortality was never promised to them; but when their Lord drew up the charter of privileges, He included chastisements among the things to which they should inevitably be heirs.”
“Trials are a part of our experience; they were predestinated for us in Christ’s last legacy. As surely as the stars are fashioned by His hands, and their orbits fixed by Him, so surely are our trials allotted to us,” Begg writes. “He has ordained their season and their place, their intensity and the effect they shall have upon us.”
“Good men must never expect to escape troubles; if they do, they will be disappointed, for none of their predecessors have been without them.”
Begg gives some examples of people in the Bible who famously went through trials and tribulations. Before we go there, here’s some advice for when you are in the position of consoling somebody who is going through hard times; Don’t say anything about Job.
Comparing somebody’s sorrows to what happened to Job tends to trivialize what the person is going through and I don’t see how it helps them at all. I find that more than a little bit annoying. That’s just me.
But of course I understand why one might begin with Job, in a discussion of tribulation.
“Consider the patience of Job; remember Abraham, for he had his trials, and facing them with faith, he became the father of the faithful,” Begg writes.”
“Review the biographies of all the patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and martyrs, and you will find that each of those whom God made vessels of mercy were made to pass through the fire of affliction.”
“God has ordained that the cross of trouble should be engraved on every vessel of mercy, as the royal insignia distinguishing the King’s vessels of honor. But even though tribulation is the path of God’s children, they have the comfort of knowing that their Master has walked it before them.”
“They have His presence and sympathy to cheer them, His grace to support them, and His example to teach them how to endure; and when they reach the kingdom, it will more than make amends for the many tribulations through which they passed to enter it.”
I advised you not to talk about Job while consoling people. So what should you say?
When I am hurting I hope for someone who will listen attentively and maybe not say much of anything beyond, “I hear you,” “I’ve Been there, or “you’re not alone.”
But the promise of the kingdom of God at the end of an earthly life of struggling, maybe that’s the best message to share. Here’s another of my memory verses, Revelation 21:4 (KJV)
“And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.”
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