Scripture Reading: Psalm 119:67, 71
Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep your word…It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes.
It is a sign of maturity to be able to look at life’s troubles objectively and find the good in them. The Psalmist realized that his afflictions had two positive effects on his life. First, it forced him to get his life on track. He was wandering away from God and godliness and affliction shook him awake from his dangerous spiritual sleepwalking. Affliction was for him what C.S. Lewis described as “God’s megaphone to arouse a deaf world.”
Secondly, affliction became a schoolmaster. It slapped the ruler across his knuckles so that he would raise his drowsy head off of his desk and pay attention to the truth he needed to learn.
Were it not for affliction he would have continued to wander in willful ignorance, which would have led to his downfall. In light of that, he could call affliction a good thing.
Affliction is a crossroads. When we experience trouble, we can choose to take the path of bitterness and unbelief, the road that leads to more trouble and a wasted life, or we can see the potential good that can come from it. We can choose to take the road of repentance and faith and allow affliction to bring us closer to God in a way that will benefit ourselves and all those who we have contact with.
The Apostle Paul, writing about his own afflictions in 2 Corinthians, said, “We felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead…”
Because we are fallen people in a fallen world, sometimes we have to be made to rely on God, to walk in the right path, and to learn God’s ways. When afflictions serve that purpose in our life, we should see them for what they are and say with the Psalmist, “It was good for me…”
Thank you, again, for an encouraging word!!