Uses of Affliction 03 031414

Uses of Afflcition 03

2.  Excitation to duty, weaning one from this world, and prompting him to look after the happiness of the other world.

There is one wonderful scipture that encourages us in this:

1 John 2:15-17 NASB
Do not love the world nor the things in the world If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. [16] For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world. [17] The world is passing away, and also its lusts; but the one who does the will of God lives forever.

We recently experienced some bad weather here and many people lost power.  Nothing big but a good reminder of how attached we become to the comforts of this world and to the minimization of our looking to the comforts of the next.  Afflictions, whatever their nature, are one way God not only gets our attention but moves us to action be it service, simplicity or paying more attention to the promises of the next world.

We need to be moved to duty.  It's too easy to become complacent and lazy even in our duties.  We get into a very comfortable rut and we just run along it day in and day out until we have become numb to what we ought to be about.  Even in our duties we can become comfortable to our hurt.

Prayer can become perfuntory, Bible Study can become bland and worship can become worthless in the comfortable ease of the day to day.  But God won't have that.  He will and does bring afflictions that reveal the weakness and wantonness of our service.  When God seems to withdraw we tend to draw closer.

This is a sad commentary on many of us - many many of us - so many of us that it seems to be the norm.  And so God will bring a crook to our lot so we will see our error and repent.

Affilctions also wean us from the world.  I made the comment while our power was on and our internet was off that there didn't seem much point to having power if we didn;t have the net.  This is an example of how comfortable we can get with all the geegaws and gadgets we have and how we begin to rely upon them for way too much.

The loss or thereatened loss of material blessings can really demonstrate for us our dependence upon them to a neglect of depending upon God.  And NO cheating - don;t try to tell me you depend upon God for your web connection - that's a stretch.

How many "things" do you really depend upon that get in the way of your dependence upon God.  What would hurt the worst to lose?  What can you not see yourself giving up?  If you have "bad hair" days - days that are just ruined over the trivial material things then you may look for an affliction to wean you away from it.

Can you see how use 1 ties into use 2?  Afflictions lead us to examine our faith and that examination has much to do with our attachment to this world and the "things" of it.  Not only that but the "things" of this world have much to do with, "the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life."  Which in turn has much to do with how much our hearts are set on the next world as opposed to being stuck on this one.

James writes:

James 1:2 NASB
Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials,

And if we a serious about our faith we will wlecome these trials as God's gracious providence.  Even with only uses 1 and 2 we can see how afflictions are, what I call, "left-handed blessings."  They don't look like blessings, they don't feel like blessings, and they do not even small like blessings - but if they drive or move us to seriously examines, our service, our attachment to this world and our longing for the next they are indeed blessings.