Trouble — Could We make it Our Servant? Part 3

Tip! It takes a quiet heart, peace of spirit, and clear vision (long range, if you please), to interpret trouble in terms of strength and high living.

Trouble will make you either bitter or better. Notice how very much alike these words are, and how very little is needed to change them; just the letter "I." Yes, dear ones, it is the "I" that changes the whole matter. When the "I" keeps out of the question, out of the difficulty, life will be better; but when the "I" is introduced and we get mixed in the trouble, life will become bitter and we harden. Too many times this "I" gets in the way; the poor, little, hurt ego gets a slap and down the street it runs, screaming for attention. The dear little ego sits in its doorway and weeps tears of self-pity until its eyes are so red and inflamed that it just cannot see things as they are or should be.

It takes a quiet heart, peace of spirit, and clear vision (long range, if you please), to interpret trouble in terms of strength and high living. Little souls, small people, are usually hurt all the time; the ego within is unduly important and consequently is easily hurt or flattered. Such souls have too small a world and hence everything relates directly to the self within. They will have a very difficult time, to say the least.

Frequently such souls are persons who are seeking justice, fairness, and a proper adjustment of life. They never seem to learn. We are not here for justice; we are here to live. If you expect to be a spiritual and victorious Christian, you may as well learn here and now to drop justice out of your vocabulary as far as it may relate to your life. We do not get justice now. God's Saturday night of settlement has not yet come.

Tip! As Christians, after we are convinced in our hearts that trouble is not designed to defeat us and is not a mere nuisance or cruelty, but is one of the corrective elements in great living, we must learn how to use it the way God wants us to use it.

Some live as though life and the Christian experience were some kind of slot machine: you put in a dime's worth of kindness and pull out three yards of blessing; then five cents' worth of charity and you think God must bless you next Saturday night. Be very good, kind or generous and next week the winds will blow you a fortune. It is true that what we sow that shall we also reap, and bread cast upon the waters shall return, but God is not too clear on the time element. So we will not always receive our justice here and now.

Jesus never taught His followers to expect justice. Paul did not receive justice. Even great leaders in history did not always receive justice here and now. Do not misunderstand me; I do not mean that the Christian or the spiritually-minded one is not conscious of the hurt or the trouble of the injustice. Believe me, dear souls, the Holy Spirit makes one all the more sensitive to the pain, the hurt and the wrong, but the victorious soul has found the gift of grace and the love of God sufficient to hinder the trouble from marring his spirit.

The closer one gets to Christ the more sensitive they will be to pain, to little, petty, mean ways and all the train of unkind and unlovely things which would vex the heart and tarnish the spirit. The eyes are now anointed and they see in them privileges of overcoming and high living. I am sure we have all lived long enough to have had some injustice done us. Yet today God has given us grace not to harbor any resentment or hard feelings. To have trouble or injustice and know the feeling of it, and yet live above and far from its damaging power, is a sign of real spirituality, a sign of Christian character that He has fashioned in the life.