Affliction and Purpose

This is from the blog A Word in Season:

“He delivers the afflicted by their affliction”

Job 36:15 (ESV)

Our God who determines the way of all creation declares:

“Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows.”
Matthew 10:29

There are no wasted efforts in His watch care over our lives. He is ever investing in and orchestrating our life events. The afflictions which come our way are pregnant with purpose and meaning. They are the means to deeper places of knowing, comprehending, and above all pleasing Him.

Knowing Him is always the precursor to pleasing Him. The more I understand His ways, and His movements in me, the more He can reveal Himself through me.

He whose name is the “man of sorrows” must lead me into the valleys of sorrow for me to partake and live in the “joy OF the Lord”. There are deep treasures to be gleaned in sorrow’s way. Brokenness is the temper of the heart from which His streams of grace flow. It is the broken vessel that allows the fragrance of His wonder to touch the lives of others.

Affliction is a means to God’s end. While many endure life’s afflictions, few readily embrace their significance. We fight, we resist, and we insulate ourselves from it. The One who knows the number of the hairs on our head knows our need for such deep valleys.

“The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the LORD delivers him out of them all”
Psalm 34:18

The mysteries of grace are ever near the broken and afflicted.

“The secret of the Lord
is with them that fear him”
Psalm 25:14

Hidden within the crushing weights of oppression and sorrow are keys to treasures far beyond the horizons of men. These are revealed to those who find grace to respond to God IN the suffering. Those who truly fear the Lord know that HE is sovereign and above all things. The “fear of the Lord” is proportional to the depth of our knowing Him. Those who know Him little, fear Him little.

Many go through life without the ability to SEE Him in sorrows way; but “unto them that look for Him shall He appear” (Hebrews 9:28). There are graces in Christ that cannot be learned apart from sorrow’s path, and it is in “looking” for Him that He shall appear even in the darkness.

Related Article: Suffering and Enlargement

Brian Troxel