Choosing to suffer means that there must be something wrong with
you, but choosing God’s will— even if it means you will suffer— is
something very different. No normal, healthy saint ever chooses
suffering; he simply chooses God’s will, just as Jesus did, whether it
means suffering or not. And no saint should ever dare to interfere with
the lesson of suffering being taught in another saint’s life.
The saint who satisfies the heart of Jesus will make other saints
strong and mature for God. But the people used to strengthen us are
never those who sympathize with us; in fact, we are hindered by those
who give us their sympathy, because sympathy only serves to weaken us.
No one better understands a saint than the saint who is as close and as
intimate with Jesus as possible. If we accept the sympathy of another
saint, our spontaneous feeling is, “God is dealing too harshly with me
and making my life too difficult.” That is why Jesus said that self-pity
was of the devil (see Matthew 16:21-23).
We must be merciful to God’s reputation. It is easy for us to tarnish
God’s character because He never argues back; He never tries to defend
or vindicate Himself. Beware of thinking that Jesus needed sympathy
during His life on earth. He refused the sympathy of people because in
His great wisdom He knew that no one on earth understood His purpose
(see Matthew 16:23). He accepted only the sympathy of His Father and the angels (see Luke 15:10).
Look at God’s incredible waste of His saints, according to the
world’s judgment. God seems to plant His saints in the most useless
places. And then we say, “God intends for me to be here because I am so
useful to Him.” Yet Jesus never measured His life by how or where He was
of the greatest use. God places His saints where they will bring the
most glory to Him, and we are totally incapable of judging where that
may be.
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