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Put Self Out of Sight, October 24
We glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh
patience; and patience, experience, and experience, hope.
Romans 5:3,
4
.
The experience gained in the furnace of trial and affliction is worth more
than the inconvenience and painful experience it all costs. The prayers you
offered in your loneliness, in your weariness and trial, God answered as you
could bear it. You did not have clear and correct views of your brethren,
neither did you see yourself in a correct light. But in the providence of God,
He has been at work to answer the prayers you have offered in your distress
in a way to save you and glorify His own name.
In your ignorance of yourself, you asked for things which were not the
best for you. God hears your prayers of sincerity, but the blessing granted
is something very different from your expectations. God designed to place
you in His providence in connection with His church more directly, that your
confidence should be less in yourself and greater in others whom He is leading
out to extend His work....
It is God that has led you through straight places. He had a purpose in
this, that tribulation might work in you patience, and patience experience,
and experience hope. The trials He permitted to come upon you were that
through the exercise of these you would experience the peaceable fruits of
righteousness....
God would lead you through affliction and trials that you might have more
perfect trust and confidence in Him and that you might think less of your
own judgment. You can bear adversity better than prosperity. The all-seeing
eye of Jehovah detected in you much dross that you considered gold and too
valuable to throw away. The enemy’s power over you had at times been direct
and very strong....
Your will must be molded by God’s will or you will fall into grievous
temptations. I saw that when you labor in God, putting self out of sight, you
will realize a strength from God which will give you access to hearts....
You are not always kindly, considerate of the feelings of others, and you
create trials and dissatisfaction, all needlessly. More love in your labors, more
kindly sympathy would give you access to hearts and win souls to Christ and
the truth.—
Letter 54, October 24, 1874
, to an early SDA minister.
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