6 Sermon Illustrations on Suffering Faith

"We would have speedy riddance of trouble, but God thinketh not fit to grant our request. Showers that come by drops soak into the earth better than those that come in a tempest and hurricane." The gradualness and long continuance of a trial, which are its sharpness and bitterness, are also, to a large extent, the causes of its usefulness. If the affliction came and departed with a rush, we should be rather swept away by it than softened and saturated by its influence. To push a crucible among the glowing coals and snatch it forth again would answer no purpose in refining: the metal must tarry in the furnace till the fire has done its work. Perhaps the reader has long lived in a perpetual drip of trouble, and now feels himself to be quite weary of the endless torture. Let him not faint under the lengthened process: the highest degree of benefit is accruing to him from the continuance of his adversity. In the later part of a trial every stroke tells with tenfold result, and operates with a greatly increased efficacy. It would be a pity for the Lord to stay his hand when it is working with such special and marked result. All the preceding affliction has only worked the heart into a fit condition to receive the master-strokes of the Divine Artist. The ground colours have hitherto been laid on, but the second and finishing touch is now being given; therefore, ask not the hand to cease, but rather pray that its work may be carried on with power, and the Lord's glory be seen in it all. It will not cease raining yet; and why should it so long as the soil is being softened, saturated, and fertilized by the falling drops? Let patience have her perfect work; and how can that be unless the tribulation runs its full time? Lord, make me ready to tarry for the vision, however long it may be delayed. Thy way of trying me is the best. I would not hurry thy hand if I could.

“I was called upon,” says the Rev. Mr. Trefit, an American minister, “some years ago, to visit an individual, a part of whose face had been eaten away by a most loathsome cancer. Fixing my eyes on this man in his agony, I said, ‘Supposing that Almighty God were to give you your choice: whether would you prefer, your cancer, your pain, and your sufferings, with a certainty of death before you, but of immortality hereafter; or, health, prosperity, long life in the world, and the risk of losing your immortal soul?’ ‘Ah, sir!’ said the man, ‘give me the cancer, the pain, the Bible, the hope of heaven; and others may take the world, long life, and prosperity!’”

In Edinburgh when they were celebrating the life of Dr. George Matheson, the blind preacher, Robertson Nicoll said that he was the greatest Scotsman since Thomas Chalmers. Divide that statement in two in the middle, and you still have a great man. At twenty the youth left a surgeon’s office, with these words echoing in the porches of the ear, “Better see your friends quickly, for soon the darkness will settle, and you will see them no more forever.” Then his biographer tells us that the youth went on with his studies, by listening while others read or recited. Had Matheson been able to read early church history, he would have been a great scholar. Had he been able to read the story of the thinkers and system-builders, he would have been a great philosopher. But the greatest thing he ever did, it seems, was in life. We are told that there came a day when his visions dissolved, and he realized that he must go alone across the years. The storm tore down the perfumed vines that were climbing about the doorway of man’s soul. And the vine suffered grievously. But the youth coerced his lips to silence, went apart and hid himself for a day. When he came out it was with suffering turned to song. What will they celebrate as the blind preacher’s greatest achievement, in that memorial service in Edinburgh? Listen to the exploit of a faith-man, singing in the hour when love dwells amidst her ruins:

O Love that will not let me go, I rest my weary soul in thee; I give thee back the life I owe That in thine ocean depths its flow May richer, fuller be.

— N. D. HILLIS