To Think About
by Norman Grubb

This life is repetition, the repetition of faith…our same daily activities are always new; for they are God appearing in new guise for new ventures of faith.

We handle our circumstances in the same way as we handle ourselves or our temptations. We move back from appearances to reality, from the external to the internal. Who puts us in this situation? Man? Devil? Our own foolishness? Our own disobedience? No, that is not taking it far enough. The Bible makes it plain that God as purposively sends the unpleasant as the pleasant.

God’s will and its outworking in our lives is not permissive, but determined. When even Satan is only God’s agent, and evil men only fulfilling His foreordained plan (Acts 4:27-28), then we can start off by praising God for adversity, and counting it (not feeling it) "all joy when ye fall into divers trials." That means we have transferred our attention from the situation and our natural dislike of it, to its underlying source, and we only do that by the act of faith. So we are back again to our familiar friend–faith in the absurd–that adversity is prosperity in disguise; and the assaults of Satan, or "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune," or the contradiction of sinners, when our eyes are opened, are Christ walking to us on the waters.

–From God Unlimited