CIRCUMSTANCES;
BLESSINGS: SPIRITUAL

As Christians we look at everything differently.…

People of the world, for instance, hope for life, health, financial prosperity, international peace and a set of favorable circumstances. These are their resources—upon them they rest. They look to them as a child looks to its nursing mother.

Christians do not despise these temporal blessings, and if they come to them, they sanctify them by receiving them with prayers of outpoured gratitude to God. But they know their everlasting welfare is not dependent upon them. These blessings may come or go, but true Christians abide in God where no evil can touch them and where they are rich beyond all the power of their minds to conceive—and this altogether apart from earthly circumstances.…

The world’s resources are good in their way, but they have this fatal defect—they are uncertain and transitory. Today we have them, tomorrow they are gone.…

If the world’s foundations crumble we still have God, and in Him we have everything essential to our ransomed beings forever. We have Christ, who also died for us and who now sits at the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens making constant and effective intercession for us. We have the Scriptures, which can never fail. We have the Holy Spirit to interpret the Scriptures to our inner lives and to be to us a Guide and a Comforter. We have prayer and we have faith, and these bring heaven to earth and turn even bitter Marah sweet. And if worse comes to worst here below, we have our Father’s house and our Father’s welcome.

Exodus 15:23–25; Matthew 6:25–34; John 14:1–3; John 16:13–15; Romans 8:34; Philippians 4:11–12

This World: Playground or Battleground?, 27, 28, 29.