Steve, exactly, exactly. There is a line from Out of Africa, truly an
astounding true story of two totally unbelievable, yet very, very
sadly, non-Christians, it seems (so, we may never see them again...). One of the lines was "when the gods are angry, they
give you what you want."
Surely that does not need interpretation.
It was written by near-pagans, I'm sure, for near-pagans. However,
that line to me was direct: "When God the Father wishes to
purify you further in the fire, He allows you the misfortune of getting
exactly what you want when it was meant for your distruction in
the first place." (And we all have different exactly-what-we-wants,
and the devil knows every single one of them!).
However, when the hurricane, fire, flood, pestilence and whatever
this "wonderful thing we wanted" brings about passes over,
the Heavenly Father then comes in with the Holy Spirit and our love for Jesus Christ which gets us through everything, and THEY begin to pick up the pieces and put us back together. Usually God builds a better machine each time--just like the old bionic man.
I used to flash on that, how funny a comparison. "God building us better! Stronger!! And for certain, for certain, for certain, "That
which does not kill you makes you stronger." |
