“I know O Lord, that your rules are righteous and that in faithfulness you have afflicted me” (Psalm 119:75).
This verse caught my eye this morning, in fact it made my brain hurt! We don’t praise God for His faithfulness during affliction. If we do, we praise Him that He is faithful to get us out! But we rarely attribute affliction to God as a good thing.We tend to think that God gives us candy and Satan takes it away.
But the Psalmist is not like us and we should therefore explore what it means to be like him. Why does He praise God for affliction? At least two previous verses may help.
V.67 reads: “Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I I keep your word.”
V.71 reads: “It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes.”
For the psalmist, affliction was for his good, if left alone to nothing but comfort and security and safety, he would go astray, therefore it is good for him to suffer affliction, it made him learn the ways of God. How other-worldly this is! The goal of the American life is to escape all pain and pad our lives with insurance and nice retirements and security and safety. But these are the things that will kill our souls if we let them! We need affliction, we need pain, we need to feel the weight of a fallen world on us.
I am not saying that we should pray to suffer. Far from it! I am saying that when suffering comes we dare not think it is somehow outside the plan and purposes of God for our lives. It is meant for good, that we might learn to keep God’s word and cling to Him all our days. Trials are merely God’s servants that draw us to Himself and make us like His Son. So I encourage you to ponder what it means to praise God for His faithful afflictions.
GB
