Bulletin 6.2.24

We can rest contentedly in our sins and in our stupidities, and everyone who has watched gluttons shoveling down the most exquisite foods as if they did not know what they were eating, will admit that we can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world. 

No doubt Pain as God’s megaphone is a terrible instrument; it may lead to final and unrepented rebellion. But it gives the only opportunity the bad man can have for amendment. It removes the veil; it plants the flag of truth within the fortress of a rebel soul. 

–  C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

(Macmillan, 1947; pp. 81, 83; emph added)

God the great Creator of all things upholds, directs, disposes, and governs all creatures, actions, and things, from the greatest even to the least, by His perfectly wise and holy providence, according to His infallible foreknowledge, and the free and unchangeable counsel of His own will, to the praise of the glory of His wisdom, power, justice, goodness, and mercy. 

The perfectly wise, righteous, and gracious God often leaves, for a season, His own children to manifold temptations, and the corruption of their own hearts, to correct them for their former sins, or to expose for them the hidden strength of depravity and deceitfulness in their hearts, that they may be humbled; and, to foster in them a closer and more constant dependence for their support upon Himself, and to make them more watchful against all future occasions of sin, and for various other just and holy purposes.  

As the providence of God in general, reaches to all creatures; so, in a specific way, it takes care of His Church, and arranges all things for the good of His Church. 

– The Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter Five (1, 5 & 7) “Of Providence” (1647; lightly modernized)

 Philippians 3:4-10 (NIV) 

If someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more:  circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for righteousness based on the law, faultless.

But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith.  

(Prayer)