Let us therefore regard these sufferings as penalties - as judgments - but as the Lord's chosen means by which to bring us to the knowledge of His glory - the fullness of God in Christ - in order that there may be a ministry of Christ. There is beauty to be seen in the garden, and we must have exercise in relation to that beauty for its display to others. There is fruitfulness in the garden - the lusciousness of which is to be ministered. We discover some of the sweetest things of Christ in the hour of suffering.
"Who comforteth us in all our afflictions, that the comforts wherewith we are comforted of God may abound unto you" (2 Corinthians 1:4). How have you been most comforted? Who has been of the greatest comfort to you in your distress - in your trial? Has it ever been a person who has never known the need of comfort himself? No, it is the one who, having been in the depths and having been at the point of extremity, has discovered the comforts of God and is able to speak out of experience about the comforts of God to your experience; one who has been in the garden and has been in exercise about what was in the garden, and has come out with something healing and comforting; one who has been into death, who knows what the apostle meant when he said: "Always bearing about in the body the putting to death of the Lord Jesus ... always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus might be manifested in our mortal flesh ... death worketh in us but life in you."
You get the benefit. That is ministry. That is going into the garden. That is knowing Christ through suffering in order to have the fruit of the garden - the good of the garden, the riches, the benefits of Christ - for others.
That explains why it is we have so much of trial. It is in order that we might have a very much richer ministry. It is in order that what is in Christ should come to the knowledge of others. He is the Light of the new creation.
The learning of Christ, as we have said, is in the school of suffering - in exercise through trial. What will be the result?
There may be some little luster here. We may wonder sometimes if the Lord gives us much light when there seems to be so little result, but that is not the end of the story. Chiefly our schooling is unto a ministry which is to be a ministry of Christ to the whole universe throughout eternity. The whole universe is to derive the benefit from our sufferings, according as these are the the sufferings of Christ which abound unto us so that the comfort also may abound. Yes, there are values beyond.
That is the only explanation of that deep, deep, painful problem of why the Lord's children so often suffer right on to the end, and very often the period of the end is the time of the most severe suffering. Can it be that these are ministering Christ at such a time? Sometimes it is so. But so many are called to suffer out of reach of anyone else. Their sufferings are not in any way immediately related to anybody. Yet they are making discoveries of Christ.
For what purpose, then, are these sufferings? The suffering is going to produce the fruit afterward; the value of that discovery of Christ is going to be the nature of their ministry in that sphere where "His servants shall serve him and they shall see his face."
~T. Austin-Sparks~
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