Singing the Devil Away (14)

Children whom a father trains
In what's good and wholesome,
Seldom grow and flourish well
Without firm correction.
So if I am God's dear child,
Why should I resist Him
Who instructs me from my sins
To receive His blessings?

I mentioned at the end of the last post that the cross will come, but that it is good. Not only outside afflictions, but even our sins, serve to teach us to receive God's blessings. Anything that crushes us and our self-esteem and our pride in ourselves makes us ever more dependent on a Savior who has done everything for us, leaving nothing undone, leaving nothing in our hands to accomplish. (And that's the only place where we're safe, when nothing is left to our own doing.)

Pr Weedon recently posted a bunch of quotes from our Confessions regardingthe benefits of affliction. Pr Stuckwisch has recently posted some excerpts from Luther on Galatians on the oppression of our sins and our feelings about our trials. And Pr Fenton has a story on wisdom from Elder Paisios that touches on why we don't always enjoy the amendment of life we would desire but instead continue to struggle.

Y'know, given enough years struggling with your sinful nature, and enough years of reveling in the absolution, and enough years of having a faithful pastor talk about the benefits of bearing your cross, a person can almost begin to agree with Paul (!) when he says wildly bizarro things like "Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ's sake. For when I am weak, then am I strong" (2 Corinthians 12:1-10). Because, after all, "Why should I resist Him who instructs me from my sins to receive His blessings?"