God Ought to Do It by M. Wood

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 24, 1871

God Ought to Do It.

By M. Wood

It is a good thing to be able to enjoy a portion of God's blessing. When we look back and realize, in a small degree, the amount of sin we have committed against a just and righteous God, how we have trampled his holy commandments under our feet, and then think how we are still permitted to live in this grand and solemn age of this world's history, God's longsuffering is beyond our comprehension.

Indeed God is merciful; and when we hear a person complaining, fault-finding, and saying that God ought to do this or that, he ought to bless me in a special manner, ought to cause me to prosper in my business, ought to pour out upon me bushels of dollars that I might slide along as smoothly as some of my neighbors do, what are we to think of such ones? The children of God will never go to Heaven on flowery beds of ease; for we are assured in the Word of God, that they who will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. The little trials, the little troubles and discouragements are to mould us and make us better prepared to meet the greater trials which are before us. We must submit to the will of God, and it will have a tendency to make us wiser and better, and happier. But if we give way to these trials and think God ought to make everything around us all sunshine, we are deceived. The devil is hard at work. He is stirring up the old man which is not yet dead within us, to rebel against God, which we do whenever we say that he ought to help, ought to be with, ought to prosper those who keep his Commandments.

He is with us and he will never leave his people. He will never forsake the true and faithful. Dark as the pathway may appear, we receive a share of the rich and tender mercies of our heavenly Father. But what God ought to do or ought not to do, is not for us to decide; the principal and all-important point for us, is to learn his will and then do it with cheerfulness and humility, and God will bless us every time.

M. Wood.