Turning Failures and Obstacles into Victories.
By D. T. Bourdeau
In religious experience, as well as in temporal things, there is no time when the heart needs encouragement more than when suffering under the galling and crushing sense of failure and disappointment; yet there is ground for encouragement even under such trying circumstances. Even serious failures and obstacles may be turned into important victories by giving individuals a knowledge of their weak points, and stirring up and bringing into exercise their latent energies, which, under common circumstances, would have lain dormant. When Christians are convinced of their deficiencies while passing through trials, reverses, and even defeats, they can, as never before, see the need of seeking for heavenly wisdom, and of laying hold of the grace and strength of God, which have ever brought victory to his earnest and needy children in distress. To such, “earth hath no sorrow that Heaven cannot heal,” and where sin has abounded the grace of God may much more abound. “In one respect,” said the French Admiral Colligni, “I may claim superiority over Alexander, over Scipio, over Cæsar. They won great battles, it is true; I have lost four great battles, and yet I show to the enemy a more formidable front than ever.” Demosthenes was naturally timid and easily confused and had a natural impediment in his speech; but by rigid discipline and perseverance he overcame these difficulties and became Greece’s greatest and most influential orator. Locke, the philosopher, was born with a very weak constitution. This led him to economize his vitality by temperate habits; and he lived until he was past seventy years of age, accomplished a prodigious amount of labor, and left behind him the marks of usefulness and true greatness. Abraham manifested great weakness and unbelief in desiring that his faithful servant Eliezer should be his heir, and then in marrying Hagar; but by the grace of God and the severe trial through which he passed in yielding his son Isaac an offering to the Lord, his errors were canceled, and he attained to a degree of faith truly wonderful. Jacob greatly erred in stealing the blessing of his brother through fraud. He would have obtained the blessing in a more honorable manner had he waited for God’s own time and not taken his case into his own hands. That thorough repentance and perfect trust may be developed in Jacob, and that his shameful error may be remitted, he is subjected to a number of perplexing trials, the greatest of which, that of wrestling with the angel, places him among the heroes of faith. Paul’s thorn in the flesh helped him to cultivate humility and magnify the grace of God, and doubtless helped him to say from experience, “When I am weak then am I strong.” The ancient worthies “out of weakness were made strong.” Let us not, then, repine at the difficulties, hardships, and trials of the Christian life. The obstacles that we encounter may be to us positive blessings. They may knit our spiritual muscles more firmly and teach us self-reliance, just as by wrestling with an athlete who is superior to us, we increase our own strength, and learn the secret of his skill. Peril is the element in which strength is developed. As one of the ancients very fitly remarked, “Necessity and ability dwell near each other.” Time is too short for us to waste its moments in deploring our errors and failures. Let us look at them to see their sinfulness, that we may cleanse them in the healing Fountain and avoid them in the future, and then let us press on to success and victory. D. T. BOURDEAU.