The secret to victorious living is to let Me turn every single negative, unwelcome experience you face into something lovely and beautiful by helping you respond to it with joyfully confident yielding to Me. I know you have already begun to grasp and live this magnificent and astounding Truth in some circumstances, but Precious One, it can go so much further!
Every day, you are faced with countless opportunities to practise this! You do not need to wait for particularly adverse circumstances to test it out! You have endless opportunities with your children's behaviour alone! Every tantrum, every refusal to obey, every rude word spoken, every argument between themselves...you are giving up your right to respond with rolled eyes, an impatient "Come on!", a huff and puff, or any other expression of displeasure.
Let Me turn your displeasure into sweet pleasure by your patient, joyfully confident submission to Me!
Try it, Beloved! You will be amazed at the power of this tool to change the atmosphere of your home! Not only so, but you will also be setting an example to your children of how to respond to unpleasant circumstances without letting your feelings boss you around. Win-win!!
"The heavenly attitude toward sorrow and grief and all experiences of suffering in this world is in total contrast to the natural attitude we know so well. Our Lord was "acquainted with grief" and suffering, and caused great good to come out of it. Not that we are to seek these things, but we are never to fear them. We should rather use them. God, who so loves us that he allows us, like his own dear Son, to learn obedience by the things we suffer (Hebrews 5:8), wants us to use them creatively. There would be no suffering and no sorrow permitted to God's children unless all such experiences were, in actual fact, a means to heavenly and eternal blessing which could not otherwise be ours...
There can be poison in the cup of sorrow, however - but only if we put it there ourselves by reacting to these mournful circumstances with self-pity, resentment, and angry struggles to evade the cup instead of drinking it!
...If we react to difficult situations with trust in God, difficult, unlovely, overwhelming, and disastrous things will bring praise and glory to God forever. Out of all our testing circumstances, by reacting to them in the heavenly way, we produce heavenly treasures. We have a lovely example of this in the material world, for really precious jewels, such as the diamond and ruby, are formed under immense and terrible pressure or by fiercest heat!
...Christ taught us the real secret for transforming earthly and temporary experiences into eternal treasure. It is this principle of sorrow rightly received, with joyful trust and glad submission, grief as God desires it to be used." (Hannah Hurnard, in "Walking Among The Unseen")
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