Blinded by Love 2 Corinthians 12:9-10

If someone we care about hurts, our first instinct is to remove the pain. We want to offer money, advice, or a way out of a mess. However, if God is not ready to have the problem patched up, then the believer who repairs it gets himself into a fix. The Lord will discipline a Christian who obstructs His work in another person’s life.

Love can blind us to the fact that God bring a person to a position of utter desperation so that she will give up her self-sufficiency. Only when His strength is manifested in her weakness does she finally know what it means to rely upon God. We do not want to hinder such an essential lesson!

Our heavenly Father’s ways often do not make sense to humans. We wonder how pain could be the means of bringing about spiritual victory. Yet His greatest triumph–overcoming sin and death–was achieved through Jesus Christ’s sacrifice, which involved physical and emotional anguish. And the example in the paragraph above helps us understand why God uses hardship to mature believers: Hurt and despair often strip away the “props” we depend on and expose our need for a Savior. Man’s weakness is a showcase for God’s strength.

It is only natural that we want to rescue hurting loved ones. However, we may not be the tool God wishes to use for that purpose. The wise course of action is to ask God if He wants us to get involved. Then, we must be sensitive to His will and ready to stand aside so that His plan can move forward.

Behold

‘Behold the man!’

John 19:5

If there be one place where our Lord Jesus most fully becomes the joy and comfort of His people, it is where He plunged deepest into the depths of woe. Come, gracious souls, and behold the Man in the garden of Gethsemane; behold His heart so brimming with love that He cannot hold it in—so full of sorrow that it must find expression. Behold the bloody sweat as it distills from every pore of His body and falls upon the ground. Behold the Man as they drive the nails into His hands and feet. Look up, repenting sinners, and see the sorrowful image of your suffering Lord. Consider Him as the ruby drops stand on the thorn-crown and adorn with priceless gems the diadem of the King of Misery. Behold the Man when all His bones are out of joint, and He is poured out like water and brought into the dust of death; God has forsaken Him, and hell surrounds Him.

Look and see, was there ever sorrow like His sorrow that is done unto Him? All passersby pause and look upon this spectacle of grief, a wonder to men and angels, an unparalleled phenomenon. Behold the Emperor of Woe who had no equal or rival in His agonies! Gaze upon Him, you mourners, for if there is no consolation in a crucified Christ there is no joy in earth or heaven. If in the ransom price of His blood there is no hope, there is no joy in the harps of heaven, and the right hand of God shall know no pleasures forevermore.

We need only sit more continually at the cross to be less troubled with our doubts and woes. We need only see His sorrows, and our sorrows we shall be ashamed to mention; we need only to gaze into His wounds and heal our own. If we would live properly, it must be by the contemplation of His death; if we would rise to dignity, it must be by considering His humiliation and His sorrow.