You do not need to extensively in Christian history or Christian biography to spot the connection between sorrow and sanctification. Though it is certainly not always the case, very often the people who are particularly used by the Lord are the same people who endure suffering. De Witt Talmage makes this point well in a quote from one of his sermons.

Call the roll of all the eminently pious of all the ages and you will find them the sons and daughters of sorrow. The Maronites say that one characteristic of the cedar tree is that when the air is full of snow, and it begins to descend, the tree lifts its branches in a way better to receive the snow and bear up under it, and I know by much observation that the grandest cedars of Christian character lift higher their branches toward God, when the snows of trouble are coming. Lord Nelson’s coffin was made out of the masts of the ship L’Orient, in which he had fought so bravely, and your throne in heaven, oh, suffering child of God, will be built out of conquered earthly disasters.
What gave John Bunyan such a wondrous dream of the celestial city? The Bedford penitentiary.
What gave Richard Baxter such power to tell of The Saints’ Everlasting Rest, and give his immortal Call to the Unconverted? Physical disease which racked every nerve of his body.
What made George Whitefield so mighty in saving souls, bringing ten thousand to God when others brought a hundred? Persecution that caricatured and assailed him all up and down England, and dead vermin thrown in his face when he was preaching.
What mellowed and glorified Wilberforce’s Christian character? A financial misfortune that led him to write: “I know not why my life is spared so long, except it be to show that a man can be as happy without a fortune as with one.”
What gave John Milton such deep spiritual eyesight that he could see the battle of angels? Extinguishment of physical eyesight.
What is the highest observatory for studying the stars of hope and faith and spiritual promise? The believer’s sick-bed.
What proclaims the richest and most golden harvests that wave on all the hills of heavenly rapture? The snows, the deep snows, the awful snows of earthly calamity. And that thought is one of the treasures of the snow.

May the Lord be with you and bless you today.

Can You Stand for Truth without Being Offensive?
“I often speak on controversial subjects: abortion, homosexuality, Islam, transgenderism, bioethics. These aren’t topics that are casually brought up over Christmas dinner and calmly discussed with out-of-town family. That’s why believers often ask me how they can stand for truth on controversial topics without being offensive. Here are three quick things I tell them…”
Too Busy to Read? Read More, Not Less
If you find you’re too busy to read, then maybe you’re thinking about things wrongly…
Questioning God
“Sometimes people act like you can’t ask questions in church life, as though you just have to ‘have faith’, which is true but not in the way that people who usually say it mean. I think they act like this because well-meaning people have told them so.”
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‘Tis the Season for Regret?
Stephen Roberts: “Christmas is often filled with regret, especially when we compare the Hallmark ideal with the realities of life in a broken world. It shines a bright light on pasts that are often filled with trauma, the gaping wounds where love once was or should’ve been, and the hardships nibbling at us in the present. Before you drown yourself in mugs of warm eggnog, here are a few reminders for how to recover the reason for the season…”
Baby Jesus: Our High Priest and Sympathizer
“The Christmas season becomes more profound when we grasp this gift of Christ’s birth. We have a God who wanted to identify with our suffering to comfort us and give us strength in time of need. Hebrew 4:16 says, ‘Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.’”
Norway’s Shoddy Christmas Tree And The Nature Of Biblical Typology
Here’s the connection between a shoddy Christmas tree and the nature of biblical typology.
Flashback: Please Don’t Give Them Porn for Christmas
This Christmas a lot of children will receive porn from under the tree. It’s not what they wanted, and not what their parents intended for them to have. But they will get it anyway.

We can’t separate the Bible’s commands to do justice from its commands to be discerning. The oppressed deserve more than our good intentions. We must love them not merely with our hearts and hands but with our heads too. —Thaddeus Williams

It is one of those biblical commands that has always perplexed me. If it appeared just one time in Scripture I might be tempted to pass it by. But it appears no less than three times, in Exodus 23:19, Exodus 34:26, and Deuteronomy 14:21. The repetition tells me that God is quite concerned that his people pay attention to his command and obey it. The command is this: “You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk.”
So why did God care how his Old Testament people cooked their goat? And is there any possible application to us today?
Not surprisingly, commentators are a bit divided on God’s intent in this injunction. There are broadly two different schools of thought. While some scholars choose one of the two options, a good number suggest both are relevant.
The first suggestion is that the Canaanites followed a religious ritual that involved this very thing—boiling a young goat in its mother’s milk. They would then take that milk and sprinkle it on their fields, hoping that the gods would respond by making the land fertile. This makes sense in the immediate context (of the first use in Exodus, at least) where we find laws about the various feasts and festivals, including ones related to harvest. The weakness of this theory is that there is no substantial proof that this was actually a Canaanite ritual and no substantial proof that the Israelites knew anything of it. It makes good sense and is quite plausible, but remains unproven.
The second suggestion is that there is something too ghastly and too contrary to nature in using a mother goat’s milk to cook her baby. It’s not that it was wrong to cook a baby goat or even that it was wrong to cook a baby goat in milk. It was simply wrong to cook a baby goat in its own mother’s milk. Philip Ryken explains this well: “A young goat is supposed to be nourished by its mother’s milk, not boiled in it.” To use the source of nourishment to be the source of seasoning or tenderness somehow opposes a principle of life. If we understand the command in this light, it might be similar to the prohibition against taking both a bird and its young (Deuteronomy 22:6). In that case, it is essentially a call to kindness in place of cruelty. God permits man to use and eat animals, but we must still treat them with dignity as beings created by his hand.
Which of these positions is correct? We cannot know definitively and thus need to hesitate about taking too bold a position. And while the Israelites probably understood better than we do, the main thing for them was not understanding but obedience. Their call was to obey God and refuse to ever boil a baby goat in its mother’s milk. Simple enough!
Is there anything we can gain from these parallel verses? Are they in any way profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness? I see two possible applications.
The first is to guard ourselves against worldliness. If the first theory is correct, then the Israelites, when they entered their new land, would be tempted to imitate a common practice that would tempt them away from reliance on God and tempt them toward reliance on superstitious ritual. We are certainly not immune from this temptation—to begin imitating behavior that may seem reasonable, yet still reduces our reliance on God. Perhaps we can do this when we follow secular financial practices that prompt us to reduce what we give to the church because we believe a comfortable future depends upon reaching a certain savings goal. Perhaps we also see this in cultures elsewhere in the world where people profess Christ and join a church, but still “hedge their bets” by maintaining traditional rites and rituals.
Perhaps God’s prohibition prompts us all the more to be consistently pro-life knowing that cruelty toward animals may become cruelty toward human beings.Share
The second is to value life—human life primarily, of course, but also animal life. God permits his people to eat animals and demands they sacrifice animals, so we have the right to kill and eat them. But we must still treat them with dignity, knowing that God created them and cares for them. To use the milk of the mother to cook her baby appears to be contemptuous of life and the special relationship between parents and children. This being the case, animals serve as a smaller picture of the greater reality of human beings. And in this way perhaps God’s prohibition prompts us all the more to be consistently pro-life knowing that cruelty toward animals may become cruelty toward human beings.
Whatever else is true of the Canaanites and the other foreign nations within and around the Promised Land, they were most certainly pagan and most certainly cruel. And boiling a baby in its mother’s milk was pagan or cruel, or perhaps pagan and cruel. God’s people, however, were to be holy and compassionate. Such set-apartness was to be displayed not only in the temple and in formal religious rituals, but even in the kitchen and in the way they prepared their food. Because to live for God demands living for him in every possible sphere and every possible activity.