One who genuinely loves God, interprets all His dealings in the best sense.
Though He afflicts sharply the soul takes all well. This is the language of a gracious spirit:
My God sees what a hard heart I have, therefore He drives in one wedge of affliction after another to break my heart.
He knows how full I am of the cancer of covetousness, or the swelling of pride, or the fever of lust therefore He gives me bitter remedies, to save my life.
This severe dispensation is either to mortify some corruption or to exercise some grace. How good is God, who will not let me alone in my sins but smites my body to save my soul!
Thus genuine piety puts a good gloss upon all God's afflictive dealings.
It is Satan who makes us have high thoughts of ourselves, and hard thoughts of God. "Take away everything he has and he will surely curse You to Your face!" Job 1:11
Job 1:20-22 Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground, and worshipped, And said, Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD. In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly.
~Thomas Watson~
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