God Uses the Disappointed Ones by Mrs. L. D. Avery-Stuttle

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · May 19, 1914

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 41, No. 19.

God Uses the Disappointed Ones

By Mrs. L. D. Avery-Stuttle

By Mrs. L. D. Avery-Stuttle

THE world is full of sorrow and of sorrowful people—of tears and grief and blasted hopes and disappointed men and women.

Yes; but God will make use of the disappointed ones—make them wonderful instruments to His glory, IF—

"Why do you place such emphasis upon that little word 'if'?" you ask. "Do you mean, if they are rich or powerful or great? Do you mean that God can use them if they are influential? if they are eloquent? if they are famous?"

No; I mean, IF the disappointed man will not allow his disappointments to sour his disposition and harden his heart—in other words, IF he is willing.

After all, do you know that the saddest heart in the world can be the most "willing"—can be the most obedient, the most tractable?

Why does the refiner place the precious metal again and again in the fierce flame?—O, he is only burning away the dross—that’s all. Gold is not very valuable when it is full of dross; and the only way to get the dross out of it, is to burn it out.

Now, then, I don’t know whether you have ever noticed it or not, but it is true, that the man or the woman whose life has held but few trials, whose slightest wish has always been gratified, who has never felt the keen pangs of poverty or sickness or adversity—that man or that woman is generally the last person on earth to whom the sick or the sorrowing instinctively turn for loving sympathy and real help in the hour of sorrow.

But God has bidden us bear one another’s burdens. So when we become hardened by prosperity, He sometimes allows adversity and disappointment to come upon us, so that we may be the better able to sympathize with those upon whom the numbing hand of sorrow has been laid.

Do you see that fine house yonder? In that home, quietly resting upon a bed of velvet, lies a sweet babe. The young mother is prostrate with grief. Friends and relatives offer her loving sympathy in vain. Dry-eyed and white with agony, she only moans brokenly: "You know nothing about my sorrow. None of you has ever lost a sweet babe. You are kind, but you do not understand. No one understands."

Just across the street, in a humble cottage, another young mother has but recently lost her little one. Ah, here we shall find real sympathy. Grief is a wonderful medicine for pride. It makes brothers and sisters of us all. When affliction speaks, wealth and social position are thrown to the winds.

The childless mothers meet. Their arms are entwined about each other. Each reads the sorrow of the other’s heart like an open book—and each is comforted.

I tell you, God afflicts no man or woman willingly. He says so. He allows no disappointment to come to us without a purpose.

Let us note a few examples. We will head the list of disappointed men with the man Moses. "But," you say, "Moses was one of the greatest men that ever lived. Surely he was in no sense of the word a disappointed man."

We shall see. Moses was a man with a mission. From his youth up, he had anticipated the wonderful work before him; and with all the energy and enthusiasm of his young manhood, he undertook that mission.

But he was not prepared.

Learned in all the arts of Egypt—indeed he was; but before God could use him, he must be educated and trained in the school of adversity and bitter disappointment—must serve a forty years’ apprenticeship in the far-off land of Midian, in the humble capacity of a shepherd. And so well did he learn his lesson, that instead of the hasty, hot-headed, impulsive prince of Egypt, he became "very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth."

But even yet, he had not quite graduated in the school of adversity. One more disappointment, bitterer than all the others, must be meted out to him.

Year after year, he had patiently waited the time when he should lead his victorious people over the Jordan to their promised inheritance. I suppose the great leader had expected to do this at once, when they followed him out of Egypt, guided by the cloudy pillar. But the weary years passed one by one. In vain did the patriarch law-giver beg the mighty "Angel of the covenant" to allow him the one wish of his heart—"to go over this Jordan."

No; and the disappointed man, who had talked with Jehovah as a man talks with his friend, turned his tear-dimmed eyes toward the towering heights of Nebo, and took his lonely journey thither.

Who can picture the silent grief of the grand old hero, as he slowly climbed toward that cloud-wrapped chamber of death? This, then, was to be the end of that wonderful life.

From lone Nebo, those dark eyes, still piercing and bright as an eagle’s—eyes which had looked unflinchingly upon the glory-mantled summit of Sinai—were turned sorrowfully toward the far west. From the distant north rushed the turbulent waters of the sinuous Jordan, beyond which stretched the inheritance of Israel.

For forty weary years he had looked longingly toward that goodly land, the center of all his hopes, the goal of his ambition.

And now he must die—not decrepit and bent and weary of life, but in the full strength of manhood; with eye undimmed; with great, unselfish, loyal heart beating strong and vigorous as when, nearly a century before, he had been heir to the proud throne of Egypt.

All alone, with no sympathizing hand of brother or wife to minister to him, he must struggle with the grim monster. How many times had his unselfish prayer prevailed for the life of his ungrateful nation! But now, in this extremity, his prayer for his own life availed nothing.

Disappointed?—Ah, yes; but God had something better for His faithful servant than the heritage of the heathen beyond Jordan. O, the heavenly Canaan is better, better than the earthly. God wanted him. And God wants the disappointed man to-day.

It was not because God delighted in the grief of His servant, that He sent disappointment, keen and bitter, to the patriarch Jacob, until he cried out despairingly, "All these things are against me!"

It is easy enough for us to wonder at his lack of faith and trust, because, looking back upon his life’s history, we can so plainly see God’s providences; but he could see only the fact that his dearly loved son had been taken from him—the son of whom he had expected so much, and upon whom he depended as the staff of his old age.

But God had a beautiful surprise for him; and out of his bitter grief, God caused to spring forth a mighty deliverance.

It has been the most bitterly disappointed men and women in all history, whom the Almighty has seen fit to honor with His most important work; and to those who have suffered most keenly, has He entrusted His most wonderful commissions. God’s true children never forget that the bitterest disappointments often prove but blessings in disguise. Some one has aptly said that we must learn to look upon our dis-appointments, as His appointments.

When we do this, we can cry, with Job, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him."