--- title: 'The Gift of Affliction' type: text hasMedia: true requiresPurchase: false authors: - 'Jim McCarthy' date: 2026-08-03 collection: 'Articles' subcollection: '2026' topics: - 'Providence' - 'Character and Conduct of Life' - 'Sanctification' scriptures: - 'Psalms 119' - 'Psalms 16' - 'Proverbs 16' - '2 Samuel 11' - '2 Chronicles 12' - '2 Chronicles 26' - 'Daniel 4' - 'John 17' - 'Luke 15' url: https://confessional.org/articles/2026/the-gift-of-affliction --- # The Gift of Affliction Affliction is God's loving instrument to humble believers, expose pride, deepen holiness, strengthen faith, and draw us closer to Christ. *“Before I was afflicted I went astray,* *but now I keep your word.” -Psalm 119:67* Years ago, a neighbor texted me, “I think your dog is out.” Now that was concerning because the neighbor lived six houses down the street and the “dog” he was referring to, was our pony-size Pyrenees-mix, Rudy. Thankfully, I found him and got him home. We celebrated the occasion by gifting him an in-ground, electric fence and shock collar. I buried the wire, staked the little white boundary flags, took a few days to familiarize Rudy with the new set up, and plugged her in. Days later, we were in the front yard when a neighbor walked by. Rudy galloped towards him and trotted right past the little flags into the blast zone when the collar zapped him. He squealed like a stuck pig and ran wide-eyed, ears-back, tail-tucked into the garage. Rudy pouted and side-eyed me the rest of the day, but he stopped running away. The sting brought about lasting submission. And that submission keeps him safe and happy. *We’re just like that, aren’t we?* “Prone to wander, Lord I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love.” But the God we love, loved us first, and loves us enough to wound us to keep us close beside Him in whose presence there is fullness of joy and at whose right hand are pleasures forevermore (Psa. 16:11). So, the Psalmist confessed, “Before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now I keep your word” (Psa. 119:67). This verse articulates the mysterious method by which *the Lord uses affliction to transform our love of sinning into more love to Christ.* ***The Danger of Ease*** In 1990, “Iron Mike” Tyson was undefeated at 37-0. When you go that long without being defeated, it’s easy to believe you can’t be defeated. But after being bested by theunknown Buster Douglas, Tyson admitted, “I never took the fight seriously…” proving Proverbs 16:18, “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” But Tyson was not alone! *When did David fall so royally?* It happened late one easy afternoon, when “David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the king’s house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing…”(2 Sam. 11:2). *When did his grandson, Rehoboam, fail so miserably?* “When the rule of Rehoboam was established and he was strong, he abandoned the law of the Lord, and all Israel with him”( 2 Chron. 12:1). *When did Uzziah sin so grievously?* “When he was strong, he grew proud, to his destruction” (2 Chron.26:16). So, Spurgeon lamented, “Why is it that a little ease works in us so much disease? Can we never rest without rusting? Never be filled without waxing fat? Never rise as to one world without going down as to another! What weak creatures we are to be unable to bear a little pleasure! What base hearts are those which turn the abundance of God’s goodness into an occasion for sin” (*The Treasury of David*. Vol. 5, Psalm 119:67). The danger does not reside in ease itself, but in our sin-haunted, pride-infected hearts. Like Nebuchadnezzar surveying his kingdom, we scan view the spires of the life God has kindly given and puff, “Is not this great Babylon, which I have built by my mighty power as a royal residence and for the glory of my majesty” (Dan. 4:30)? What the historian Edward Gibbon said of the fall of the Roman Empire could be true of any of us: “The decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay. . .” When we realize our heart’s disease and the danger of ease, we’ll remind ourselves of who we really are and what we really deserve. We’ll be careful to not inordinately cherish a compliment and be quick to deflect glory back to God. We’ll cultivate honest relationships with believers who will lovingly pop our inflating ego before it carries us away on the wind. We’ll stay riveted to the Bible and planted in the pew because sanctification comes through truth and God’s Word is truth (John 17:17). If we are unable to enjoy ease humbly and to the glory of God, he’ll save us from ourselves, oftentimes through affliction. ***The Deliverance of Affliction*** Just as a tulip bulb must spend months under the snow or in the refrigerator in order to produce blooms, the beauty of godliness is brought to flower in us by the harsh cold of affliction. As Samuel Rutherford, said, “Grace grows best in winter.” The worst thing that ever happened to the prodigal son was to have his pockets lined with his father’s gold—gold he used to fuel the fires of his sin. But the best thing that ever happened to him was to have his pockets picked bare and his pride shattered as he was brought down into the pig slop and afflicted. It was only when he came to the end of himself that he came to his senses and saw himself and his father clearly: “I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you” (Luke 15:18). I don’t know what you’ve been through or what you may be going through right now. I don’t know when it will be over. But I know that because Jesus Christ, the only person who kept God’s word perfectly and never strayed, was stricken, smitten, and afflicted on the cross for your sins, God your judge is now God your Father, and your trials aren’t a preview of hell but a preparation for heaven. Jesus took all the fatal venom out of our trials. Because Jesus was plunged into the furnace of God’s wrath on the cross for our sins, our Father can sing to us in the crucible of affliction, “the flame shall not hurt you, I only design thy dross to consume and thy gold to refine.” On May 21st, 2008, the Christian musician, Steven Curtis Chapman, was standing on his porch when his son, Will Franklin, pulled into the driveway. Just then, Chapman’s daughter, Maria, ran around the side yard to greet her brother, but he didn’t see her and struck her. Tragically the little girl died right there in her parents’ arms. As her body was airlifted away, Steven got into the passenger seat of a police car to follow. But he looked and saw his son Will, on his knees, sobbing upon the blood stained pavement. He rolled down the window of the cruiser, and over the roar of the helicopter and police sirens, cried, “Will Franklin! Your father loves you!” The next time you find yourself in the depths of affliction, where joy feels like an impossibility, Christian, if you listen carefully, you’ll hear it too, through the roar of your pain, a voice from heaven sounding, “Your Father loves you.” God save us from the tragedy of emerging from affliction unchanged. God teach us to sing with the Psalmist, “Before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now I keep your word.”