When God Removes Any Comfort From Us

We must be patient when God removes any comfort from us.

If God takes away any of our relations – ‘I take away the desire of thine eyes with a stroke’ (Ezek. 24:16) – it is still our duty patiently to acquiesce in the will of God. The loss of a dear relation is like pulling away a limb from the body. ‘A man dies every time he loses his own kith and kin.’ But grace will make our hearts calm and quiet, and produce holy patience in us under such a severe dispensation. I shall lay down eight considerations which may act like spiritual medicine to kill the worm of impatience under the loss of relations:

1. The Lord never takes away any comfort from His people without giving them something better. The disciples parted with Christ’s corporal presence and He sent them the Holy Ghost. God eclipses one joy and augments another. He simply makes an exchange; He takes away a flower and gives a diamond.

2. When godly friends die, they are in a better condition; they are taken away ‘from the evil to come’ (Isa. 57:1). They are out of the storm and have gone to the haven: ‘Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord’ (Rev. 14:13). The godly have a portion promised upon their marriage to Christ, but the portion is not paid till the day of their death. The saints are promoted at death to communion with God; they have what they so long hoped for, and prayed for. Why, then, should we be impatient at our friends’ promotion?

3. You who are a saint have a friend in heaven whom you cannot lose. The Jews have a saying at their funerals, ‘Let your consolation be in heaven.’ Are you mourning somebody close to you? Look up to heaven and draw comfort from there; your best kindred are above. ‘When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up’ (Ps. 27:10). God will be with you in the hour of death: ‘though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, Thou art with me’ (Ps. 23:4). Other friends you cannot keep. God is a friend you cannot lose. He will be your guide in life; your hope in death; your reward after death.

4. Perhaps God is correcting you for a fault, and if so, it becomes you to be patient. It may be your friend had more of your love than God and therefore God took away such a relation, so that the stream of your love might run back to Him again. A gracious woman had been deprived , first of her children, then of her husband. She said, ‘Lord, Thou hast a plot against me; Thou intendest to have all my love.’ God does not like to have any creature set upon the throne of our affections; He will take away that comfort, and then He shall lie nearest our heart. If a husband bestows a jewel on his wife, and she so falls in love with that jewel as to forget her husband, he will take away the jewel so that her love may return to him again. A dear relation is this jewel. If we begin to idolize it, God will take away the jewel so that our love may return to Him again.

5. A godly relation is parted with, but not lost. That is lost which we have no hope of ever seeing again. Religious friends have only gone a little ahead of us. A time will shortly come when there shall be a meeting without parting (1 Thess. 5:10). How glad is one to see a long-absent friend! Oh, what glorious applause there will be, when old relations meet together in heave, and are in each other’s embraces! When a great prince lands at the shore, the guns go off in token of joy; when godly friends have all landed at the heavenly shore and congratulate one another on their happiness, what stupendous joy there will be! What music in the choir of angels! How heaven will ring with their praises! And that which is the crown of all, those who were joined in the flesh here shall be joined nearer than ever in the mystic body, and shall lie together in Christ’s bosom, that bed of perfume (1 Thess. 4:17).

6. We have deserved worse at God’s hand. Has He taken away a child, a wife, a parent? He might have taken away His Spirit. Has He deprived us of a relation? He might have deprived us of salvation. Does He put a wormwood in the cup? We have deserved poison. ‘Thou hast punished us less than our iniquities deserve’ (Ezra 9:13). We have a sea of sin, and only a drop of suffering.

7. The patient soul enjoys itself most sweetly. An impatient man is like a troubled sea that cannot rest (Isa. 57:20). He tortures himself upon the rack of his own griefs and passions, whereas patience calms the heart, as Christ did the sea, when it was rough. Now there is a sabbath in the heart, yes, a heaven. ‘In your patience possess ye your souls’ (Luke 21:19). By faith a man possesses God and by patience he possesses himself.

8. How patient many of the saints have been, when the Lord has broken the very staff of their comfort in bereaving them of relations. The Lord took away Job’s children and he was so far from murmuring that he fell to blessing: ‘the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord’ (Job 1:21). God foretold the death of Eli’s sons: ‘in one day they shall die, both of them’ (1 Sam. 2:34). But how patiently he took this sad news: ‘It is the Lord: let Him do what seemeth Him good’ (1 Sam. 3:18). See the difference between Eli and Pharaoh! Pharaoh said, ‘Who is the Lord?’ (Exod. 5:2). Eli said, ‘It is the Lord.’ When God struck two of Aaron’s sons dead, ‘Aaron held his peace’ (Lev. 10:2,3). Patience opens the ear but shuts the mouth so that it has not a word to say against God. See here the patterns of patience; and shall we not copy them? These are heart-quietening considerations when God sets a death’s-head upon our comforts and removes dear relations from us.

Thomas Watson

The Godly Man’s Picture, pp. 120-123