A good man is willing to know the worst of himself, and particularly under affliction, desires to be told wherefore God contends with him and what God designs in correcting him.
Matthew HenryRead
What peace can they have who are not at peace with God?
Interpretation
Inner peace is rooted in one's relationship with a higher power.
Matthew Henry emphasizes that true peace cannot be achieved without reconciliation with God. This suggests that regardless of external circumstances, an individual's spiritual peace or turmoil directly influences their overall well-being and sense of tranquility.
In practice
During a sermon about finding inner peace, I shared this quote to emphasize the importance of spiritual connection.
A good man is willing to know the worst of himself, and particularly under affliction, desires to be told wherefore God contends with him and what God designs in correcting him.
There is a burden of care in getting riches; fear in keeping them; temptation in using them; guilt in abusing them; sorrow in losing them; and a burden of account at last to be given concerning them.
To wait on God is to live a life of desire toward Him, delight in Him, dependence on Him, and devotedness to Him.
Scriptures were written, not to satisfy our curiosity and make us astronomers, but to lead us to God, and make us saints.
What God requires of us he himself works in us, or it is not done. He that commands faith, holiness, and love, creates them by the power of his grace going along with his word, that he may have all the praise.
No attribute of God is more dreadful to sinners than His holiness.
People born in Puerto Rico are U.S. citizens - except for the teeny, tiny, mind-boggling fact that if you live in Puerto Rico, you are not allowed to cast a vote in the election for president. That tiny fact starts to get bigger when you realize that electing our own leaders is the whole reason that we have a country in the first place.
The church is not a political power; it's not a party, but it's a moral power.
Man's ideal state is realized when he has fulfilled the purpose for which he is born. And what is it that reason demands of him? Something very easy-that he live in accordance with his own nature.
Allah the Exalted loves him who forgoes worldly life, the Angels love him who rejects the vices, and the Muslims love him who gives up greediness in respect of the Muslims.
A total spiritual direction given to the whole life and the whole nature can alone lift humanity beyond itself. . . It is only the full emergence of the soul, the full descent of the native light and power of the Spirit and the consequent replacement or transformation and uplifting of our insufficient mental and vital nature by a spiritual and supramental Supernature that can effect this evolutionary miracle.
It is this mythical, or rather symbolic, content of the religious traditions which is likely to come into conflict with science. This occurs whenever this religious stock of ideas contains dogmatically fixed statements on subjects which belong in the domain of science.
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