Romans 5:3-5

Romans 5:3-5. But we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; and patience, experience; and experience, hope: and hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.

Beloved, it is a mark of great grace to be able to acquiesce in tribulation, and to accept it with patient resignation at the Lord’s hands; but it is a sign of a still higher state of grace when we glory in tribulation,-when we welcome it and say, "Now, the Lord is about to elevate me to the upper class in his school,-to teach me some deeper truths than I have hitherto learned, to give me a closer acquaintance with some mystery of his kingdom than I have previously had,-to work in my heart some new grace which has never been there before. "We glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience." You cannot learn to swim on dry land, and you cannot learn to be patient without having something to endure. "Tribulation worketh patience; and patience, experience." There are some who think that they will get; experience through tribulation. So they do, in a certain sense; but not experience of the right kind. There is a middle term-patience,-which keeps its right place: "Tribulation worketh patience; and patience, experience." I know some people, who have had a thousand troubles, but they have no more experience now than they had when they began; I mean, they are just as foolish,-just as untaught in the things of God,-just as ready as before to blunder into a fresh trouble, because they have lacked that middle term. Then, further Paul says, "and experience, hope." Our experience of the Lord’s goodness in the past leads us on to hope for still greater things in the future and, thus, experience worketh hope. I have seen some persons, who were called experienced Christians, in whom it seemed to me that experience had worked despair; for their faces were always very long and very sad, and their speech was as dolorous as it well could be. But here I find that true Christian experience worketh hope,-a hope that maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us."