You thought you were suffering alone.

The bills have been mounting. Your health has been shaky. Family problems eat away at your peace of mind. World conditions have made you worried. Your job isn’t all that secure. And your savings are being depleted.

Take heart

God knows.

He also knows the state of your spiritual life. And intends that these burdens build you up in the faith. Matthew Henry has written: “God looks upon our souls, when we are in trouble, to see whether they are humbled for sin, and made better by the affliction. Every believer will meet with such dangers and deliverances, until he is delivered from death, his last enemy.”

C. H. Spurgeon said, “Trials are the ballast of life. The burdened vessel may sail slowly, but she sails safely. Without the ballast of trial men are apt to blow over. Ballast yourself with sympathy, if you have no trials of your own.

Since God has considered your troubles… knows them, it is certain that they have not taken Him by surprise. Nothing slips up on God. And we belong to Him. He will not allow us to face more than we can bear. Henry Ward Beecher concluded: “No physician ever weighed out medicine to his patients with half so much care and exactness as God weighs out to us every trial, Not one grain too much does He ever permit to be put in the scale.”

Rejoice. He knows and cares!