10. Now, since this knowledge of the Gospel is so difficult to attain
and so foreign to nature, it is necessary that we pray for it with
all earnestness and labor to be increasingly filled with it, and to
learn well the will of God. Our own experience testifies that if it
be but superficially and improperly learned, when one is overtaken by
a trifling misfortune or alarmed by a slight danger or affliction,
his heart is easily overwhelmed with the thunderbolts of God's wrath
as he reflects: "Wo to me! God is against me and hates me." Why
should this miserable "Wo!" enter the heart of a Christian upon the
occasion of a little trouble? If he were filled with the knowledge of
God as he should be, and as many secure, self-complacent spirits
imagine themselves to be, he would not thus fear and make outcry. His
agitation and his complaint, "O Lord God! why dost thou permit me to
suffer this?" are evidence that he as yet knows not God's will, or at
least has but a faint conception of it; the wo exceeds the joy. But
full knowledge of God's will brings with it a joy that far
overbalances all fear and terror, ay, removes and abolishes them
altogether.
11. Therefore let us learn this truth and with Paul pray for what we
and all Christians supremely need--full knowledge of God's will, not
a mere beginning; for we are not to imagine a beginning will suffice
and to stop there as if we had comprehended it all. Everything is not
accomplished in the mere planting; watering and cultivation must
follow. In this case the watering and cultivating are the Word of
God, and prayer against the devil, who day and night labors to
suppress spiritual knowledge, to beat down the tender plants wherever
he sees them springing up; and also against the world, which promotes
only opposition and directs its wisdom and reason to conflicting
ends. Did not God protect us and strengthen the knowledge of his
will, we would soon see the devil's power and the extent of our
spiritual understanding.
12. We have a verification of this assertion in that poetical work,
the book of Job. Satan appears before God, who asks (ch. 1, 8): "Hast
thou considered my servant Job? for there is none like him in the
earth, a perfect and upright man, one that feareth God." And Satan
answers on this wise: "Yea, thou hast surrounded him with thy
protection and kept me at bay; but only withdraw thy hand and I
venture I will soon bring him around to curse thee to thy face"; as
he afterward did when he afflicted Job with ugly boils and in
addition filled him with his fiery arrows--terrifying thoughts of
God. Further, Christ said to Peter and the other apostles: "Satan
asked to have you, that he might sift you as wheat: but I made
supplication for thee, that thy faith fail not." Lk 22, 31-32. In
short, if God hinders him not, Satan dares to overthrow even the
greatest and strongest saints.
13. Therefore, although we have become Christians and have made a
beginning in the knowledge of God's will, we ought nevertheless to
walk in fear and humility, and not to be presumptuous like the
soon-wearied, secure spirits, who imagine they exhausted that
knowledge in an instant, and know not the measure and limit of their
skill. Such people are particularly pleasing to the devil, for he has
them completely in his power and makes use of their teaching and
example to harm others and make them likewise secure, and unmindful
of his presence and of the fact that God may suffer them to be
overwhelmed. Verily, there is need of earnest and diligent use of the
Word of God and prayer, that Christians may not only learn to know
the will of God, but also to be filled with it. Only so can the
individual walk always according to God's will and make constant
progress, straining toward the goal of an ever-increasing comfort and
strength that shall enable him to face fears and terrors and not
allow the devil, the world, and flesh and blood to hinder him.