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We may take this comforting promise to ourselves and apply it —

I. TO SUCH OF OUR TRIALS AS, LIKE ST. PAUL'S, ARE SECRET. You may be called to endure chastenings from God's hand which no one but yourselves can know or appreciate. Perhaps your affliction also exposes you to misconception from your fellow-men, who condemn your conduct as eccentric and unchristian, when if they knew the reason of it they would compassionate rather than censure. Eli condemned Hannah as a drunkard, when he afterwards discovered that she was praying in a sorrowful spirit. Christ can understand your case, and His "grace is sufficient for thee."

II. TO THOSE TRIALS WHICH ARE MORE OPEN. Take, e.g., one of the most common of our earthly troubles, that caused by the voice of calumny. You may be conscious that you are innocent, and it is all very well to talk of superiority to calumny. When Christ was called a gluttonous man and a wine-bibber, a Samaritan and a devil, and crucified as a malefactor, He did not wrap Himself up in His conscious innocence and look with perfect indifference upon the malignant assaults of His enemies. It was one of the severest parts of His earthly trials. And here is our hope, viz., that the Saviour, who has Himself known the trial, will make His "grace sufficient for us." There is one Friend whom the slanderer cannot alienate. No falsehood breathed against any man ever injured him in the estimation of Jesus, but, on the contrary, made him more peculiarly the object of the Saviour's care.

III. FOR THE DUTIES OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE, How arduous those duties are! And many have drawn back from them. "My grace is sufficient for thee," is not a promise for those who neglect duty, but for those who engage in it. The fullest stream cannot move the wheel till the water gate is raised, but then when that is done, it comes down steadily upon it, and as each turn makes place for more, another gushing flood comes down and turns it again, and keeps it ever moving. So is it in our duties. Let us engage in them, let us remove the obstacles, let us draw up the gate, and then it is Christ's part to send down grace to keep the machinery of the spiritual life in constant motion. It is the absurdest thing to shrink from duties because of our weakness, when the almighty power of Jesus is pledged to be present with us.

IV. TO ALL THAT YET LIES BEFORE US, OF TRIAL AND OBEDIENCE. We can fancy many dreadful evils in the coming future. We have, at least, one great trial to endure, the severing of friends from us by death, and our own last conflict with the great enemy.

(W. H. Lewis, D. D.)

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KJV: For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me.

WEB: Concerning this thing, I begged the Lord three times that it might depart from me.