Author: Unknown
“Now thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ.” (II Cor. 2 :14.)
When you are forgotten or neglected or purposely set at naught, and you smile inwardly, glorying in the insult or oversight-that is victory.
When your good is evil spoken of, when your wishes are crossed, your taste offended, your advice disregarded, your opinions ridiculed, and you take it all in patient loving silence-that is victory. When you are content with any food, any raiment, any climate, any society, any solitude, any interruption by the will of God-that is victory.
When you can lovingly and patiently deal with any disorder, any irregularity, any unpunctuality or any annoyance-that is victory.
When you never care to refer to yourself in conversation or to record your own good works or to itch after commendation; when you can truly love to be unknown-that is victory. When you can stand face to face with waste, folly, extravagance, spiritual insensibility, and endure it as Jesus endured it-that is victory.
When like Paul, you can throw all your suffering on Jesus, thus converting it into a means of knowing His overcoming grace, and can say with a surrendered heart, “Most gladly therefore do I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ’s sake”-that is victory (See II Cor. 12:7-10).
When death and life are both alike to you through Christ, and to do His perfect will, you delight no more in one than the other-that is victory; for through Him you may be able to say, “Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be by life, or by death.” (Phil. 1:20.)
The perfect victory is to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ” and thus to triumph over self. (Rom. 13:14). “In all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.” Rom. 8:37.
