Without a due sense of predestination, we shall lack the surest and the most powerful inducement to patience, res­ignation, and dependence on God under every spiritual and temporal affliction.

How sweet must the following considerations be to a distressed believer!

1. There most certainly exists an almighty, all wise, and infi­nitely gracious God (Heb. 11:6).
    
2. He has given me in times past and is giving me at present (if I had but eyes to see it) many signal intimations of His love to me, both in a way of providence and grace (Eph. 1).
    
3. This love of His is immutable. He never repents of it nor withdraws it (Phil. 1:6).
    
4. Whatever comes to pass in time is the result of His will from everlasting (1 Cor. 8:6), consequently –
    
5. My afflictions were a part of His original plan and are all ordered in number, weight, and measure (Ps. 22:24).
    
6. The very hairs of my head (every one) are counted by Him; nor can a single hair fall to the ground but in consequence of His determination (Luke 12:7). Hence –
    
7. My distresses are not the result of chance, accident, or a fortuitous combination of circumstances (Ps. 56:8), but –
    
8. My distresses are the providential accomplishment of God’s purpose (Rom. 8:28), and –
    
9. My distresses are designed to answer some wise and gracious ends (James 5:10-11), and –
    
10. My affliction shall not continue a moment longer than God sees (fit) (2 Cor. 7:6-7).
     
11. He who brought me to it has promised to support me under it and to carry me through it (Ps. 34:15-17).
     
12. All shall most assuredly work together for His glory and my good, therefore –
     
13. “The cup which my heavenly Father hath given me to drink, shall I not drink it?” (John 18:11).

Yes, I will, in the strength He imparts, even rejoice in tribulation. Using the means of possible redress, which He hath or may hereafter put into my hands, I will com­mit myself and the event to Him, whose purpose cannot be overthrown, whose plan cannot be disconcerted, and who, whether I am resigned or not, will still go on to work all things after the counsel of His own will (Rom. 5:3-6; Ps. 33:11-12; Eph. 1:11).

Above all, when the suffering Christian takes his elec­tion into the account and knows that he was by an eternal and immutable act of God appointed to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ; that, of course, he hath a city prepared for him above, a building of God, a house not made with hands, but eternal in the heavens; and that the heaviest sufferings of the present life are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in the saints – what adversity can possibly befall us, which the assured hope of blessings like these will not infinitely overbalance (Prov. 8:35; 2 Cor. 5:1; Rom. 8:18; Rom. 8:33-37)? ... However keenly afflictions might wound us on their first access, yet under the impression of such ani­mating views we should quickly come to ourselves again; and the arrows of tribulation would in great measure lose their sharpness. Christians lack nothing but absolute res­ignation to render them perfectly happy in every possible circumstance; and absolute resignation can only flow from an absolute belief of, and an absolute acquiescence in, God’s absolute providence, founded on absolute predestination (1 Thess. 1:2-4).