The more closely we walk with God, the less we shall know of boredom. The tragedy of the unconverted man is that he is essentially bored and so is forever looking for something with which to amuse himself. Satan, being expert in human weaknesses, lays on an impressive array of temptations for mankind. It is to these that Bunyan is alluding when he calls the whole world 'Vanity Fair'. Satan's manipulation of tempting pleasures is successful only because, as he well knows, lost sinners find life hard and empty. Knowing neither God as their friend nor heaven as their hope, sinners are shut up to only one philosophy of life: 'Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die' (1 Corinthians 15:32). Poor sinners therefore go after fatal pleasures as surely as the moth goes for the naked flame of the candle, and are caught up with sins as mortally as the fly in the spider's web, till they are utterly undone.

God is too good to believers to permit them to be the victims of boredom like the world. He orders his providence with respect to them in such a manner that their hands are kept busy. God would rather have his children overworked than become a prey to boredom and its dangers. Consequently, most believers feel they are more at risk of wearing out than rusting out. The discipline of daily labour is irksome to the Christian at times but it is safe for him, since he is in this way spared much of the mischief which comes on the world through idleness.

In the light of the above, it is clear that the way of the Lord with the godly man is to subject him to changes and alterations in this life. This is a large part of his sanctification and is also an aspect of the way in which God exercises his ability to 'deliver the godly out of temptations' (2 Peter 2:9). The Scriptures, as might in the circumstances be expected to do, bear witness to this aspect of God's dealings with his own people by explaining to us that we are to expect God to vary our circumstances continually all through life.

This truth is frequently stated in the book of Job. Job complains that God scarcely gives him time to swallow down his saliva (Job 7:19) but watches over him as though he was a 'sea or a whale' (Job 7:12). So unpredictable does he experience God's ways with him to be, that he exclaims: 'Changes and war are against me' (Job 10:17).

On the other hand, the Psalmists declare that the ungodly have a less stormy passage through life. 'They (that is, the wicked) are not in trouble as other men; neither are they plagued like other men' (Psalm 73:5). The unconverted 'have their portion in this life' (Psalm 17:14). Consequently, the ungodly man flatters himself: 'I shall not be moved: for I shall never be in adversity' (Psalm 10:6). In a word, the wicked have no regard for God because 'they have no changes' (Psalm 55:19).

There are 'changes', therefore, in the life of the believer to which the non-Christian is a stranger. These are the special dealings of God with those whom he is in this life preparing to be the heirs of glory. It is our concern here to identify some of these changes and to note the purpose of God in sending them and the effects they have on the Christian now in this life.

The 'Changes' which Accompany Salvation⤒🔗

The elect, even before their salvation, occasionally have a consciousness of God's dealings with them in a manner not common to others. Not only do they look back after conversion and remember a secret uneasiness within their conscience and sense of frustration with life apart from God, but they also recall times when God either snatched them from the mouth of danger or else spoiled their happiness in the midst of sinful company. By such interruptions to the course of their life, the Lord was preserving them from self-destruction and preparing them for himself.

The elect become aware of a further 'change' in their experience when the Spirit of God sets to work in bringing home to them their guiltiness before God. In this experience, the Spirit lifts a corner of the veil which conceals the flame of hell from men, and they both feel its heat in their consciences and experience a little of the gnawing pain which the damned will have eternally. Conviction of sin and compunction are God's common method of awakening the elect sinner to see that he must flee for his life. By this experience, the Holy Spirit brings him to appreciate for the first time the exceeding sinfulness of sin, the terrors of law and of God and the imminence of divine judgment. No use will be found for a Saviour till some such experience of conviction has passed over the sinner's soul. In saying this, we do not mean to limit the means at God's disposal for bringing his people to Christ.

The greatest single change which God brings on the elect sinner in this life is the second birth. Like natural birth it may well be preceded by exquisite pain and anguish. But it is followed by the experience of new life in the soul and therefore by a peace which 'passeth all understanding' (Philippians 4:7).

It might be thought that, once the elect sinner is brought safely home to Christ, there is no further need for God to subject him to the sort of changes we have referred to. But that is not the case. Left to ourselves and to the ease which our fallen flesh craves, we would all as Christians have a tendency, through indwelling sin, to revert to a life of self-interestedness. To curb this and also to advance the life of grace within the souls of his people, the Father of mercies has ordained that commonly all his beloved children should be subjected to changes and alterations, of which they quickly become aware once the pilgrim journey is begun.

God's Purpose in Our Changes←⤒🔗

In general, the alterations which the Lord brings on us in this life are of such a kind as to cross our perverse wills, disappoint our foolish schemes, humble our pride and arouse us from complacency to higher levels of spirituality and perfection of character. Unwelcome as God's interruptions of a believer's peace are to him, they become welcome in the context of his highest good. When viewed in their first light, these dealings of God with us are often felt to be annoyances against which we instinctively pray. It may be only after some time that we come to value them as changes which God has sent upon us for our sanctification. Of such a kind was Paul's 'thorn in the flesh' (2 Corinthians 12:7), against which he had prayed repeatedly before his eyes were opened to the purpose of God's grace in sending it.

So it generally is with all Christians. When God sends some sudden bereavement, some illness, some galling humiliation, some loss, some sharp affliction, some disappointment or similar change of state, we reel and stagger with initial surprise. Only later, and perhaps only much later, do we come to value the alterations in our life as changes which did us good. 'It is good for me that I was afflicted' (Psalm 119:71) and 'Before I was afflicted I went astray' (Psalm 119:67) are truths seen only in retrospect, when time perhaps has healed the wound and when much inner conflict has subsided, with the result that we have at last become teachable.

Our getting safe to heaven depends very much upon our having such experiences. Without them we should perhaps make shipwreck of our faith. Wise, therefore, is the saying of the great Augustine: 'I had been undone if I had not been undone.'

The Effects of Change on the Christian←⤒🔗

The benefits which come to believers by these changes sent into their lives are neither few nor small. For one thing, they show us that our 'spot is the spot of God's children' (Deuteronomy 32:5). We can identify with the dark and difficult experiences of biblical saints. We, too, have had our moments when we could say: 'I am like a bottle in the smoke' (Psalm 119:83); 'I am a worm, and no man' (Psalm 22:6); 'I am forgotten as a dead man out of mind: I am like a broken vessel (or pot)' (Psalm 31:12);

I am as a man that hath no strength; free among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave, whom thou rememberest no more ... I am shut up and cannot come forth.Psalm 88:4-5, 8

It is the believer's great comfort to realise, with Bible in hand, that his tears and his troubles, as he suffers for a little while under God's hand of correction, place him inside, not outside, the circle of God's saints.

Then, too, the believer's experience of disciplinary change in his life enriches him in the true knowledge of God. There will be no Bunyans or Bostons any more till Christians give up their shallow modern theory that the Fatherhood of God guarantees the believer's easy passage through life. We mean not to be sour or censorious. But it will not do for the Christian to talk ingratiatingly about God as if he were on terms of unwarranted intimacy with him. There is a way of talking about 'the Lord' and 'my Father' and 'knowing the will of God for my life' which is not piety but presumption. The God who is our Father is and still remains the incomprehensible God. When we speak of our intimacy with God, we had best not insinuate that we are privy to his secret counsels. Those who do so show their immaturity, not their advancement over their brethren, and they only glory in their shame.

The Bunyans and Bostons of the church arrived at their high knowledge of God as a result of their many sanctified trials and temptations. What makes The Pilgrim's Progress sublime religious allegory rather then merely a brilliant piece of fantasy is that it records what is real in Christian experience. Countless Christians can identify with the book because it mirrors their own experiences of life. But the book could never have been written had not Bunyan's own soul first been the arena of the experiences he writes about. Prayer, temptation and affliction, to quote a saying of Luther's, make a minister. In the same way they make a Christian strong in the knowledge of God.

Finally, we would observe that the Lord sends changes of the kind we speak of into the lives of his children to prepare them for heaven. As we find by experience that 'here we have no continuing city, we learn to look for 'one that is to come' (Hebrews 13:14). When we see our earthly sand-castles repeatedly washed away by successive waves, we are compelled to understand at length that our home is not on any earthly shore but is to be in that invisible kingdom which nothing shall shake. Like Rutherford, we come to the view that we must build our nest in no earthly tree since God will consign the whole forest to the fire.

If the worldly man's life is one of boredom, the Christian's, by contrast, is marked by activity, experience, discipline and change. The right-minded Christian would prefer to serve Christ here on earth even if there were no heaven at all. Then let us welcome our ups and downs as believers, as God empties us from vessel to vessel. Those who are left to themselves soon settle on their lees. The worldly life is really only a living death. Life in the fellowship of Christ is two heavens: a heaven below and a heaven above. O! let us enjoy both in rich measure!