Day by Day with Martin Luther

Read: Genesis 8:1 – 10:32 Matthew 4:12 – 25 Proverbs 1:20-23

“The Purpose of Trouble”

“Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
[Matthew 6:10]

Let us learn, therefore, to submit our troubles to the counsels of God and to refrain from the cares and thoughts that God has not commanded. There is nothing safer or more acceptable to God than if we refrain from our own counsels and rely on His Word. There we shall find sufficient guidance about what we ought to do. His commands to us are faith, love, and bearing our cross. With these things, I say, we can happily occupy ourselves. Let us deal with everything else as it comes into our hands, leaving to Him the concern about its outcome … but God has given men this trouble or affliction, not in order to destroy them, but in order to call them back from their foolish wisdom and schemes, and to teach us that our wisdom amounts to nothing … for it is not wisdom that accomplishes anything, not even genuine wisdom, but the will of God, so that we learn to pray [Matthew 6:10]: “Thy will be done.”