Enduring Grace

And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. 2 CORINTHIANS 12:9

What first sent Amanda Smith seeking holiness in earnest was not a sermon or a book. It was a bad night at home. Her second marriage had turned out badly; her husband, she wrote, “was one of those poor unfortunate dispositions that are hard to satisfy.” One morning, bent over the wash-tub after such a night, her heart sore, she prayed, Lord, is there no way out of this? And the Lord, she says, sent Mother Jones.

Get sanctified, and then you have enduring grace

She could not help crying, and poured out all the good things she did to make home pleasant, and how unkind her husband still was. Mother Jones listened and said that her own husband used to treat her the same way, “but when God sanctified my soul He gave me enduring grace, and that is what you need; get sanctified, and then you have enduring grace.”

The phrase went straight to her heart. “My,” she thought, “is that what sanctification means? Enduring grace? That is just what I need; I have always been planning to get out of trials, instead of asking God for grace to endure.”

Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing. JAMES 1:3–4

That sentence contains a great deal of practical theology. Most of us, when life is hard, pray to be got out of it. There is nothing wrong with praying so; Paul asked three times for his thorn to be taken away. But the believer who only ever asks for escape has not yet learned what Paul learned, that the answer may be not the removal of the trial but the gift of grace sufficient to bear it. Amanda Smith’s holiness was never an escape from ordinary life. It was strength to live it.

Not a nun

After her sanctification she found out, she said, “that it was not necessary to be a nun or be isolated away off in some deep retirement to have communion with Jesus.” Her hands might be in the wash-water, and her heart could still be with Him. “Many times over my wash-tub and ironing table, and while making my bed and sweeping my house and washing my dishes I have had some of the richest blessings.”

And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men. COLOSSIANS 3:23

She told this to many mothers, and it cheered them to learn that the blessing of holiness did not mean isolation from the natural and legitimate duties of life. It meant God in you, supplying all your needs — including the need of patience, long-suffering and forbearance, “for we have to learn how not only to bear, but also to forbear with infirmities of ourselves and others as well.”

That is a working woman’s holiness, and it is deeply biblical. The New Testament does not call most Christians out of the kitchen and the workshop; it calls them to be holy in them. Holiness is not the absence of dishes. It is God present at the sink.

Manna fresh every morning

She was realistic, too, about how such grace is kept. Soon after her sanctification she said to herself that she would not need to pray now as she used to. The answer came at once: “The children of Israel gathered manna fresh every morning.” She understood. As her body needed daily bread, so her soul needed daily prayer, daily reading of the Word, and daily appropriating of the promises. Without that, all else would avail nothing.

Give us this day our daily bread. MATTHEW 6:11

Returning good for evil

Her book is full of small, unglamorous tests of this grace. For two years a neighbour in her lodging house, a woman from her own church whom she had helped, refused to speak to her after a misunderstanding, sent spiteful messages, and threw greasy bread crumbs over the steps she had just scrubbed. Amanda often cried, but she said nothing. When another woman came to carry tales of what the neighbour said, she told her plainly never to bring such tales again: if the neighbour wanted her to know something, she must say it herself. Months later the tale-bearer was about to be put out on the street after falling out with the same neighbour, and Amanda took her in. It was, she said, a chance to return good for evil.

Recompense to no man evil for evil. Provide things honest in the sight of all men. ROMANS 12:17

On another occasion a friend told a lie about her that caused a stir. She spent a whole morning walking from house to house trying to track it down, and found at each door only that someone said that someone else said that she had said. She came home ashamed and disgusted, went down to the cellar, and promised the Lord that she would never, while she lived, go after another lie. And, she says, she never did.

Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord. ROMANS 12:19

The husband who did not change

The hardest thing to admit is that her home did not get better. A week after she was sanctified, the enemy pointed out that when people get sanctified everything around them gets better, and her husband was, if anything, worse. She agreed that it was so, and did not understand it. When she told him what God had done, he wanted to argue, and she would not. He tantalised her, she says, in every way; but God kept her still in her soul. She could only weep and pray.

That honesty is precious. Much Christian testimony promises that if we are right with God our circumstances will come right too. Hers did not. Her husband died within a year or so, unchanged as far as she tells us. What changed was her. Enduring grace does not always end the trial. It makes the believer able to stand in it without bitterness, and that, in the end, is the greater miracle.

Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life. JAMES 1:12

There is a caution here too. Her counsel to endure was counsel for trials, not for danger. Scripture does not require anyone to remain where they or their children are being harmed, and she herself later advised a friend in a frightening home not to leave, advice that grieved and estranged that friend. Endurance is a grace, not a law. But for the ordinary, grinding unkindnesses of family and neighbours and fellow church members, her counsel stands: ask not only to be got out, but to be given grace to endure.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. What trial are you currently praying to be got out of? This week, pray also for grace to endure it, and notice the difference.

2. Choose one ordinary task you do every day — washing up, commuting, a spreadsheet — and make it a place of communion with Christ.

3. Set a fresh time each morning this week to gather your manna: a passage of Scripture, a promise claimed, a short prayer.

4. Is there someone who has wronged you to whom you could quietly return good for evil? Do one concrete kind thing for them.

5. Resolve, as she did, never to go chasing a lie told about you. Leave your reputation with God.

A PRAYER

Lord, I have spent so much of my life planning to get out of trials. Teach me to ask You for grace to endure them.

Meet me at the sink and the desk and the bedside, and let the ordinary work of my hands be a place where I know You.

Give me my manna fresh this morning, and keep me from thinking I can live on yesterday’s.

Where I have been wronged, give me the grace to return good for evil, and to leave my cause in Your hands. Amen.