PODCAST
Harassment Results In Suffering
September 19th, 2014
Lamentations 3:46-60
After my first year of college, I landed a summer job with an oil pipeline crew. Just imagine seven tough pipeline workers and one ministerial student. They were going to have a field day harassing the preacher boy!
So it started: they attempted to get me to lie for them. They told every dirty story they knew in our crowded truck. Fridays they went to a tavern to drink for an hour on company time. I chose not to join them and instead stayed in the truck and read the paper. Then the harassment really escalated!
I was miserable. I counted the days to the end of August. I prayed for them, about them, and against them.
Harassment brings suffering. It tests your soul. Still, God’s Word says, “I called on your name, Lord . . . and you said, ‘Do not fear’” (v. 55, 57). I survived the pipeline crew, and in fact, God did an amazing thing. On my last day, the crew members gathered around and asked if I would return the next summer. “No harassment,” they promised. I returned to the same crew the following summer and, indeed, they never harassed me again.
Author: James H. Diehl
September 19th, 2014 at 10:40 am
What a wonderful testimony of real-life endurance. Thank-you.