"Have you ever noticed how people who experienced the depression years keep harking back to them? They do so with a kind of pride. If you are not irritated by such people, you may be able to observe that the effect of the depression on them was to toughen and strengthen them and that thinking back to the lean years reinforces their resilience.
If you never thought about it, you might expect that positive and beautiful memories would be the ones to increase our faith. I always believed for instance that one or two really dramatic or miraculous answers to prayer would increase my faith immeasurably. Yet it hasn't worked out that way.
Lorrie (my wife) and I have seen some pretty big miracles in our day. We could, I am sure, collaborate on a 'believe-it-or-not' book of incredible answers to prayer. Then why don't we write a book? We don't have the time. Such a book is low on our priority list because it would only benefit the bookselling business and our own pockets. It might increase people's faith, but they have a Bible full of better miracles. More to the point, the miracles of which I speak have not increased our faith at all . We are ashamed to admit it, but yesterday's miracle does not make today's obedience any easier for us.
The first bit of advice the writer to the Hebrew Christians had about increasing their faith was to think back to the tough times in their past (Hebrews 10:32-35). Kenneth Taylor translates the passage as referring to 'wonderful days,' but see what kind of 'wonderful days' they were, even in The Living Bible.
Don't ever forget those wonderful days when you first learned about Christ. Remember how you kept
right on with the Lord even though it meant terrible suffering. Sometimes you were laughed at and
beaten, and sometimes you watched and sympathized with others suffering the same things. You suffered
with those thrown into jail, and you were actually joyful when all you owned was taken from you,
knowing that better things were waiting you in heaven, things that would be yours forever. Do not let this
happy trust in the Lord die away. Remember your reward!
You would think the writer would have more sense than to remind discouraged Jews of how rough it used to be. After all, it appears from the context that the Jews in question were seriously considering dropping their Christian beliefs. Yet it is precisely to the tough times that he directs their thinking.
Why?
I do not altogether know. Tough times, of course, do one of two things. They either break or make you. If you are not utterly crushed by them (in which case you will do all you can to bury their memory), you will be enlarged by them. Their pain will make you live more deeply and expand your consciousness in a way LSD never could. Evidently, the Jews whom the writer addressed had undergone such experience in their sufferings. God had loomed larger in them. Their experience in Christ proved more exciting. Therefore the memories were pain-wrapped but precious. And when the pain wrappings were taken off and the memories relived, their hearts would be stirred to warm allegiance again. Their faith would be quickened.
If you have only just come to Christ, your rough time may have not yet taken place. But if you've been longer on the way--think back. Remember what happened? How you felt? Doesn't it being to move you? And aren't you a better person for being stirred in this way? Doesn't a more solid sort of faith begin to be rooted?
Think well on the rough times in your Christian past."
pgs 105-107
-John White
from: http://www.amazon.com/The-Fight-Practical-Handbook-Christian/dp/0877847770/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1360908093&sr=8-3&keywords=the+fight
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