"God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble" (Ps. 46:1).
The question often comes, "Why didn't He help me sooner?" It is not His
order. He must first adjust you to the trouble and cause you to learn
your lesson from it. His promise is, "I will be with him in trouble; I
will deliver him and honor him." He must be with you in the trouble
first all day and all night. Then He will take you out of it. This will
not come till you have stopped being restless and fretful about it and
become calm and quiet. Then He will say, "It is enough."
God uses trouble to teach His children precious lessons. They are
intended to educate us. When their good work is done, a glorious
recompense will come to us through them. There is a sweet joy and a real
value in them. He does not regard them as difficulties but as
opportunities.
--Selected.
Not always OUT of our troublous times,
And the struggles fierce and grim,
But IN--deeper IN--to our one sure rest,
The place of our peace, in Him.
--Annie Johnson Flint
We once heard a simple old colored man say something that we have never
forgotten: "When God tests you, it is a good time for you to test Him
by putting His promises to the proof, and claiming from Him just as much
as your trials have rendered necessary."
There are two ways of getting out of a trial. One is to simply try to
get rid of the trial, and be thankful when it is over. The other is to
recognize the trial as a challenge from God to claim a larger blessing
than we have ever had, and to hail it with delight as an opportunity of
obtaining a larger measure of Divine grace. Thus even the adversary
becomes an auxiliary, and the things that seem to be against us turn out
to be for the furtherance of our way. Surely, this is to be more than
conquerors through Him who loved us.
--A. B. Simpson
- Streams in the Deserts, Vol. 1, for September 7th
"Thou hast enlarged me when I was in distress" (Ps. 4:1).
This is one of the grandest testimonies ever given by man to the moral
government of God. It is not a man's thanksgiving that he has been set
free from suffering. It is a thanksgiving that he has been set free
through suffering: "Thou hast enlarged me when I was in distress." He
declares the sorrows of life to have been themselves the source of
life's enlargement.
And have not you and I a thousand times felt this to be true? It is
written of Joseph in the dungeon that "the iron entered into his soul."
We all feel that what Joseph needed for his soul was just the iron. He
had seen only the glitter of the gold. He had been rejoicing in youthful
dreams; and dreaming hardens the heart. He who sheds tears over a
romance will not be most apt to help reality; real sorrow will be too
unpoetic for him. We need the iron to enlarge our nature. The gold is
but a vision; the iron is an experience. The chain which unites me to
humanity must be an iron chain. That touch of nature which makes the
world akin is not joy, but sorrow; gold is partial, but iron is
universal.
My soul, if thou wouldst be enlarged into human sympathy, thou must be
narrowed into limits of human suffering. Joseph's dungeon is the road to
Joseph's throne. Thou canst not lift the iron load of thy brother if
the iron hath not entered into thee. It is thy limit that is thine
enlargement. It is the shadows of thy life that are the real fulfillment
of thy dreams of glory. Murmur not at the shadows; they are better
revelations than thy dreams. Say not that the shades of the prison-house
have fettered thee; thy fetters are wings -- wings of flight into the
bosom of humanity. The door of thy prison-house is a door into the heart
of the universe. God has enlarged thee by the binding of sorrow's
chain.
--George Matheson
If Joseph had not been Egypt's prisoner, he had never been Egypt's
governor. The iron chain about his feet ushered in the golden chain
about his neck.
--Selected
-Streams in the Desert, Vol. 1, for September 8th
~Brittany
