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October 8— “ Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ’s sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong” (2 Cor. 12:10). The literal translation of this verse gives a startling emphasis to it, and makes it speak for itself with a force that we have probably never realized. Here it is : “Therefore I take pleasure in being without strength, in insults, in b e i n g pinched, in being chased about, in being cooped up in a corner for Christ’s sake; for when I am without strength, then am I dynamite.” Here is the secret o f divine all-sufficiency, to come to the end of everything in ourselves and in our circum stances. When we reach this place, we will stop asking for sympathy because of our hard situation or bad treatment, for we will recognize these things as the very conditions of our blessing, and we will turn from them to God and! find in them a claim upon Him.— A. B. Simpson. — o— October 9— “And the Lord said . . . . Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat : but I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not" (Luke 22:31, 32). ' Our faith is the center of the target at which God doth shoot when He tries us; and if any other grace shall escape un tried, certainly faith shall not. There is no way of piercing faith to its very mar row like the sticking of the arrow of de sertion into it. This finds out whether it be of the immortals or no. Strip it of its armor of Conscious enjoyment, and suffer the terrors o f the Lord to set themselves, in array against it, and that is faith in deed which can escape unhurt from the midst of the attack. Faith must be tried, and seeming desertion is the furnace, heated seven times, into which it might be thrust. Blessed is the man who can en dure the ordeal \—Spurgeon. — o— October 10-— “ That we might be par takers o f his holiness” (Heb. 12:10). I recollect, when a lad, and while at tending a classical institute in the vicinity' of. Mount Pleasant, sitting on an elevation of that mountain, and watching a storm as it came up the valley. The heavens were filled with blackness, and the earth was shaken by the voice o f thunder. It seemed as though that fair landscape was utterly changed, and its beauty gone never to re turn. But the storm swept on, and passed out of the valley; and if I had sat in the same place on the following day, and said, “Where is that terrible storm, with all its terrible blackness?” the grass would have said, “ Part of it is in me,” and the daisy would have said, “Part of it is in me,” and the fruits and flowers and everything that grows out of the ground would have said, “ Part of that storm is incandescent in me.” Have you asked to be made like your Lord ? Have you longed for the fruit of the Spirit, and have you prayed for sweetness and gentleness and love? Then fear not the stormy tempest that is at this moment sweeping through your life. A blessing is in the storm, and there will be the rich fruitage in the “afterward.” —Henry Ward Beecher.
so exhausted, the rushing rivers that we have to pass through-—Jesus has gone through it all before us. “He was wearied with his journey.” Not some, but all the many waters went over Him, and yet they did not quench His love. He was made a perfect Leader by the things which He suffered. “He knoweth our frame; he re- membereth that we are dust.” Think of that when you are tempted to question the gentleness o f His leading. He is remem bering all the time. Not one step will He make you take beyond what your foot is able to-endure. Never mind if you think it will not be able for the step that seems to come next; either He will so strengthen you that you shall be able, or He will call a sudden halt, and you shall not have to take the step at all. —Streams in the Desert. —o— October 6— “For a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations” (1 Pet. 1:6). The great Husbandman is not always threshing. Trial is only for a season. The showers soon pass. Weeping may tarry only for the few hours of the short sum mer night; it must be gone at daybreak. Our light affliction is but for a moment. Trial is for a purpose^ “it needs be.” The very fact of trial proves that there is something in us very precious to our Lord; else He would not spend so much pains and1' time on us. Christ would not test us if He did not see the precious ore of faith mingled in the rocky matrix of our nature, lit is to bring this out into purity and beauty that He forces us through the fiery ordeal. Be patient, O sufferer! The result will more than com pensate for all our trials, when we see how they wrought out the far more ex ceeding and eternal weight o f glory. To have one word of God’s commendation, to be honored before the holy angels, to be glorified in Christ so as to be better able to flash His glory on Himself—ahl that will more than repay for all. —Tried by Fire. — o— • October 7—" With God all things are possible” (Matt. 19:26). Perhaps, for most o f us, the hardest thing in life is to master ourselves, to keep ourselves facing the light and the right. Our chief difficulty lies within our selves rather than in our circumstances. We suffer from what the French call “the malady of ME,” from what we call tem perament, or weakness or an inferior com plex. All our efforts may end in failure, simply because we begin at the wrong end. “ Is anything too hard for the Lord?” Can He not change the heart? Can He not live and work and reign in us? Cannot He so deliver us to the very end of our days as to make the last stages o f the way the best of all?— Rev. Allon Poole. All things are possible to God; To Christ, the power of God in me; Now shed Thy mighty Self abroad, Let me no longer live, but. Thee; Give me this hour in Thee to prove The sweet omnipotence of love.
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