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May 22
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Changeful
experience often leads the anxious believer to enquire "Why is
it thus with me?" I looked for light, but lo, darkness came; for
peace, but behold trouble. I said in my heart, my mountain standeth
firm, I shall never be moved. Lord, thou dost hide Thy face, and I am
troubled. It was but yesterday that I could read my title clear; to-day
my evidences are bedimmed, and my hopes are clouded. Yesterday I could
climb to Pisgah's top, and view the landscape o'er, and rejoice with
confidence in my future inheritance; to-day, my spirit has no hopes,
but many fears; no joys, but much distress. Is this part of God's plan
with me? Can this be the way in which God would bring me to heaven?
Yes, it is even so. The eclipse of your faith, the darkness of your
mind, the fainting of your hope, all these things are but parts of God's
method of making you ripe for the great inheritance upon which you shall
soon enter. These trials are for the testing and strengthening of your
faith--they are waves that wash you further upon the rock--they are
winds which waft your ship the more swiftly towards the desired haven.
According to David's words, so it might be said of you, "so He
bringeth them to their desired haven." By honour and dishonour,
by evil report and by good report, by plenty and by poverty, by joy
and by distress, by persecution and by peace, by all these things is
the life of your souls maintained, and by each of these are you helped
on your way. Oh, think not, believer, that your sorrows are out of God's
plan; they are necessary parts of it. "We must, through much tribulation,
enter the kingdom." Learn, then, even to "count it all joy
when ye fall into divers temptations."
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