….there he proved them.– Exodus 15:25

Mrs. Charles Cowman wrote, “I stood once in the test room of a great steel mill. All around me were little partitions and compartments. Steel had been tested to the limit, and marked with figures that showed its breaking point. Some pieces had been twisted until they broke, and the strength of torsion was marked on them. Some had been stretched to the breaking point and their tensile strength indicated. Some had been compressed to the crushing point, and also marked. The master of the steel mill knew just what these pieces of steel would stand under strain. He knew just what they would bear if placed in the great ship, building, or bridge. He knew this because his testing room revealed it.

It is often so with God’s children. God does not want us to be like vases of glass or porcelain. He would have us like these toughened pieces of steel, able to bear twisting and crushing to the uttermost without collapse.

He wants us to be, not hothouse plants, but storm-beaten oaks; not sand dunes driven with every gust of wind, but granite rocks withstanding the fiercest storms. To make us such He must needs bring us into His testing room of suffering.

As long as we are in this corrupt world, characterized by conflict, circumstances will never be ideal, conditions will never be perfect, and changes will keep coming. Yet in all this we are commanded to be content (Heb. 13:5). Impossible? It seems so. Paul, however, proved it isn’t (Phil.4:11). Speaking of Paul’s great attitude, S. G. Rees wrote:

Paul not only stood the tests in Christian activity, but in the solitude of captivity. You may stand the strain of the most intense labor, coupled with severe suffering, and yet break down utterly when laid aside from all religious activities; when forced into close confinement in some prison house. That noble bird, soaring the highest above the clouds and enduring the longest flights, sinks into despair when in a cage where it is forced to beat its helpless wings against its prison bars. You have seen the great eagle languish in its narrow cell with bowed head and drooping wings. What a picture of the sorrow of inactivity.

Paul in prison. That was another side of life. Do you want to see how he takes it? I see him looking out over the top of his prison wall and over the heads of his enemies. I see him write a document and sign his name–not the prisoner of Festus, nor of Caesar; not the victim of the Sanhedrin; but the–“prisoner of the Lord.” He saw only the hand of God in it all. To him the prison becomes a palace. Its corridors ring with shouts of triumphant praise and joy.

Restrained from the missionary work he loved so well, he now built a new pulpit–a new witness stand–and from that place of bondage come some of the sweetest and most helpful ministries of Christian liberty. What precious messages of light come from those dark shadows of captivity.

My dear friend, as the old song says, what He’s done for others He can do for you! Like Paul, we can have peace in prison, joy in jail, contentment in the worst circumstances, an amazing attitude although greatly afflicted.

This is my comfort in my affliction: for thy word hath quickened me– Psalm 119:50

Can mere words really do wonders? They can when they come from God! Sadly most folks underestimate the power of God’s Word, and they do so to their own peril. Here’s an article that echos my thoughts on this serious subject:

When we feel the despair of sorrow, pain, or loss creeping into our soul and stealing our joy, the last thing that we sometimes feel like doing is sitting down and perusing the Bible. The frustration and grief feel too real, and reading seems too insufficient as a remedy.

But this is the wonder of God’s Word — when we are in the midst of affliction, it is only this Book, with its wonderful promises, startling standards, and exalted view of God, that can give us hope and help and healing. This is because God does not avoid the reality of our suffering, but rather infuses it with purpose and meaning. When we see that God is actively at work in His creation, and is molding His people into the image of His Son, then suddenly suffering takes on a silver lining.

May David’s comfort be your comfort, dear reader, in the midst of your affliction. May God’s Word quicken your crushed and despairing heart. May you see, in the pages of His epistle to you, that His love is just as true and full, His rule is just as good and powerful, and His wisdom is just as perfect and right in our times of affliction as it is in our times of prosperity. (“A GOOD THING”)

Were we running things pain wouldn’t be in our plans. That just shows how foolish we are. Pain can actually be profitable, even pleasurable in the end. It can produce things we would never possess without it. J. R. Miller was right when he wrote these words:

Everyone has sorrow. Being a Christian does not exempt anyone from grief. But faith in Christ brings a transformation of sorrow. Not only are we taught to endure the sorrows that come to us patiently and submissively—but we are assured that there is a blessing in them for us, if we accept them with love and trust.

One of the deepest truths taught in the Bible—is that earthly sorrow has a mission in the sanctifying of life. “Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous; nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.” Hebrews 12:11

We dread pain! And yet the person who has not experienced pain—has not yet touched the deepest and most precious meanings of life. There are things we never can learn—except in the school of pain! There are heights of life we never can attain—except in the bitterness of sorrow. There are joys we never can have—until we have walked in the dark ways of sorrow. Not to have sorrow, in some form, is to miss one of life’s holiest opportunities. We get our best things—out of affliction! “I have refined you in the furnace of suffering!” Isaiah 48:10

The famous preacher from many long years ago, John Henry Jowett published this article entitled “Grow in the Gloom” –it is one of my favorites:

“I have all, and abound” (Phil. 4:18).

In one of my garden books there is a chapter with a very interesting heading, “Flowers that Grow in the Gloom.” It deals with those patches in a garden which never catch the sunlight. And my guide tells me the sort of flowers which are not afraid of these dingy corners–may rather like them and flourish in them.

And there are similar things in the world of the spirit. They come out when material circumstances become stern and severe. They grow in the gloom. How can we otherwise explain some of the experiences of the Apostle Paul ?

Here he is in captivity at Rome. The supreme mission of his life appears to be broken. But it is just in this besetting dinginess that flowers begin to show their faces in bright and fascinating glory. He may have seen them before, growing in the open road, but never as they now appeared in incomparable strength and beauty. Words of promise opened out their treasures as he had never seen them before.

Among those treasures were such wonderful things as the grace of Christ, the love of Christ, the joy and peace of Christ; and it seemed as though they needed an “encircling gloom” to draw out their secret and their inner glory. At any rate the realm of gloom became the home of revelation, and Paul began to realize as never before the range and wealth of his spiritual inheritance. Who has not known men and women who, when they arrive at seasons of gloom and solitude, put on strength and hopefulness like a robe? You may imprison such folk where you please; but you shut up their treasure with them. You cannot shut it out. You may make their material lot a desert, but “the wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose.”