Greatest Gifts Come Through Travail

For Abraham, when hope was gone, hoped in faith, His faith never quailed (Rom 4:18,19).
~
     We shall never forget a remark that Georege Mueller once made to a gentleman who asked him the best way to have strong faith.
     "The only way," replied the patriarch of faith, "to learn strong faith is to endure great trials. I have learned my faith by standing firm amid severe testings." This is very true. The time to trust is when all else fails.
     Dear one, you scarcely realize the value of your present oppurtunity; if you are passing through great afflications you are in the very soul of the strongest faith, and if you will only let go, He will teach you in these hours the mightiest hold upon His throne which you can ever know.
     "Be not afraid, only believe." And if you are afraid just look up and say, "What time I am afraid I will trust in thee," and you will thank God for the school of sorrow which was to you the school of faith. A.B. Simpson
~
     Great faith must have great trials.
     God's greatest gifts come through travail. Whether we look into the spiritual or temporal sphere, can we discover anything, any great reform, any beneficient discovery, any soul-awaking revival, which did not come through the toils and tears, the vigils and blood-shedding of men and women whose sufferings were the pangs of its birth? If the temple of God is raised, David must bear sore afflications; if the gospel of the grace of God is to be disentangled from Jewish tradition, Paul's life must be one long agony.

Take heart, O weary, burdened one, bowed down
Beneath thy cross;
Remeber that thy hreatest gain may come
Through greatest loss.
Thy life is nobler for a sacrifice,
And more divine.
Acres of bloom are crushed to make a drop
Of perfume fine.

Because of storms that lash the ocean waves,
The waters there
Keep purer than if the heavena o'verhead
Were always fair.
The brightest banner of the skies floats not
At noonday warm;
The rainbow traileth after thunder-clouds,
And after storm.

From Streams in the Desert June 2. by Mrs. Chrles E. Cowman