By the pen of Charles Spurgeon:

The path of the Christian is not always bright with sunshine, for even believers have their seasons of darkness and storms. True, it is written in God’s Word, referring to the ways of godly wisdom and understanding: “Her ways are pleasant ways, and all her paths are peace” (Prov. 3:17). It is also a great truth that the Christian faith has been designed by God to give believers happiness in this life as well as true bliss in heaven above. And despite the following truth that “The path of the righteous is like the first gleam of dawn, shining ever brighter till the full light of day” (Prov. 4:18), experience tells us that sometimes the sun is eclipsed. At times clouds will obscure the believer’s sun, causing him to walk in darkness and making him unable to see the light.

There are many believers who have rejoiced in God’s presence for a season. They have basked in the sunshine in the early phases of their Christian walk and have walked “in green pastures . . . beside quiet waters” (Ps. 23:2). Then suddenly they find the once glorious sky is clouded, and instead of walking “the land of Goshen” (Josh. 11:16 ESV) they find themselves forced to tread the sandy desert; and instead of sweet quiet streams, they find troubled waters that are bitter to the taste. Then they say, “Surely if I were a child of God this would not have happened.”

Oh, you who are walking in darkness, never say this! Even the best of God’s saints must drink of the bitterness of “the wormwood and the gall” (Lam. 3:19 ESV), and the most precious of His children must bear their cross. No Christian has ever enjoyed perpetual prosperity, and no believer is continually able to keep his joyful harp away from the weeping willow. (See Ps. 137:1 – 2.)

Perhaps at the onset of your Christian walk the Lord assigned you a smooth, unclouded path because you were weak and fearful. He was simply protecting His newborn lamb from the harsh cold wind. But now that you are stronger in your spiritual life, you must enter the more mature and rougher experience of God’s full-grown children.

We need harsh winds and storms to exercise our faith, to tear away the rotten limbs of self-dependence, and to root us more firmly in Christ. The difficult days of evil reveal to us the true value of our glorious hope.

By the pen of Jim Reimann:

Without trials we would often miss seeing God’s miraculous power. Unless we step into the raging sea, we will not see the Lord make a dry path for us, and unless we walk through the dry and dangerous desert, we will never see the miracle of a desert stream.

After all, who but the Lord can make a dry place in the sea and a wet place in the desert! “This is what the Lord says — he who made a way through the sea, a path through the mighty waters . . . See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland” (Isa. 43:16, 19).

Thank You, sovereign Lord, for the difficult days. May I never miss even one of the miracles You have for me by shrinking from the difficulties of life. May You receive glory in my daily walk, wherever that walk may lead.