“And the rest, some on boards, some on broken pieces of the ship. And so it came to pass that they escaped all safe to land” (Acts 27:44).

The marvelous story of Paul’s voyage to Rome, with its trials and triumphs, is a fine pattern of the lights and shades of the way of faith all through the story of human life. The remarkable feature of it is the hard and narrow places which we find intermingled with God’s most extraordinary interpositions and providences.
 
It is the common idea that the pathway of faith is strewn with flowers, and that when God interposes in the life of His people, He does it on a scale so grand that He lifts us quite out of the plane of difficulties.  The actual fact, however, is that the real experience is quite contrary.  The story of the Bible is one of alternate trial and triumph in the case of everyone of the cloud of witnesses from Abel down to the latest martyr.

Paul, more than anyone else, was an example of how much a child of God can suffer without being crushed or broken in spirit.  On account of his testifying in Damascus, he was hunted down by persecutors and obliged to fly for his life. but we behold no heavenly chariot transporting the holy apostle amid thunderbolts of flame from the reach of his foes, but “through a window in a basket,”was he let down over the walls of Damascus and so escaped their hands.  In an old clothes basket, like a bundle of laundry, or groceries, the servant of Jesus Christ was dropped from the window and ignominiously fled from the hate of his foes.
 
Again we find him left for months in the lonely dungeons; we find him telling of his watchings, his fastings, and his desertion by friends, of his brutal and shameful beatings, and here even after God has promised to deliver him, we see him for days left to toss upon a stormy sea, obliged to stand guard over the treacherous seaman, and at last when the deliverance comes, there is no heavenly galley sailing from the skies to take off the noble prisoner; there is no angel form walking along the waters and stilling the raging breakers; there is no supernatural sign of the transcendent miracle that is being wrought; but one is compelled to seize a spar, another a floating plank, another to climb on a fragment of the wreck, another to strike out and swim for his life.

Here is God’s pattern for our own lives. Here is a Gospel of help for people that have to live in this every day world with real and ordinary surroundings, and a thousand practical conditions which have to be met in a thoroughly practical way.

God’s promises and God’s providences do not lift us out of the plane of common sense and commonplace trial, but it is through these very things that faith is perfected, and that God loves to interweave the golden threads of His love along the warp and woof of our every day experience.–Hard Places in the Way of Faith

(From Charles E Cowman Devotionals - Streams in the Desert)

“He brought me forth also into a large place; he delivered me; because he delighted in me” (Ps. 18:19).

And what is this “large place”?  What can it be but God Himself, that infinite Being in whom all other beings and all other streams of life terminate?  God is a large place indeed.  And it was through humiliation, through abasement, through nothingness that David was brought into it.–Madame Guyon

“I bare you on eagle’s wings, and brought you unto myself” (Exod. 19:4).

Fearing to launch on “full surrender’s” tide,
I asked the Lord where would its waters glide
My little bark, “To troubled seas I dread?”
“Unto Myself,” He said.

Weeping beside an open grave I stood,
In bitterness of soul I cried to God:
“Where leads this path of sorrow that I tread?”
“Unto Myself,” He said.

Striving for souls, I loved the work too well;
Then disappointments came; I could not tell
The reason, till He said, “I am thine all;
Unto Myself I call.”

Watching my heroes–those I loved the best–
I saw them fail; they could not stand the test,
Even by this the Lord, through tears not few,
Unto Himself me drew.

Unto Himself!  No earthly tongue can tell
The bliss I find, since in His heart I dwell;
The things that charmed me once seem all as naught;
Unto Himself I’m brought. 

– selected

(From Charles E Cowman Devotionals - Sreams in the Desert)

“And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day” (Gen. 32:24).

God is wrestling with Jacob more than Jacob is wrestling with God.  It was the Son of man, the Angel of the Covenant.  It was God in human form pressing down and pressing out the old Jacob life; and ere the morning broke, God had prevailed and Jacob fell with his thigh dislocated.  But as he fell, he fell into the arms of God, and there he clung and wrestled, too, until the blessing came; and the new life was born and he arose from the earthly to the heavenly, the human to the divine, the natural to the supernatural.  And as he went forth that morning he was a weak and broken man, but God was there instead; and the heavenly voice proclaimed, “Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel; for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed.”
 
Beloved, this must ever be a typical scene in every transformed life.  There comes a crisis-hour to each of us, if God has called us to the highest and best, when all resources fail; when we face either ruin or something higher than we ever dreamed; when we must have infinite help from God and yet, ere we can have it, we must let something go; we must surrender completely; we must cease from our own wisdom. strength, and righteousness, and become crucified with Christ and alive in Him. God knows how to lead us up to this crisis, and He knows how to lead us through.

Is He leading you thus? Is this the meaning of your deep trial, or your difficult surroundings, or that impossible situation. or that trying place through which you cannot go without Him, and yet you have not enough of Him to give you the victory?

Oh, turn to Jacob’s God! Cast yourself helplessly at His feet.  Die to your strength and wisdom in His loving arms and rise, like Jacob, into His strength and all-sufficiency.  There is no way out of your hard and narrow place but at the top. You must get deliverance by rising higher and coming into a new experience with God. Oh, may it bring you into all that is meant by the revelation of the Mighty One of Jacob!–But God

“At Thy feet I fall,
Yield Thee Up My ALL,
To suffer LIVE, OR DIE
For my Lord crucified.”

(From Charles E Cowman Devotionals - Streams in the Desert)