Streams in the Desert

Devotional For

December 15

      Spiritual Force
      
      "All these things are against me" (Gen. 42:36). "All things work together for good to them that love God" (Rom. 8:28).
      
      Many people are wanting power. Now how is power produced? The other day we passed the great works where the trolley engines are supplied with electricity. We heard the hum and roar of the countless wheels, and we asked our friend,
      
      "How do they make the power?"
      
      "Why," he said, "just by the revolution of those wheels and the friction they produce. The rubbing creates the electric current."
      
      And so, when God wants to bring more power into your life, He brings more pressure. He is generating spiritual force by hard rubbing. Some do not like it and try to run away from the pressure, instead of getting the power and using it to rise above the painful causes.
      
      Opposition is essential to a true equilibrium of forces. The centripetal and centrifugal forces acting in opposition to each other keep our planet in her orbit. The one propelling, and the other repelling, so act and re-act, that instead of sweeping off into space in a pathway of desolation, she pursues her even orbit around her solar centre.
      
      So God guides our lives. It is not enough to have an impelling force--we need just as much a repelling force, and so He holds us back by the testing ordeals of life, by the pressure of temptation and trial, by the things that seem against us, but really are furthering our way and establishing our goings.
      
      Let us thank Him for both, let us take the weights as well as the wings, and thus divinely impelled, let us press on with faith and patience in our high and heavenly calling. --A. B. Simpson
      
      In a factory building there are wheels and gearings,
      There are cranks and pulleys, beltings tight or slack--
      Some are whirling swiftly, some are turning slowly,
      Some are thrusting forward, some are pulling back;
      
      Some are smooth and silent, some are rough and noisy,
      Pounding, rattling, clanking, moving with a jerk;
      In a wild confusion in a seeming chaos,
      Lifting, pushing, driving--but they do their work.
      
      From the mightiest lever to the tiniest pinion,
      All things move together for the purpose planned;
      And behind the working is a mind controlling,
      And a force directing, and a guiding hand.
      
      So all things are working for the Lord's beloved;
      Some things might be hurtful if alone they stood;
      Some might seem to hinder; some might draw us backward;
      But they work together, and they work for good.
      
      All the thwarted longings, all the stern denials,
      All the contradictions, hard to understand.
      And the force that holds them, speeds them and retards them,
      Stops and starts and guides them--is our Father's hand.
      --Annie Johnson Flint