“Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous but grievous;
nevertheless afterward” (Heb. xii. 11).
God seems to love to work by paradoxes and contraries. In the
transformations of grace, the bitter is the base of the sweet, night is
the mother of day, and death is the gate of life.
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 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.”
It is very simple, and a trifling experiment will prove it to any one.
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 of us
don’t like it. Some of us don’t understand, and we try to run away from
the pressure, instead of getting the power and using it to rise above the
painful cause.