[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":4},["ShallowReactive",2],{"reading-0802":3},"AUGUST 2\r\nI will make all my mountains a way (Isa. 49:11).\r\nGod will make obstacles serve His purpose. We all have mountains in our lives. There are people and things that threaten to bar our\r\nprogress in the Divine life. Those heavy claims, that uncongenial occupation, that thorn in the flesh, that daily cross-we think that   if only these were removed we might live purer, tenderer, holier   lives; and often we pray for their removal.\r\n\r\n\"Oh, fools, and slow of heart!\" These are the very conditions of\r\nachievement they have been put into our lives as the means to the very graces and virtues for which we have been praying so long.\r\nThou has prayed for patience through long years, but there is\r\nsomething that tries thee beyond endurance; thou hast fled from It\r\nevaded It accounted it an unsurmountable obstacle to the desired\r\nattainment and supposed that its removal would secure thy immediate deliverance and victory.\r\nNot so! Thou wouldest gain only the cessation of temptations to impatience. But this would not be patience. Patience can be\r\nacquired only through just such trials as now seem unbearable.\r\nGo back; submit thyself. Claim to be a partaker in the patience of Jesus. Meet thy trials in Him. There is nothing in fife which\r\nharasses and annoys that may not become subservient to the highest  ends. They are His mountains. He puts them there. We know that God will not fail to keep His promise. \"God understandeth the way\r\nthereof and knoweth the place thereof. For he looketh to the ends\r\nof the earth, and seeth under the whole heaven\"; and when we come to the foot of the mountains, we\r\nshall find the way. --Christ in Isaiah, by Meyer.\r\nThe meaning of trial is not only to test worthiness, but to\r\nincrease it; as the oak is not only tested by the storms, but toughened by them.",1783499793262]