[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":4},["ShallowReactive",2],{"reading-0828":3},"AUGUST 28\r\nThere he proved them (Exod. 15.25).\r\nI stood once in the test room of a great steel mill. All around me\r\nwere little partitions and compartments. Steel had been tested to\r\nthe limit, and marked with figures that showed its breaking point\r\nSome pieces had been twisted until they broke, and the strength of\r\ntorsion was marked on them. Some had been stretched to the breaking point and their tensile strength indicated. Some had been\r\ncompressed to the crushing point and also marked. The master of the steel mill knew just what these pieces of steel would stand under\r\n\r\nstrain. He knew just what they would bear If Placed in the great ship, building, or bridge. He knew this because his testing room revealed it\r\nIt is often so with God's children. God does not want us to be like\r\nvases of glass or porcelain. He would have us like these toughened\r\npieces of steel, able to bear twisting and crushing to the uttermost without collapse.\r\nHe wants us to be, not hothouse plants, but storm-beaten oaks; not sand dunes driven with every gust of wind, but granite rocks\r\nwithstanding the fiercest storms. To make us such He must needs bring us into His testing room of suffering. Many of us need no\r\nother argument than our own experiences to prove that suffering is indeed God's testing room of faith. --J. H. McC.\r\nIt is very easy for us to speak and theorize about faith, but God\r\noften casts us into crucibles to try our gold, and to separate it\r\nfrom the dross and alloy. Oh, happy are we if the hurricanes that ripple life's unquiet sea have the effect of making Jesus more\r\nprecious. Better the storm with Christ than smooth waters without Him. --Macduff.\r\nWhat if God could not manage to ripen your life without suffering?",1783499793801]