Streams in the Desert September 30 Daily Devotional

As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young,
spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings: so the Lord alone did lead him, and there was no strange God with
him (Deut. 32:11, 12).
Our Almighty Parent delights to conduct the tender nestlings of His care to the very edge of the precipice, and even to thrust them off into the steeps of air, that they may learn their possession of
unrealized power of flight to be forever a luxury; and if, in the
attempt they be exposed to unwonted peril, He is prepared to swoop beneath them, and to bear them upward on His mighty pinions. When
God brings any of His children into a position of unparalleled
difficulty, they may always count upon Him to deliver them. --The Song of Victory.
"When God puts a burden upon you He puts His own arm underneath."
There is a little plant, small and stunted, growing under the shade of a broad-spreading oak; and this little plant values the shade
which covers it and greatly does it esteem the quiet rest which its noble friend affords. But a blessing is designed for this little
plant
Once upon a time there comes along the woodman, and with his sharp
axe he fells the oak. The plant weeps and cries, "My shelter is
departed; every rough wind will blow upon me, and every storm will seek to uproot me!"
"No, no," saith the angel of that flower, "now will the sun get at
thee; now will the shower fall on thee in more copious abundance than before; now thy stunted form shall spring up into loveliness, and thy flower, which could never have expanded itself to
perfection shall now laugh in the sunshine, and men shall say, "How greatly hath that plant increased! How glorious hath become its
beauty, through the removal of that which was its shade and its delight!"
See you not then, that God may take away your comforts and your
privileges, to make you the better Christians? Why the Lord always
trains His soldiers, not by letting them he on feather-beds, but by
turning them out and using them to forced marches and hard service.
He makes them ford through streams, and swim through rivers, and
climb mountains, and walk many a long march with heavy knapsacks of sorrow on their backs. This is the way in which He makes them

soldiers-not by dressing them up in fine uniforms, to swagger at
the barrack gates, and to be fine gentlemen in the eyes of the
loungers in the park. God knows that soldiers are only to be made in battle; they are not to be grown in peaceful times. We may grow the stuff of which soldiers are made; but warriors are really
educated by the smell of powder, in the midst of whizzing bullets and roaring cannonades, not in soft and peaceful times. Well,
Christian, may not this account for it all? Is not thy Lord
bringing out thy graces and making them grow? Is He not developing
in you the qualities of the soldier by throwing you into the heat of baffle, and should you not use every applicance to come off conqueror? --Spurgeon.