Your greatest sweets

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We often find that those very times when God's people think they are faring ill—are the seasons when they are really faring well.

And again, at other times, when they think they are faring well—then they are really faring ill. For instance, when their souls are bowed down with trouble—it often seems to them that they are faring ill. God's hand appears gone out against them in trouble, sorrow, and affliction. These troubles wean them from the world.

If their heart and affections were going out after idols—these troubles instrumentally bring them back. If they were hewing out broken cisterns—these troubles dash them all to pieces. If they were setting up, and bowing down to idols in the chambers of imagery—affliction and trouble smite them to pieces before their eyes—take away their gods—and leave them no refuge but the Lord God almighty.

If you can only look back, you will often see that your greatest sweets have sprung out of your greatest bitters, and the greatest blessings have flowed from the greatest miseries, and what at the time you thought your greatest sorrows—you will find that the brightest light has sprung up in the blackest darkness, and that the Lord never made Himself so precious as at the time when you were sunk lowest—so as to be without human help, wisdom, or strength.

So that when a child of God thinks he is faring very ill, because burdened with sorrows, temptations, and afflictions—he is never faring so well.