The Tried Believer (C.H. Spurgeon)

1. His power may be gone. Personally he becomes helpless. Bodily health fails, prudence is baffled, skill is taken aeay, courage sinks, even spiritual force departs. Lamentations 3: 17And thou hast removed my soul far off from peace: I forgat prosperity. 18And I said, My strength and my hope is perished from the LORD.

2. His earthly help may fail. "There is none shut up or left." A man without a friend moves the compassion of God.

3. He may be assailed by doubts and fears, and hardly know what to do with himself Job 3: 23 Why is light given to a man whose way is hid, and whom God hath hedged in?
24For my sighing cometh before I eat, and my roarings are poured out like the waters.
25For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me. 26I was not in safety, neither had I rest, neither was I quiet; yet trouble came. In all this there may be chastisement for sin. It is so described in the context.

4. His hope lies in the compassion of God: he has no pleasure in putting his people to gries. "He will turn again, he will have compassion" Micah 7: 19He will turn again, he will have compassion upon us; he will subdue our iniquities; and thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea. Such sharp trials may be sent because:

• Nothing less would cure the evil hidden within Isaiah 27: 9By this therefore shall the iniquity of Jacob be purged; and this is all the fruit to take away his sin; when he maketh all the stones of the altar as chalkstones that are beaten in sunder, the groves and images shall not stand up.
• Nothing less moght suffice to bring the whole heart to God alone.
• Nothing less might affect the believer's future life. Isaiah 38: 16 O LORD, by these things men live, and in all these things is the life of my spirit: so wilt thou recover me, and make me to live.
• Nothing less might complete his experience, enlarge his acquaintance with the Word, and perfect his testimony for God.