Steams In The Desert for December 18th

Personal Note To Begin: It has been a hard week. Scratch that. It's been a hard few months. There is lots that I could be complaining about and I am sad to say that I have whined, complained and questioned God. But throughout it all, God has been gracious. Throughout it all, no matter what my circumstances, God must be praised! Yesterday as I was incredibly discouraged and preparing for yet another exhausting, tiring medical test I grabbed my beloved copy of Streams in the Desert to find the following words. Hope that they bring refreshment to your soul as they did to mine.

"In all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us." Romans 8:37

The gospel and the gift of God are structured so wonderfully that the very enemies and forces that are marshaled to fight against us actually help pave our way to the very gates of heaven and into the presence of God. Those forces can be used in the same way an eagle uses the fierce winds of a storm to soar to the sky. At first he sits perfectly still, high on a cliff, watching the sky as it fills with darkness and as the lightning strikes all around him. Yet he never moves until he feels the burst of the storm, and then with a screech he dives toward the winds, using them to carry him even higher.

This is also what God desires of each of His children. He wants us to be "more than conquerors," turning storm clouds into chariots of victory. It is obvious when an army becomes "more than conquerors," for it drives its enemies from the battlefield and confiscates their food and supplies. This is exactly what this Scripture passage means. There are spoils to be taken!

Dear believer, after experiencing the terrible valley of suffering, did you depart with the spoils? When you were struck with an injury and you thought you had lost everything, did you trust in God to the point that you came out richer than you were before? Being "more than [a] conqueror" means taking the spoils from the enemy and appropriating them for yourself. What your enemy had planed to use for your defeat, you can confiscate for your own use.

When Dr. Moon, of Brighton, England, was suddenly struck with blindness, he said, "Lord, I accept this 'talent' of blindness from You. Help me to use it for Your glory so that when You return, You may receive it 'back with interest' [Matt. 25:27]." Then God enabled him to invent the Moon Alphabet for the blind, through which thousands of blind people were enabled to read the Word of God and thereby come to the glorious saving knowledge of Christ. selected

God did not remove Paul's "thorn in the flesh" (2 Cor. 12:7 KJV). The Lord did something much better - He conquered it and made it Paul's servant. The ministry of thorns has often been a greater ministry to humankind than the ministry of thrones. selected