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Assailed With the Fiercest Temptations, January 25
Because he himself has suffered and been tempted, he is able to help those
who are tempted.
Hebrews 2:18
, RSV.
If, under trying circumstances, men of spiritual power, pressed beyond measure,
become discouraged and desponding, if at times they see nothing desirable in life,
that they should choose it, this is nothing strange or new. Let all such remember that
one of the mightiest of the prophets fled for his life before the rage of an infuriated
woman. A fugitive, weary and travel-worn, bitter disappointment crushing his
spirits, he asked that he might die. But it was when hope was gone and his lifework
seemed threatened with defeat, that he learned one of the most precious lessons of
his life. In the hour of his greatest weakness he learned the need and the possibility
of trusting God under circumstances the most forbidding.
Those who, while spending their life energies in self-sacrificing labor, are
tempted to give way to despondency and distrust may gather courage from the
experience of Elijah. God’s watchful care, His love, His power, are especially
manifest in behalf of His servants whose zeal is misunderstood or unappreciated,
whose counsels and reproofs are slighted, and whose efforts toward reform are
repaid with hatred and opposition.
It is at the time of greatest weakness that Satan assails the soul with the fiercest
temptations. It was thus that he hoped to prevail over the Son of God; for by this
policy he had gained many victories over man. When the willpower weakened and
faith failed, then those who had stood long and valiantly for the right yielded to
temptation. Moses, wearied with 40 years of wandering and unbelief, lost for a
moment his hold on Infinite Power. He failed just on the borders of the Promised
Land. So with Elijah. He who had maintained his trust in Jehovah during the
years of drought and famine, he who had stood undaunted before Ahab, he who
throughout that trying day on Carmel had stood before the whole nation of Israel
the sole witness to the true God, in a moment of weariness allowed the fear of death
to overcome his faith in God. And so it is today....
Those who, standing in the forefront of the conflict, are impelled by the Holy
Spirit to do a special work will frequently feel a reaction when the pressure is
removed. Despondency may shake the most heroic faith and weaken the most
steadfast will. But God understands, and He still pities and loves. He reads the
motives and the purposes of the heart.... Heaven will not fail them in their day of
adversity. Nothing is apparently more helpless, yet really more invincible, than
the soul that feels its nothingness and relies wholly on God (
Prophets and Kings,
173-175
).
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