Assailed With the Fiercest Temptations

[Daily Devotional]

Assailed With the Fiercest Temptations 

Because he himself has suffered and been tempted, he is able to help those
who are tempted. Heb. 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, pp. 173-175). 

>From Lift Him Up - Page 31