We Love A Smooth Path

Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain. Isaiah 40:4 

We all want ease. We love a smooth path. We would like to be carried to heaven in a flowery bed of ease to enjoy every comfort that earth can give or heart desire and then, dying without a pang of body or mind, find ourselves safe in heaven! But that is not God's way.

If in your road heavenward, no valley ever sank before you~if no mountain and hill ever rose up in sight~if you encountered no crooked path through the dense forest, and no rough places, with many large stones and many a thorny brier in the tangled forest~it would not seem that you were treading the way which the saints of God have ever trod nor would it appear as if you needed special help from the Lord or any peculiar power to be put forth for your help and deliverance.

But being in this path, and that by God's own appointment, and finding right before your eyes~valleys of deep depression which you cannot raise up~mountains and hills of difficulty that you cannot lay low~crooked things which you cannot straighten~and rough places which you cannot make smooth~you are compelled, from felt necessity, to look for help from God. 

These perplexing difficulties, then, are the very things that make yours a case that the gospel of grace is thoroughly adapted. If you could at the present moment view these trials with spiritual eyes and feel that they were all appointed by unerring wisdom and eternal love and were designed for the good of your soul you would rather bless God that your pathway was so planned, that you had now a valley now a mountain now a crook and now a thorn. 

These very difficulties in the road are all productive of so many errands to the throne of grace. They all called upon you, as with so many speaking voices, to beg of the Lord that He would manifest Himself in love to your heart!

~J. C. Philpot~