This morning I read the devotion from L. B. Cowman's Streams in the Desert:
Sorrow, under the power of divine grace, performs various ministries in our lives. Sorrow reveals unknown depths of the soul, and unknown capacities for suffering and service. Lighthearted, frivolous people are always shallow and are never aware of their own meagerness or lack of depth. Sorrow is God's tool to plow the depths of the soul, that it may yield richer harvests. If humankind were still in a glorified state, having never fallen, then the strong floods of divine joy would be the force God would use to reveal our souls' capacities. But in a fallen world, sorrow, yet with despair removed, is the power chosen to reveal us to ourselves. Accordingly, it is sorrow that causes us to take the time to think keeply and seriously.
Sorrow makes us move more slowly and considerately and examine our motives and attitudes. It opens within us the capacities of the heavenly life, and it makes us willing to set our capacities afloat on a limitless sea of service for God and for others.
Many people live casually on the outer edge of their own souls until great thunderstorms of sorrow reveal hidden depths within, which were never before known or suspected.
God never uses anyone to a great degree until He breaks the person completely. Joseph exdperienced more sorrow than the other sons of Jacob, and it led him into a ministry of food for all the nations.
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