God's people have their trials. When God chose you, he never designed you to be an untried people. You were chosen in the furnace of affliction! You were never chosen for worldly peace and earthly joy. Freedom from sickness? Escape from the pains of mortality? These were never promised. When your Lord drew up your charter of privileges, he included chastisements right there among your guaranteed inheritance.

Trials are part of your lot—they were predestined for you in Christ's last will and testament. As surely as the stars are fashioned by his hands and their orbits fixed by him, so surely are your trials allotted to you. He has ordained their season and their place, their intensity and the effect they shall have upon you.

Good men must never expect to escape troubles. If they do, they will be disappointed, for none of their predecessors have been without them. Mark the patience of Job! Remember Abraham—for he had his trials, and by his faith under them, he became the "Father of the faithful." Note well the biographies of all the patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and martyrs, and you shall discover none of those whom God made vessels of mercy who were not made to pass through the fire of affliction. Not one!

It is ordained of old that the cross of trouble should be engraved on every vessel of mercy, as the royal mark whereby the King's vessels of honor are distinguished.

But although tribulation is thus the path of God's children, they have the comfort of knowing that their Master has traversed it before them. They have his presence and sympathy to cheer them, his grace to support them, and his example to teach them how to endure. And when they reach "the kingdom," it will more than make amends for the "much tribulation" through which they passed to enter it.