SUFFERING;
SELF-ASSURANCE; HUMILITY

All great Christians have been wounded souls. It is strange what a wound will do to a man. Here’s a soldier who goes out to the battlefield. He is full of jokes and strength and self-assurance; then one day a piece of shrapnel tears through him and he falls, a whimpering, beaten, defeated man. Suddenly his whole world collapses around him and this man, instead of being the great, strong, broad-chested fellow that he thought he was, suddenly becomes a whimpering boy again. And such have even been known, I am told, to cry for their mothers when they lie bleeding and suffering on the field of battle. There is nothing like a wound to take the self-assurance out of us, to reduce us to childhood again and make us small and helpless in our own sight.

Job 5:17–18; Proverbs 27:6; James 1:2–4; 1 Peter 4:12–13

Man: The Dwelling Place of God, 110.