Numbers 22:26

A narrow place!” You know that place; you have been there—you will very likely be there again before long—some of you may be there at this very moment; for it is not merely a defile away somewhere among the mountains to the east of Moab. It is a life passage in individual experience—a time when there we are brought face to face with some inevitable question . . .

Temptation is such a “narrow place.” In the serious crisis of the soul’s history, it is alone. It is a path on which there is room only for itself, and before it there is God. Between these two always the matter has to be settled. Yes, or no, is the hinge on which everything turns. Shall I yield and dishonor God, or shall I resist and triumph in His might? There is no possible compromise; for compromise with sin is itself the most insidious form of sin. No man can pass through these crises, and be after them what he was before. He has met God face to face, and he must either be the better or the worse for that experience. Either, like Jacob at Peniel he can say, “My life is preserved,” or like Saul after he had thrown off his allegiance to his God, “Jehovah has departed from me, and is become my enemy.” WILLIAM M. TAYLOR