I will never forget the statement which that great man of faith George Mueller once made to a gentleman who had asked him the best way to have strong faith: “The only way to know strong faith is to endure great trials. I have learned my faith by standing firm through severe testings.”

How true this is! You must trust when all else fails.

Dear soul, you may scarcely realize the value of your present situation. If you are enduring great afflictions right now, you are at the source of the strongest faith. God will teach you during these dark hours to have the most powerful bond to His throne you could ever know, if you will only submit.

“Don’t be afraid; just believe” (Mark 5:36). But if you ever are afraid, simply look up and say, “When I am afraid, I put my trust in you” (Psalm 56:3). Then you will be able to thank God for His school of sorrow that became for you the school of faith. A. B. SIMPSON

Great faith must first endure great trials.

God’s greatest gifts come through great pain. Can we find anything of value in the spiritual or the natural realm that has come about without tremendous toil and tears? Has there ever been any great reform, any discovery benefiting humankind, or any soul-awakening revival, without the diligence and the shedding of blood of those whose sufferings were actually the pangs of its birth? For the temple of God to be built, David had to bear intense afflictions. And for the gospel of grace to be extricated from Jewish tradition, Paul’s life had to be one long agony.

Take heart, O weary, burdened one, bowed down Beneath your cross; Remember that your greatest gain may come Through greatest loss.

Your life is nobler for a sacrifice, And more divine.

Acres of blooms are crushed to make a drop Of perfume fine.

Because of storms that lash the ocean waves, The waters there Keep purer than if the heavens o’er head Were always fair.

The brightest banner of the skies floats not At noonday warm; The rainbow follows after thunder clouds, And after storm.

An old woman with an halo of silvered hair—the hot tears flowing down her furrowed cheeks—her worn hands busy over a washboard in a room of poverty— praying—for her son John—John who ran away from home in his teens to become a sailor—John, of whom it was now reported that he had become a very wicked man—praying, praying always, that her son might be of service to God.

What a marvelous subject for an artist’s brush!

The mother believed in two things, the power of prayer and the reformation of her son. So while she scrubbed, she continued to pray. God answered the prayer by working a miracle in the heart of John Newton. The black stains of sin were washed white in the blood of the Lamb. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow” (Isaiah 1:18).

The washtub prayers were heard as are all prayers when asked in His name. John Newton, the drunken sailor, became John Newton, the sailor-preacher. Among the thousands of men and women he brought to Christ was Thomas Scott, cultured, selfish, and self-satisfied. Because of the washtub prayers, another miracle was worked, and Thomas Scott used both his pen and voice to lead thousands of unbelieving hearts to Christ—among them, a dyspeptic, melancholic young man, William Cowper by name.

He, too, was washed by the cleansing Blood and in a moment of inspiration wrote:

There is a fountain filled with blood Drawn from Immanuel’s veins, And sinners, plunged beneath that flood, Lose all their guilty stains.

And this song has brought countless thousands to the Man who died on Calvary. Among the thousands was William Wilberforce, who became a great Christian statesman and unfastened the shackles from the feet of thousands of British slaves. Among those whom he led to the Lord was Leigh Richmond, a clergyman of the Established Church in one of the Channel Islands. He wrote a book, The Dairyman’s Daughter, which was translated into forty languages and with the intensity of leaping flame burned the love of Christ into the hearts of thousands.

All this resulted because a mother took God at His Word and prayed that her son’s heart might become as white as the soapsuds in the washtub.