by T. Austin-Sparks
Unfortunately the first two messages of this series are missing. However, an article published in the A Witness and A Testimony magazine in 1950, may have been part of this series, so we have included it here as chapter 1. The remaining two chapters are supplied and edited by the Golden Candlestick Trust.
What is God after? Why are you set on this scene as you are? Why is it that God does not give us such pleasant situations and circumstances as we crave for, and make it easy for us? Why does it seem rather that He makes it hard, puts us into hard places, and does not deliver us or prevent us from those very trying conditions? Why is the furnace heated seven times for saints, men who are walking with God? Well, what is it doing with us? Is not this the necessary back-ground to formation according to Christ? Where will the characteristics of the heavenly Man have an opportunity, if not in adversity? And this heavenly manhood can only be developed over against a background which is so opposite…. He gives us a first-class opportunity just where we are of developing characteristics which are not of the old man at all, they are of the new man: that is the explanation.
