Your trial of empty coffers and a troubled mind drives you to prayer, and that is well, it is only as the Spirit of God shall come upon God's servant and shall make the Word which He preaches to drop as a living seed into the heart, that any result can follow. Brethren, do you not see in this point our need of the Spirit of God? Do not imagine that the knot of your present difficulty must be cut by your own contriving. You have done well to learn the letter of the Truth of God, but you still need the Spirit of God to make it the light and power of God to your soul.
And what is it that He is teaching you? Surely, dear soul, we are so foolish that we need to be taught, and we cannot have a better Teacher than the Omniscient God. He is making you to observe His work, work in yourself, work for yourself, and being taken into the School of God, you are made to see it and wonder. Yet do not merely sit as a silent pupil. David, as soon as he learned, became a pupil-teacher, declaring God's wondrous works. I charge you now, from this very affliction, to ask: Am I God's witness? You need not tell men that you trust Him, let them feel that you trust Him. Boast not of your faith, but exercise it, so shall your testimony be such that men cannot help seeing it.
Consider again the covenant promises. Are you God's hidden one, belonging to Him? Then He is hiding you with a view to safety, though for a moment the refuge seems more a furnace. That brand, taken out of the fire, shall be exhibited in Heaven as a proof of what God's Almighty Grace can do. The angel says to the adversary, “Get out of here! What have you to do with this man? God means to save him, so can you destroy him?” If you are His, you are His in the financial straits and in the spiritual fainting. God's mercy extends freely to sinners, and even now, sinner though you are, if you come beneath the Cross and trustingly look up to God's dear Son, you shall be saved, and your temporal needs cast upon the same mercies that bore the nails.
Gird up your loins. You sang, perhaps, that you owed more to God's Grace than any other. Do not now silence that song. Let not the fear of feeble man, nor the dread of the creditor, hold back your witness. The Presence of God in your trouble is very widespread, and He is Satan's Master, asking, “From where do you come?” He knows your frame; He remembers that you are dust. So go forth today, not seeking a sign, but seeking Him who has already shown you His wound and His love. May this time of God's visitation of your house, though it begins with the sting of judgment, be attended with a visitation in mercy, till you can cry from the fullness of your heart, “You are my God,” and having that, find that nothing else can be added and nothing else can be desired.