Charles E. Cowman preaches about how God tests His children like a master of a steel mill tests steel pieces to know their strength under strain. God desires us to be toughened like steel, able to withstand trials without collapsing, becoming storm-beaten oaks and granite rocks. Through suffering, God refines our faith, separating the precious from the impure, making Jesus more precious to us. The storms of life, orchestrated by God, are meant to ripen our lives and deepen our relationship with Christ.

"There he proved them" (Exod. 15:25). I stood once in the test room of a great steel mill. All around me were little partitions and compartments. Steel had been tested to the limit, and marked with figures that showed its breaking point. Some pieces had been twisted until they broke, and the strength of torsion was marked on them. Some had been stretched to the breaking point and their tensile strength indicated. Some had been compressed to the crushing point, and also marked. The master of the steel mill knew just what these pieces of steel would stand under strain. He knew just what they would bear if placed in the great ship, building, or bridge. He knew this because his testing room revealed it. It is often so with God's children. God does not want us to be like vases of glass or porcelain. He would have us like these toughened pieces of steel, able to bear twisting and crushing to the uttermost without collapse. He wants us to be, not hothouse plants, but storm-beaten oaks; not sand dunes driven with every gust of wind, but granite rocks withstanding the fiercest storms. To make us such He must needs bring us into His testing room of suffering. Many of us need no other argument than our own experiences to prove that suffering is indeed God's testing room of faith.--J. H. McC It is very easy for us to speak and theorize about faith, but God often casts us into crucibles to try our gold, and to separate it from the dross and alloy. Oh, happy are we if the hurricanes that ripple life's unquiet sea have the effect of making Jesus more precious. Better the storm with Christ than smooth waters without Him.--Macduff What if God could not manage to ripen your life without suffering?