A.B. Simpson emphasizes that crises and trials are often necessary for spiritual growth, as seen in the lives of Jacob, David, and Paul. These challenges compel believers to deepen their faith and reliance on God's grace, ultimately leading to a victorious life. Simpson illustrates that through hardship, individuals can experience God's sufficiency and learn to trust Him more fully. The sermon highlights that it is in our extremities that we discover the true power and faithfulness of God. Thus, trials serve as a means to draw closer to God and receive the grace we need.

God allowed the crisis that closed around Jacob, on the night when he bowed at Peniel in supplication, to bring him to the place where he could take hold of God as he never would have done. From that narrow pass of peril Jacob came, enlarged in his faith and knowledge of God and in the power of a new and victorious life. God had to compel David, by a long and painful discipline of years, to learn the almighty power and faithfulness of his God, and to grow up into the established principles of faith and godliness which were indispensable for his subsequent and glorious career as the king of Israel. Nothing but the extremities in which Paul was constantly placed could ever have taught him, and taught the Church through him, the full meaning of the great promise he so learned to claim, My grace is sufficient for thee. And nothing but our trials and perils would ever have led some of us to know Him as we do, to trust Him as we have and to draw from Him the measures of grace which our very extremities made indispensable.