This devotion contains some godly wisdom and inspiration in Christ from Charles Spurgeon:

I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: every where and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me. (Philippians 4:12-13, KJV)

Those people who only sail in a little boat on a lake have no stories to tell of adventures at sea; but he who is to write a book describing long voyages must travel far out of sight of land and behold the sea in the time of storm as well as in a calm. You are to become perhaps an experienced Christian; you are to bring great honor to God by being the means of comforting others who will be tried in a similar way to yours; you are to be trained into a hero, and that cannot be done except by great and bitter griefs coming upon you.

I believe that there are some of us whom God cannot trust with much joy. His head would turn dizzy if he were to be set upon a high pinnacle, and he would get proud and self-sufficient, and so be ruined. God will not kill His with sweets any more than He will destroy them with bitters. They shall have a tonic when they need it; but when that tonic is so bitter that they seem as if they could not drink it and live, their Lord will either take the tonic away or give them some delicious sweetness to remove all the bitter taste.

(At the Master’s Feet, April 6)