A narrow place!” You know that place; you have been there—you will very likely be there again before long—some of you may be there at this very moment; for it is not merely a defile away somewhere among the mountains to the east of Moab. It is a life passage in individual experience—a time when there we are brought face to face with some inevitable question . . .

Temptation is such a “narrow place.” In the serious crisis of the soul’s history, it is alone. It is a path on which there is room only for itself, and before it there is God. Between these two always the matter has to be settled. Yes, or no, is the hinge on which everything turns. Shall I yield and dishonor God, or shall I resist and triumph in His might? There is no possible compromise; for compromise with sin is itself the most insidious form of sin. No man can pass through these crises, and be after them what he was before. He has met God face to face, and he must either be the better or the worse for that experience. Either, like Jacob at Peniel he can say, “My life is preserved,” or like Saul after he had thrown off his allegiance to his God, “Jehovah has departed from me, and is become my enemy.” WILLIAM M. TAYLOR

The harder the place, the more He loves to show His power. If you wish to find Him real, come to Him in some great trouble. He has no chance to work until you get in a hard place. He led Israel out of the usual way till He got them to the Red Sea. Then there was room for His power to be manifested. God loves the hard places and the narrow places.

Rejoice if you are in such a place! Even if it is in the very heart of the foe, God is able to deliver you. Let not your faith in Him waver for a moment, and you will find His omnipotence is all upon your side for every difficulty in which you can be placed.

“When you get into a tight place,” said Harriet Beecher Stowe, “and everything goes against you, till it seems as if you could not hold on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and the time that the tide will turn.”