[The following lesson in Obstacles we take from an editorial in the Sunday School Times of September 29, 1906.]
THERE are many ways of learning God's will for us, and we need never be in doubt as to His wish for our every action. He will make plain to us, in diverse ways, when He would have us enter upon a new work, or when He would have us turn aside from a present work, even tho no new work is yet apparent. But there is one way by which, we may pretty safely rest assured, God does not call men out of their work which they are doing. That way is by putting difficulties in their path. . . .
When God wants a child of His to move forward in a certain direction, He usually indicates this by placing an obstacle in that particular path. Obstacles are God's chosen stepping-stones to higher, better things. They are His challenges to faith and character—and a challenge is always an invitation. God knows that ability and character are not made, and do not increase, by traveling smooth roads; therefore He removes this danger to our souls by often blocking our paths. And God knows that the man who will not be stopped by an obstacle is the only man whom He can really use, in this world and in the next. Therefore when God has plans ahead for the doing of a work, by one of His children, of peculiar importance, He is most likely to pile the obstacles high in the face of the one to whom He hopes to entrust that work. Of course, if that one is turned aside by such obstacles, when he ought to have pushed straight ahead and overcome them, it is proved that he is not the one to be trusted with the important work that lies just ahead. Another must be found to undertake it, and must be proved worthy of its undertaking by the same hindering process that revealed the unworthiness of the first. Sooner or later, some sturdy soul will keep on in that obstacle-blocked path and reach the prize of privilege which was intended for the others. And some of those who failed because they were willing to be turned aside by difficulties will envy the successful worker, and will wish they had had his "chance" and his "good luck."