From: The Refiners Fire
Austin-Sparks ‘The Lord’s Attitude to His Children in Adversity’
“In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them: in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; and he bare them, and carried them all the days of old.” Isaiah 63:9
In this context, the word ‘adversity’ means ‘straightness’. It refers to Israel’s time in the wilderness. They were shut up with regard to many things which the world had and the world could do. In Egypt they had everything, but out here they never knew.
It’s a life of faith, and faith is a life of straitness so often cut off from much and shut up to this wilderness where things are to the natural mind “narrowed down” to God. But the goal of this earthly narrowing is heavenly enlargement?
When we find ourselves in this kind of shut up straitness, how quickly the enemy comes in and says, The Lord is against you! How often the enemy shuts the doors and then says the Lord has shut them because He is against you. How often the enemy tries to becloud our assurance with accusation and then says it is the Lord.
Oh how the enemy will take hold of everything to use it for our destruction! It is not the case at all. The Lord is after an enlargement. “In all their adversity, He was no adversary.” In all their straitness, He was not against them.
Hunger and Thirst 