Sermon Outlines . Volume 07 | Issue 11

Three Great Tests

by Vance Havner

We face three tests in our journey here below.

  • There is the test of the marvelous, the great days when we are on the mountaintop of great success. It takes special grace for that because we tend to grow proud and drunken with the wine of victory.
  • There is the test of the monotonous, the daily grind, and it takes great grace for the weeks and months when nothing much happens and life sinks into routine.
  • The greatest test is the mysterious chapter, when things happen that don’t make sense, when God seems to have forgotten us, when nothing works out according to all our little plans–and when instead of a storybook ending, all crashes in unexplainable confusion.

Paul knew all three chapters–the third-heaven exaltation, the daily care of churches, the thorn in the flesh. Blessed is the man who is fortified by a double does of Divine grace for the marvelous, the monotonous, the mysterious.