Then there is another great feature in respect of pressure, and that is influence. Where should we all be if we did not have among us the influence which we see in the hand of God touching one and another? I remember that Mr. Stoney once said that he went to visit the sick, not for their sake so much as for his own sake. I know what he meant; he meant that when we move around in activity and, as it were, breathe the external atmosphere of the world and its affairs and the people in it, we become more or less hardened — imperceptibly almost, but certainly. And then you come aside, you come to the bedside of one who is laid there in suffering, and you see the way in which God is making Himself known in His tender love to that one. You and I are often in such a position. I was, a very short time ago, with a dear man now with the Lord, and the peacefulness, the restfulness in the love of God that was manifested in that one was very wonderful.
Take the case of another young man whom I was with a very short time ago. The doctor came to him and said, “I think you are going to recover after all.” He said, “You are not bringing me good news. You told me a little while ago that I was going home to be with the Lord, and now you are trying to bring me back again!” The influence of these things upon our spirits is invaluable, bringing us, as it were, into the breathing of an atmosphere that is at total variance to this world and that is redolent with the precious support of God, the encouragement of God, and the priestly touch of the Lord Jesus Christ! You go out from a place like that and your spirit is purified, softened and molded. So the maintenance of these things in the house of God is a necessity for its spiritual wholesomeness, for its spiritual perfection.
I wonder if you see how this principle works all through Scripture? We look for a day of glory. We read about it in the first Epistle of Peter. That is the great epistle of suffering, of pressure. What is the answer to that? The answer to that is a day of glory in which there will be no suffering —the world to come. Talking with a dear sister who was laid aside in very painful circumstances, where she had been lying in one position for many years, her poor body twisted, I said to her, “You know your present sufferings have not to do so much with this world as with the world that is coming.” She wanted to know how. I said, “In the world that is coming there will be no one who will know God in suffering; there will be no one who will be able to tell from personal experience what the support of the High Priest is in circumstances like these, but you are laid aside here and have been here for years. It is not so much for its effect in this world, as it is in the education that you will have for the Lord to say to you, ‘Go and tell this one and that one and the other one in the world to come what God has been to you in a sphere of weakness and suffering.’ ” She said, “I never thought of it in that way; I deem it a great honor.” That is right. “In pressure Thou hast enlarged me.” She was enabled in that sense to apprehend that God has, in the process of training, under His own blessed touch, those who will supply to the myriads of the world to come a manner of light and education that they never could get from their own practical experience.