Spurgeon on Sifting

Amos 9:9: For behold, I will command, and shake the house of Israel among all the nations as one shakes with a sieve, but no pebble shall fall to the earth.

Every sifting comes by divine command and permission. Satan must ask leave before he can lay a finger upon Job. Nay, more, in some sense our siftings are directly the work of heaven, for the text says, "I will sift the house of Israel." Satan, like a drudge, may hold the sieve, hoping to destroy the corn; but the overruling hand of the Master is accomplishing the purity of the grain by the very process which the enemy intended to be destructive.

We hear this over and over, and yet every time we are shaken, the faint thought comes into our mind, or perhaps it is a loud voice shouting: "Where is your God? Why has he left you? See this trouble you are in? Why would He ever leave you to something like this? Didn't He say He loved you? And you were foolish enough to believe Him? Ha! Forsake your God, for He has left you. Take charge yourself, for you cannot trust Him. You can do better than this, you know you can."

Do not listen to him! He is a deceiver and a liar, twisting God's words in our darkest moments. Cling to the Truth, and the Speaker of Truth will hold you in His grasp.

God himself sifts, and therefore it is stern and terrible work; he sifts them in all places, "among all nations"; he sifts them in the most effectual manner, "like as corn is sifted in a sieve"; and yet for all this, not the smallest, lightest, or most shrivelled grain, is permitted to fall to the ground. Every individual believer is precious in the sight of the Lord, a shepherd would not lose one sheep, nor a jeweller one diamond, nor a mother one child, nor a man one limb of his body, nor will the Lord lose one of his redeemed people. However little we may be, if we are the Lord's, we may rejoice that we are preserved in Christ Jesus.