It is winter-time with you, dear friend, may that winter do you good. “It is very painful,” say you, “and very dangerous.” Yes, and God means to make you see what a poor thing you are, and to make you know what a wretched sinner you are, and how lost you are.
Do you not know that He will strip you before He will clothe you? It is always His way to kill before He makes alive. He will not begin filming over proud flesh. He will take the knife and cut it out, and with many a cruel gash, too, as it may seem,
for He means to have a lasting cure.

Therefore you must pass through these winters.

But let me remind you that your only hope of anything better than what you are passing through lies in Christ. You cannot save yourself. As long as you have any lingering idea that you can do so, you
never will be saved. You can no more save yourself than the arctic regions can turn themselves into the
torrid zone.

Charles H. Spurgeon