In the New Testament Christ calls the Apostles and the disciples witnesses, requires them to witness to Him. Let us see now what is to be understood by this. These are men who by the renunciation of all things, in poverty, in lowliness, and thus ready for every suffering, were to go out into the world which expresses mortal hostility to the Christian way of life. This is what Christ calls witnesses and witnessing.

We will have to pay a price for being happy?""Everyone does. That's what it means to be alive.

Other believers had suffered in this country. Others had died at these hands, and hands like them. Jesus had suffered far worse. He had suffered and bled and died for her. For her sins. To set her free. To adopt her as a child into His family. To bring her into His Kingdom. Forever. How could she not be willing to suffer and bleed and die for Him? If that's what He asked, she would do it. With the strength He gave her. By the grace He provided. And maybe she would see Him soon, face-to-face.

Life is only a dream: soon, we shall awaken. And what joy! The greater our sufferings, the more limitless our glory. Oh! do not let us waste the trial Jesus sends.

You are not Christ's disciple, in the sense of following him, if this is not your way of life: rejected and slain daily!

Organic church life, however, is a wedding of glory and gore.

What an encouraging thought that Jesus - our beloved Husband - can find comfort in our lowly feeble gifts! Can this be, for it seems far too good to be true? May we then be willing to endure trials or even death itself if through these hardships we are assisted in bringing gladness to Immanuel's heart.

George MacDonald gives me renewed strength during times of trouble--times when I have seen people tempted to deny God--when he says, The Son of God suffered unto death, not that men might not suffer, but that their sufferings might be like his.

Joy is what has made the pain bearable and, in the end, creative rather than destructive.

The better word, of course, is joy, because it doesn't have anything to do with pain, physical or spiritual. I have been wholly in joy when I have been in pain—childbirth is the obvious example. Joy is what has made the pain bearable and, in the end, creative rather than destructive.

If we endure all things patiently and with gladness, thinking on the sufferings of our Blessed Lord, and bearing all for the love of Him: herein is perfect joy.

In the light of His example we can see, in the faith of His power we too can prove, that suffering is to God's child the token of the Father's love, and the channel of His richest blessing. [. . .] Suffering is the way of the rent veil, the new and living way Jesus walked in and opened for us.