Be aware that when the world crucified Christ, it crucified you with Him. However, be aware also that when Christ overcame the world on the cross, He made you a conqueror, too.

In the light of His example, we can prove that suffering is to God's child the token of the Father's love and the channel of His richest blessing.

Wrong. Christ was not our substitute but our representative, and since His saving passion was representative, it doesn't exempt us from suffering but rather endows our suffering with divine power and redemptive value.

May we be prepared, whatever happens, rather to undergo a hundred deaths than to turn aside from the profession of true piety, in which we know our safety to be laid up. And may we so glorify thy name as to be partakers of that glory which has been acquired for us through the blood of thine only-begotten Son. Amen.

The afflictions of the wicked exasperate them, enrage them, stone and pave them, obdurate and petrify them, but they do not crucify them. The afflictions of the godly crucify them. And when I am come to that conformity with my Saviour, as to fulfill his sufferings in my fiesh, (as I am, when I glorify him in a Christian constancy and cheerfulness in my afflictions) then I am crucified with him, carried up to his cross...

The afflictions of the wicked exasperate them, enrage them, stone and pave them, obdurate and petrify them, but they do not crucify them. The afflictions of the godly crucify them. And when I am come to that conformity with my Saviour, as to fulfill his sufferings in my flesh, (as I am, when I glorify him in a Christian constancy and cheerfulness in my afflictions) then I am crucified with him, carried up to his cross...

Every experience in life is designed to magnify the cross of Christ.

If you suffer, thank God! It is a sure sign that you are alive.

That's five friends, one each for Jesu's wounds, and Godric bears their mark still on what's left of him as in their time they all bore his on them. What's friendship, when all's done, but the giving and taking of wounds?

Christ never promises peace in the sense of no more struggle and suffering. Instead, he helps us to struggle and suffer as he did, in love for one another.

Under the guidance of the Spirit every trial enriches the soul... He best heals wounds who has felt a similar wound.

Pain is sacrifice without love. Sacrifice is pain with love. When we understand this, then we shall have an answer for those who feel that God should have let us sin without pain: