Disappointment is like dream defibrillation. If we respond to it the right way, disappointment can actually restore our prayer rhythm and resurrect our dreams.

Do battle with the challenges of your present, and you will unlock the prizes of your future.

Suffering, it turns out, demands profound imagination. A new future has to be conjured up because the old future isn't there anymore.

In the university of God, however brilliant you may be, you will not be given double promotion. You must take every course, because each course serves a purpose.

Be patient. God is using today's difficulties to strengthen you for tomorrow. He is equipping you. The God who makes things grow will help you bear fruit.

God uses no one until He first puts them through the storm. The greater your mission, the greater your storm.

If I had not felt certain that every additional trial was ordered by infinite love and mercy, I could not have survived my accumulated sufferings.

The devil and temptations also do give occasion unto us somewhat to learn and understand the Scriptures, by experience and practice. Without trials and temptations we should never understand anything thereof; no, not although we diligently read and heard the same.

Stop your complaining, stop your doctoring; this tumult has arisen and is direct from above, and it will not cease till it makes all the adversaries of the Word like the mud on the streets. But it is sad to have to remind a theologian like you of these things, as if you were a pupil instead of one who ought to be teaching others.

It is necessary for the saints to be disciplined in this way, to descend into hell and the abyss, and to be recalled from there into heaven. For

for no man, without trials and temptations, can attain to the true understanding of the Holy Scriptures. 

Love consists not in feeling great things but in having great detachment and in suffering for the Beloved.