Trials and difficulties may assail the life of a believer, but they also have the ability to remold his character and banish from his life those impurities which might impair growth and service.

Following Christ has been made too easy. It is easy to follow Him when our world is safe and comfortable . . .but when that world shatters, only a secure faith will sustain us.

Becoming "new" in Christ is a wonderful beginning, but it isn't the end of pain or problems in our lives. It is the beginning of our facing up to them. Being a Christian involves a lifetime of hard work, dedicated study, and difficult decisions.

There are two ways of getting out of a trial. One is to simply try to get rid of the trial, and be thankful when it is over. The other is to recognize the trial as a challenge from God to claim a larger blessing than we have ever had.

I wept more in Korea than in all the past several years put together. These experiences changed my life. I could never be quite the same again... I felt sadder, older. I felt as though I had gone in a boy and come out a man.

We can react with bitterness and hate God, as some do, or we can accept suffering as a natural part of life and a condition that comes with living in this world. We cannot avoid suffering, but we can determine our response to it.

Life is a succesion of lessons which must be lived to be understood.

We need limitations and temptations to open our inner selves, dispel our ignorance, tear off disguises, throw down old idols, and destroy false standards. Only by such rude awakenings can we be led to dwell in a place where we are less cramped, less hindered by the ever-insistent External. Only then do we discover a new capacity and appreciation of goodness and beauty and truth.

I seldom think about my limitations, and they never make me sad.

Bad days will come for each one of us, and the more we've thought these things through ahead of time, the better prepared we'll be when tragedy strikes or struggles emerge.

We have all been thrown down so low that nobody thought we'd ever get up again; but we have been long enough trodden now; we will come up again, and now I am here.

The tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr dies and his rule begins.