I do not think you should get rid of your sin until you have learned what it has to teach you.

All great spirituality is about what we do with our pain.

The heroic deeds of those great worthies do not comfort the church so much as their falls and bruises do.

Many persecuted believers have thrived in the desert of prison. Perpetua, a third-century Christian who was imprisoned and martyred for her faith, said of her prison cell: "The dungeon became to me as it were a palace, so that I preferred being there to being elsewhere." Do not be fearful of dry times in your spiritual life. Tap into the Bridegroom, seeking only His living water and you will thrive.

Faith in God is the sole answer to the mystery of evil.

In the ensuing years, in several different prisons, they broke four vertebrae in my back, and many other bones. They carved me in a dozen places. They burned and cut eighteen holes in my body.

There was once a fiddler who played so beauitully that everybody danced. A deaf man who could not hear the music considered them all insane. Those who are with Jesus in suffering hear this music to which other men are deaf. They dance and do not care if they are considered insane.

Even the best of Christians are troubled by the question, "Why does an almighty God send, or at least allow, suffering?" When you are nagged by thoughts like this, say to yourself, "I am still in elementary school. When I graduate from the university of Christian life, I will understand His ways better and doubts will cease.

Did I believe in God? Now the test had come. I was alone. There was no salary to earn, no golden opinions to consider. God offered me only suffering—would I continue to love Him?

I found that joy can be acquired like a habit, in the same way as a folded sheet of paper falls naturally into the same fold.

I have found truly jubilant Christians only in the Bible, in the Underground Church and in prison.

Often, after a secret service, Christians were caught and sent to prison. There, Chris