When everything in life is stripped away except God, and we trust him more because of it, this is gain, and he is glorified.

To know that our Father in heaven has ordained our pain is not a comfoftable truth, but it is comforting. That our pain has a loving and wise and all-powerful purpose behind it is better than any other view--weak God, cruel God, bumbling God, no God. To know that in his hands "this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison" (2 Corinthians 4:17) is profoundly reassuring.

The Calvary road with Jesus is not a joyless road. It is a painful one, but it is a profoundly happy one. When we choose the fleeting pleasures of comfort and security over the sacrifices and sufferings of missions and evangelism and ministry and love, we choose against joy.

Cancer does not win if we die. It wins if we fail to cherish Christ.

His beauty shines most brightly when treasured above health and wealth and life itself. Jesus knew this. He knew that suffering (whether small discomforts or dreadful torture) would be the path in this age for making him most visibly supreme.

There would be no obstacles to overcome. We won't fight for joy in heaven. But we are not there yet.

H]ealing displays the works of God in John 9, and sustaining grace displays the works of God in 2 Corinthians 12. What is common in the two cases is the supreme value of the glory of God. The blindness is for the glory of God. The thorn in the flesh is for the glory of God. The healing is for his glory, and the non-healing is for his glory. Suffering can only have ultimate meaning in relation to God.

I want you to see persecution and opposition and slander and misunderstanding and disappointment and self-recrimination and weakness and danger as the normal portion of faithful pastoral ministry.

The secret, I said, is knowing that the same sovereignty that could stop the coronavirus, yet doesn't, is the very sovereignty that sustains the soul in it.

faith has tasted the glory of God in Christ and treasures it enough that the fullness of it is worth waiting for and suffering for. Faith has seen the truth that part of Christ's glory is his trustworthiness. Therefore, faith can cast itself on the promise of Christ and trust that the fullness of glory and the fullness of joy will surely come.

The hope of heaven brought him joy, and joy brought him strength, and so, like John Calvin before him and George Whitefield after him (two verifiable examples) and, it would seem, like the apostle Paul himself Ãƒ¢Ã¢'¬Ã‚¦ he was astoundingly enabled to labor on, accomplishing more than would ever have seemed possible in a single lifetime."4 But

We know life is short and eternity is long. This eternal perspective does not take us out of the world. It gives us freedom from self-pity.