Quotes about Suffering

Now we see that every experience in life is designed to magnify the cross of Christ.

So when you hold the "Institutes" of John Calvin in your hand, remember that theology, for John Calvin, was forged in the furnace of burning flesh, and that Calvin could not sit idly by without some effort to vindicate the faithful and the God for whom they suffered. I think we would, perhaps, do our theology better today if more were at stake in what we said.

God gets glory when two very different and very imperfect people forge a life of faithfulness in the furnace of affliction by relying on Christ.

So my prayer for this book is that God would stand forth and reassert his Creator-rights in our lives, and show us his crucified and risen Son who has all authority in heaven and on earth, and waken in us the strongest faith in the supremacy of Christ, and the deepest comforts in suffering, and the sweetest fellowship with Jesus that we have ever known.

Suffering for Jesus is temporary. Pleasure in Jesus is eternal.

For Jesus, the demand for joy is a way to live with suffering and to outlast suffering.

What is needed is a miracle. I mean that literally. A supernatural in-breaking of God through the gospel of Christ. It is not even possible to describe the hope-filled relational dynamics that may happen when the gospel explodes in two hearts that bring such radically different experiences of sin and suffering to the relationship.

The road to heaven is a hard road, but it is not joyless.

When you are tempted to forsake God because of the greatness of evil and misery in the world, may you remember that the BIble has prepared us for this temptation.

Physical pain is God's trumpet blast to tell us that something is dreadfully wrong in the world.

Even in the greatest afflictions, we ought to testify to God, that, in receiving them from his hand, we feel pleasure in the midst of the pain, from being afflicted by Him who loves us, and whom we love.

He will not be held guiltless who neglects to relieve suffering on the Sabbath. God's holy rest day was made for man, and acts of mercy are in perfect harmony with its intent. God does not desire His creatures to suffer an hour's pain that may be relieved upon the Sabbath or any other day. The demands upon God are even greater upon the Sabbath than upon other days.