Quotes about Suffering

God will never disappoint us… If deep in our hearts we suspect that God does not love us and cannot manage our affairs as well as we can, we certainly will not submit to His discipline. …To the unbeliever the fact of suffering only convinces him that God is not to be trusted, does not love us. To the believer, the opposite is true.

The world cries for men who are strong; strong in conviction, strong to lead, to stand, to suffer.

The deepest things that I have learned in my own life have come from the deepest suffering. And out of the deepest waters and the hottest fires have come the deepest things that I know about God.

Are we so childish (I do not say childlike) as to think that a God who could scheme a Jesus-plan would lead poor pilgrims into situations they could not bear?

We want to avoid suffering, death, sin, ashes. But we live in a world crushed and broken and torn, a world God Himself visited to redeem. We receive his poured-out life, and being allowed the high privilege of suffering with Him, may then pour ourselves out for others.

To love means to open ourselves to suffering. Shall we shut our doors to love, then and 'be safe'?" That's the only alternative, really. But locking ourselves up and never facing another person won't fix what's really going on in our souls.

Whatever is in the cup that God is offering to me, whether it be pain and sorrow and suffering and grief along with the many more joys, I'm willing to take it because I trust Him.

Our vision is so limited we can hardly imagine a love that does not show itself in protection from suffering. The love of God did not protect His own Son. He will not necessarily protect us - not from anything it takes to make us like His Son. A lot of hammering and chiseling and purifying by fire will have to go into the process.

It's only in the cross that we can begin to harmonize this seeming contradiction between suffering and love.

There is, in fact, no redemptive work done anywhere without suffering.

It is a merciful Father who strips us when we need to be stripped, as the tree needs to be stripped of its blossoms. He is not finished with us yet, whatever the loss we suffer, for as we loose our hold on visible things, the invisible become more precious—where our treasure is, there will our hearts be.

It's He who was the Word before the foundation of the world, suffering as a lamb slain. And He has a lot up His sleeve that you and I haven't the slightest idea about now. He's told us enough so that we know suffering is never for nothing.