Oh that you might have such a strong love for perishing sinners that you will put up with their rebuffs and rebukes, and say to them, “Strike me if you will, but hear me; ridicule me, but still I will plead with you; cast me under your feet as though I were the offscouring of all things, but at any rate, I will not let you perish, if it be in my power to warn you of your danger.”
– Charles Spurgeon –
from Council for Christian Workers
Afflictions add to the saints’ glory. The more the diamond is cut, the more it sparkles; the heavier the saints’ cross is, the heavier shall be their crown.
– Thomas Watson –
There is no one beyond the reach of the tempter. Keep that in mind. Life may run smoothly for a while, but the testing time is coming.
– DL Moody –
The Lord himself was led up into the wilderness. And in one form or another, every soul who has done a great work in the world has passed through similar periods of obscurity, suffering, disappointment, or solitude.
– FB Meyer –
Continue, then, always with God; it is the only support and comfort for your affliction.
– Brother Lawrence –
from The Practice of the Presence of God
In a letter smuggled out secretly, the Underground Church said, ”We dont pray to be better Christians, but that we may be the only kind of Christians God means us to be: Christlike Christians, that is, Christians who bear willingly the cross for Gods glory.”
– Richard Wurmbrand –
from Tortured for Christ
I may be such a pig-headed cross-patched, and have such determined notions of my own, that no one can live with me. That is not suffering for the Son of Man’s sake; it is suffering for my own sake.
– Oswald Chambers –
Is he the God of the hills, and not of the valleys? Did he love me in my youth and health, and will he not also in my age and pain and sickness?
– Richard Baxter –
from Dying Thoughts, 1683
Many, to rid themselves out of trouble, run themselves into sin. When God has bound them with the cords of affliction, they go to the devil to loosen their bands. Better it is to stay in affliction than to sin ourselves out of it.
– Thomas Watson –