Affliction is the best bit of furniture in my house. It is the best book in a minister’s library.
– Charles Spurgeon –
Hardship
What we Forget – Leonard Ravenhill
Satan fools and feigns, blows and bluffs, and we so often take his threats to heart and forget the “exceeding greatness of God’s power to us.”
– Leonard Ravenhill –
Discontent is Like a Worm – Jeremiah Burroughs
Discontent is like a worm that eats the meat out of the nub, and then when the meat is eaten out of it, you have the shell.
– Jeremiah Burroughs –
(1600-1646)
From Our Fallen State – William Law
Self is the root, the tree, and the branches of all the evils of our fallen state
– William Law –
Best Christians Found In Worst Times – John Bunyan
I have often thought that the best Christians are found in the worst of times: and I have thought again, that one reason why we are no better, is because God purges us no more. I know these things are against the grain of the flesh, but they are not against the graces of the Spirit.
– John Bunyan –
Hope fills the afflicted soul – William Gurnall
Hope fills the afflicted soul with such inward joy and consolation, that it can laugh while tears are in the eye, sigh and sing all in a breath; it is called “the rejoicing of hope.” (Hebrews 3:6)
– William Gurnall –
Crisis always reveals character – Oswald Chambers
If you are not doing the thing that lies nearest, because God as engineered it, when the crisis comes instead of being revealed as fit, you will be revealed as unfit. Crisis always reveal character.
– Oswald Chambers –
Awakens Christians To Faith And Prayer – John Bunyan
Such things as are most bitter to the flesh, tend to awaken Christians to faith and prayer, to a sight of the emptiness of this world, and the fadingness of the best it yield? Doth not God by these things (ofttimes) call our sins to remembrance, and provoke us to amendment of life? How then can we be offended at things by which we reap so much good?…. Therefore if mine enemy hunger, let me feed him; if he thirst, let me give him drink. Now in order to do this, (1) We must see good in that, in which other men can see none. (2) We must pass by those injuries that other men would revenge. (3) We must show we have grace, and that we are made to bear what other men are not acquainted with. (4) Many of our graces are kept alive, by those very things that are the death of other men’s souls…. The devil, (they say) is good when he is pleased; but Christ and His saints, when displeased.
– John Bunyan –
Immune From Trouble – Oswald Chambers
There are disasters to be faced by the one who is in real fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ. God has never promised to keep us immune from trouble; He says “I will be with him in trouble,” which is a very different thing.
– Oswald Chambers –