The flowers smell sweetest after a shower;
vines bear the better for bleeding;
the walnut-tree is most fruitful when most beaten;
saints spring and thrive most internally,
when they are most externally afflicted.
Afflictions are the mother of virtue.
Manasseh’s chain was more profitable to him than his crown.
All of the stones that came about Stephen’s ears
did but knock him closer to Christ, the corner-stone.
– Thomas Brooks –
It would be no better than madness to despair of the providence of God now.
– Eric Ludy –
As in the book of Daniel when the three young men who were put in the furnace did not smell like fire upon being delivered from it, so the Christians who have been in Communist prisons don’t smell like bitterness against Communists. A flower if you bruise it under your feet, rewards you by giving its perfume. Likewise Christians, tortured by the Communists, rewarded their torturers by love. We brought many jailors to Christ. And we are dominated by one desire: to give Communists who have made us suffer the best we have, the salvation that comes from our Lord Jesus Christ.
– Richard Wurmbrand –
Yes, there lies before us a beautiful possible life – one that shall have a passion for giving: that shall be poured forth to God – spent out for man: that shall be consecrated for the hardest work and the darkest sinners.
– Lillias Trotter –
My Lord was pleased to die for my sins; why should I not be glad to give up my poor life out of love for Him.
– Girolamo Savanarola –
Brothers, we do not ourselves aspire to be numbered with the warlike. The roll of battle does not contain our names, and we do not wish that it should. But there is a roll which is now being made up—a roll of heroes who do and dare for Christ, who go outside the camp and take up His reproach and, with confidence in God, earnestly contend for the faith once delivered to the saints and venture all for Jesus Christ! And there will come a day when it will be infinitely more honorable to find one’s name in the lowest place in this list of Christ’s faithful disciples than to be numbered with princes and kings! Blessed is he who can this day cast in his lot with the Son of David and share His reproach, for the day shall come when the Master’s Glory shall be reflected upon all His followers!
– Charles Spurgeon –
Just because it has sheep’s clothing doesn’t mean it’s a sheep.
– Mark Carnehl –
We have to make the preparation now before we are imprisoned . . . I personally use an exercise. I live in the United States of America. Can you imagine what an American supermarket looks like? You find there many delicious things. I look at everything and say to myself, “I can go without this thing and that thing; this thing is very nice, but I can go without: this third thing I can go without, too.” I visited the whole supermarket and did not spend one dollar. I had the joy of seeing many beautiful things and the second joy to know that I can go without.
– Richard Wurmbrand –
From Preparing for the Underground Church