"I do not know whether my experience is that of
all God’s people; but I am afraid that all the grace that I have got
out of my comfortable and easy times and happy hours, might almost
lie on a penny. But the good that I have received from my sorrows,
and pains, and griefs, is altogether incalculable. What do I not owe
to the hammer and the anvil, the fire and the file? What do I not
owe to the crucible and the furnace, the bellows that have blown up
the coals, and the hand which has thrust me into the heat?
Affliction is the best bit of furniture in my house. It is the best
book in a minister’s library. We may wisely rejoice in tribulation,
because it worketh patience, and patience experience, and experience
hope; and by that way we are exceedingly enriched, and our faith
grows strong."
- Charles H. Spurgeon - The Trial of Your Faith
"Men will never become great in divinity until they become great in
suffering. “Ah!” said Luther, “affliction is the best book in my
library;” and let me add, the best leaf in the book of affliction is
that blackest of all the leaves, the leaf called heaviness, when the
spirit sinks within us, and we cannot endure as we could wish".
- C.H.S. The Christian's Heaviness and Rejoicing
Doctor Affliction is the best expositor of
Scripture. I can recommend you Dr. Gill and Dr. Adam Clarke and many
others, but if you want to understand the Word of God you must go to
the school of trial.
- Charles H. Spurgeon
"No words can express how much the world owes to sorrow. Most of the
epistles were written in prison. The great thoughts of the great
thinkers have all passed through fire. The greatest poets have
learned in suffering what they taught in song. In bondage, Bunyan
lived the allegory that he afterwards wrote and we may thank Bedford
Jail for Pilgrim's Progress. Take comfort, afflicted Christian! When
God is about to make preeminent use of a man, he puts him in the
fire."
- George MacDonald
Martin Luther said that he could never understand some of the Psalms
until he was afflicted.
- Thomas Watson, All Things for Good
Job eyed God in his affliction. He does not say,
"The Lord gave and the Devil hath taken away,' but 'The Lord hath
taken away.' Whoever brings an affliction to us, it is God that
sends it.
- Thomas Watson, All Things for Good
God wants to teach us to look to Jesus alone. That is why
he takes away all the props in our life;
only then will we learn to fetch all we need from Jesus Christ
alone.
-
Joel Beeke, Walking as He Walked
