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no one participates in God’s joy without first tasting the afflictions of His Son.
When affliction decimates you, then you understand Elisabeth’s doctrine: The Bible’s answers are never to be separated from the God of the Bible.
I’m convinced that there are a good many things in this life that we really can’t do anything about, but that God wants us to do something with.
“Suffering is having what you don’t want or wanting what you don’t have.”
let’s never forget that if we don’t ever want to suffer, we must be very careful never to love anything or anybody. The gifts of love have been the gifts of suffering. Those two things are inseparable.
And I realized then that God was not telling me that everything was going to be fine,
But He was giving me one unmistakable promise: I will be with you.
It’s only in the cross that we can begin to harmonize this seeming contradiction between suffering and love. And we will never understand suffering unless we understand the love of God.
that I could never have known otherwise. And so I can say to you that suffering is an irreplaceable medium through which I learned an indispensable truth. I Am. I am the Lord.
“God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”
The very question why, even if it is flung at us by one who calls himself an unbeliever or an atheist is a dead give-away that there is that sneaking suspicion in the back of every human mind that there is somebody, some reason, some thinking individual behind this.
God, through my own troubles and sufferings, has not given me explanations. But He has met me as a person, as an individual, and that’s what we need. Who of us in the worst pit that we’ve ever been in needs anything as much as we need company?
my faith had to be founded on the character of God Himself. And so, what looked like a contradiction in terms: God loves me; God lets this awful thing happen to me. What looked like a contradiction in terms, I had to leave in God’s hands and say okay, Lord. I don’t understand it. I don’t like it. But I only had two choices. He is either God or He’s not. I am either held in the Everlasting Arms or I’m at the mercy of chance and I have to trust Him or deny Him. Is there any middle ground? I don’t think so.
If your prayers don’t get answered the way you thought they were supposed to be, what happens to your faith?
Those “blesseds” of the Beatitudes. Paul’s word, it is my happiness to suffer for You.
“Christ leads me through no darker rooms than He went through before.”
The love of God is not a sentiment. It is a willed and inexorable love that will command nothing less than the very best for us. The love of God wills our joy.
Think of a see-saw. The fulcrum is the point where the see-saw rests. And my moral and spiritual balance depends on that stability of faith. And my faith, of course, rests on the bedrock that is Jesus Christ.
Faith is not a feeling. Faith is a willed obedience action.
“Do the next thing.” I don’t know any simpler formula for peace, for relief from stress and anxiety than that very practical, very down-to-earth word of wisdom. Do the next thing.
And we parents, I’m sure, suffer sometimes a hundred times more than our children suffer. Although we think that the situation is worse than it is, what we can never visualize is the way the grace of God goes to work in the person who needs it.
You either believe God knows what He’s doing or you believe He doesn’t. You either believe He’s worth trusting or you say He’s not. And then, where are you? You’re at the mercy of chaos not cosmos. Chaos is the Greek word for disorder. Cosmos is the word for order. We either live in an ordered universe or we are trying to create our own reality.
I’m not a different kind of a Christian because I’m a woman. But I most certainly ought to be a very different kind of a woman because I’m a Christian.
And He gives us everything that is appropriate to the job that He wants us to do. And so, understanding that, then we can say yes, Lord. I’ll take it. It would not have been my choice but knowing You love me, I will receive it and I understand that someday I’m going to understand the necessity for this thing. So I accept it. And then I can even go the step beyond and say thank You. Thank You, Lord.
It’s not the experiences of our lives that change us. It is our response to those experiences.
gratitude and acceptance should distinguish the Christian.
“He who brings thanksgiving as his sacrifice honors me;
How to deal with suffering of any kind. Number one, I wrote, “Recognize it.” Number two, “Accept it.” Number three, “Offer it to God as a sacrifice.” And number four, “Offer yourself with it.”
Love still wills my joy.
I prayed that he would take my anxieties and my fears. And that He would deliver me from making a career out of my troubles,
“I realized that I could make a career out my child’s illness. I began to pray that God would free me from that in order that I might serve others.”
gratitude honors God.
It prepares the way.
It is in these very situations which are so painful—having what you don’t want, wanting with all your heart something that you don’t have—that thanksgiving can prepare the way for God to show us His Salvation.
It’s a good thing to talk to God before you start talking to anybody else.
Suffering and love are inextricably bound up together. And love invariably means sacrifice.
You and I have no idea what God has in mind when we make the offering. But everything is potential material for sacrifice.
“If my life is broken when given to Jesus, it may be because pieces will feed a multitude when a loaf would satisfy only a little boy.”
He was number five. I was number two. And I don’t think I would have gotten away with it. But she’d learned a lot of things by that time and I’m sure she was tired.
if your faith rests on the character of Him who is the eternal I AM, then that kind of faith is rugged and will endure.
“When the burnt offering began, the song of the Lord also began”
