Affliction

“Think it not hard if you get not your will, nor your delights in this life; God will have you to rejoice in nothing but himself.”

“Through many afflictions we must enter into the kingdom of God. It is folly to think to steal to heaven with a whole skin.”

“Grace will ever speak for itself and be fruitful in well-doing; the sanctified cross is a fruitful tree.”

“You must learn to make your evils your great good; and to spin comforts, peace, joy, communion with Christ, out of your troubles, which are Christ's wooers, sent to speak for you from Himself.”

“If ye were not Christ's wheat, appointed to be bread in His house, He would not grind you.”

“The cross of Christ is the sweetest burden that I ever bear; it is such a burden as wings to a bird or sails to a ship, to carry me forward to my harbor.”

“Welcome, welcome, cross of Christ, if Christ be with it.”

“Grace grows best in winter.”

“God being a Father, if He hide His face from His child, it is in love.”

“There is nothing that can hurt the soul but sin; it is not affliction that hurts it, it often makes it better, as the furnace makes gold the purer; but it is sin that damnifies.”

“Affliction may be lasting, but it is not everlasting.”

“The godly have some good in them, therefore the devil afflicts them; and some evil in them, therefore God afflicts them.”

“Afflictions add to the saints' glory. The more the diamond is cut, the more it sparkles.”

“The worst that God does to His children is to whip them to heaven.”

“After a bitter pill, God gives sugar.”

“Hope itself is like a star, not to be seen in the sunshine of prosperity, and only to be discovered in the night of adversity.”

“If you can't see His way past the tears, trust His heart.”

“I have learned to kiss the waves that throw me up against the Rock of Ages.”

“The Lord's mercy often rides to the door of our heart upon the black horse of affliction.”

“The Lord gets His best soldiers out of the highlands of affliction.”

“Many might have failed beneath the bitterness of their trial had they not found a friend.”

“Your emptiness is but the preparation for your being filled, and your casting down is but the making ready for your lifting up.”

“Let your cares drive you to God. I shall not mind if you have many of them if each one leads you to prayer.”

“Great hearts can only be made by great troubles. The spade of trouble digs the reservoir of comfort deeper.”

“Many men owe the grandeur of their lives to tremendous difficulties.”

“It is good for me to have been afflicted, that I might know how to speak a word in season to one that is weary.”

“Affliction hardens those whom it does not soften.”

“Doubt not his grace because of thy tribulation, but believe that he loveth thee as much in trouble as in times of happiness.”

“A little stay on earth will make heaven more heavenly. Nothing makes rest so sweet as toil.”

“Each burden we have to carry has once been laid on the shoulders of Immanuel.”

“It is true that we endure trials, but it is just as true that we are delivered out of them.”

“A godly man often grows best when his worldly circumstances decay.”

“The day of evil reveals to us the value of our glorious hope.”

“God had one Son without sin, but not a single child without the rod.”

“No water tastes so sweet as that which springs amid the desert sand. And no faith is so precious as that which triumphs through adversity.”

“Trials teach us what we are; they dig up the soil, and let us see what we are made of.”

“I bear my witness that the worst days I have ever had have turned out to be my best days.”

“Love letters from heaven are often sent in black-edged envelopes.”

“In a storm there is no shelter like the wings of God.”

“There is more evil in the least sin than in the greatest affliction.”

“A gracious soul may look through the darkest cloud and see God smiling on him.”

“Consider that the trials and troubles, the calamities and miseries, the crosses and losses that you meet with in this world, are all the hell that ever you shall have.”

“When afflictions arrest us, we shall murmur and grumble and struggle until we see that it is God that strikes.”

“Afflictions are but as a dark entry into our Father's house.”

“One drop of the sweetness of heaven is enough to take away all the sourness and bitterness of all the afflictions in the world.”

“Oh, that we could but convince men and women that murmuring spirit is a greater evil than any affliction, whatever the affliction!”

“Thus, a godly man wonders at his cross that it is not more, a wicked man wonders his cross is so much.”

“Now this is a mystery to a carnal heart. They can see no such thing; perhaps they think God loves them when he prospers them and makes them rich, but they think God loves them not when he afflicts them.”

“You may think you find peace in Christ when you have no outward troubles, but is Christ your peace when the Assyrian comes into the land, when the enemy comes?”

“Your mercies are more than your afflictions.”

“Did God give you more prosperity before? It was to prepare you for affliction.”

“A godly man in the midst of the waves and storms that he meets with can see the glory of heaven before him and so contents himself.”

“God would not rub so hard if it were not to fetch out the dirt that is ingrained in our natures. God loves purity so well He had rather see a hole than a spot in His child's garments.”

“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.”

“God's wounds cure, sin's kisses kill.”

“It is impossible for an evil heart, to think well of an afflicting God.”

“The Christian must trust in a withdrawing God.”

“Few are made better by prosperity, whom afflictions make worse.”

“The storm may be tempestuous, but it is only temporary.”

“Oh, it is sad for a poor Christian to stand at the door of the promise, in the dark night of affliction, afraid to draw the latch, whereas he should then come boldly for shelter as a child into his father's house.”

“Thus doth God, with whom are reserves of mercies, reserve his sweetest consolations, for the time of our sourest afflictions, and doth temper the one with the other in most fit proportion.”

“Why should I tremble at the plow of my Lord that makes deep furrows on my soul? For He is no idle husbandman, He purposes a crop.”

“Whatever afflictions, curses, and punishments are in the world, they are ordained by God for the sin of man.”

“Great winds and storms help fruit-bearing trees; so also do corruptions and temptations help the fruitfulness of grace and holiness.”

“We ought as much to pray for a blessing upon our daily rod as upon our daily bread.”

“Labour to grow better under all your afflictions, lest your afflictions grow worse, and God mingle them with more darkness, bitterness and terror.”

“O you saints of the Most High, you who are traveling on through much failure, through much infirmity, it may be through much trial and tribulation, shout the hallelujahs of heaven!”

“Affliction is a fire to purge out our dross, and to make virtue shine.”

“Though we meet with travellers' fare sometimes, yet it should not be grievous to us.”

“The first possession that we take of this world, is by crying: and there is nothing in it, that we hold by a surer tenure than our griefs.”

“And the worst that malice can inflict is to torture and kill the body.”

“It is the furnace alone that reveals the alloy, and separates it from the pure gold, and so brings to view the new nature in its reality, loveliness, and purity.”

“I know not whether joy or heaviness in my soul carrieth it away.”

“Afflictions are like pinching frosts, which will search us; where we are most unsound, we shall soonest complain, and where most corruptions lie, we shall most shrink.”

“For my loins are filled with a loathsome disease: and there is no soundness in my flesh.”

“I have all the desires of my heart in the covenant of God, though he take away the desire of mine eyes upon earth with his stroke.”

“All your pains and trials, all that befalls you in your own person, or that affects you upon the account of others—shall in the end prove to your advantage.”

“Now, I am discontented and murmuring because I am afflicted; but this is why you are afflicted: God would humble you.”

“Secondly, by death is here understood, all that lasting and hard labour, that great sorrow, all the tedious miseries of this life, by which life ceases to be life, and which are the sad harbingers of certain death.”

“So also will the warmth of prosperity cause one to shed the graces he held tightly in times of adversity.”

“He is teaching you, also, by trial as you could learn in no other school.”

“For a tender heart is sensible of the miseries of the church, as being members of the same body, whereof Christ is the head.”

“What is our duty with respect to dark and difficult dispensations of God's providence in the world?”

“Alas! what are these sufferings, that we should grudge at them?”

“There is no work that God has made—the sun, moon, stars, and all the world—in which so much of the glory of God appears as in a man who lives quietly in the midst of adversity.”

“No man can attain to the grace of Christian contentment if he is unable to handle his affliction; he must understand and know his affliction, or he cannot come to Christian contentment.”

“Why, you shall find likewise in Psalm 60 that David has as much of the blessing of God in his prosperous state as in his afflicted estate.”

“And thus it is with the broken-hearted; he needs, and God has prepared for him plenty of the comforts and cordials of heaven, to succour and relieve his sinking soul.”

“As in nature, clouds screen the sun—and storms descend—and tempests rage—and hurricanes sweep fearfully—and rapid changes come—so is it in the life of grace.”

“Grace teaches us how to make a mixture of gracious joy and gracious sorrow together—how to moderate and order an affliction so that there shall be a sense of it, and yet for all that contentment under it. 1.”

“The great design God has in afflicting you is to break and humble your heart.”

“If you could only cure your disquiet, if you could but quiet your own hearts and get them into a better frame of contentedness under God's hand in affliction, then you would find God's presence with you.”

“A humble soul knows, that if he blesses God under mercies —he has paid his debt; but if he blesses God under crosses —he has made God a debtor.”

“In the midst of all the fires round about their ears, they glorified God; some read it ‘in the valley,’ in the lowest condition they could be in.”

“Roses hanging in the garden may give a fragrant redolence, yet their sweet water is distilled only by the fire.”

“If ever you will get above the power of your own fears in a suffering day make haste to clear your interest in Christ, and your pardon in his blood before that evil day come.”

“Is afflicting and forsaking all one with you? must God needs hate, because he scourgeth you?”

“So when the feathered mother spreads her sheltering wings, the hawk may soar above—the gathering clouds may menace—but the downy refuge covers.”

“Here you have no rainbow without a cloud and without a storm.”

“Sometimes we are afraid God is departed from us, and it is merely because we are afflicted.”

“There is an affliction upon you and that is grievous; but there is a murmuring heart within, and that is more grievous! 2.”

“Manasseh's affliction brought him to humiliation, but Judas' sin brought him to desperation.”

“Job scraping on the dunghill, and Jeremiah sticking in the mire in the dungeon, yet they had more glory and beauty on them, then the great ones of the earth when they sat on their thrones.”

“Light and joy are sown for the mourners in Zion, and the harvest (which is of God s making, for time and manner) is near.”

“The most frightful thing in any affliction, is the mark or character of God's wrath which it seems to bear: take away that, and the affliction is nothing.”

“As the tree in winter, though it has lost its leaves and fruit—yet there is sap in the root; so in the winter of desertion there is the sap of grace in the root of the heart.”

“There is never a holy sigh, never a tear we shed, which is lost.”

“Death comes, and desolation sits where happy fellowship once reigned.”

“Remember David’s troubles, and foresee what may be our troubles.”

“Those whom God intends to be pillars in his church must be more hewn.”

“As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him.” He never afflicts them willingly.”

“He will break their bones, and pierce their hearts—but he will cure them of this malady.”

“Reproach works for good to God's children; it increases their grace and their glory.”

“When we have this done, then we have discharged our duty in mourning, and may turn to other occasions as God doth require of us; for when we have mourned and wept, then we must look upon causes of rejoicing and thanksgiving.”

“I called upon the Lord in distress; the Lord answered me, and set me in a large place.”

“We should look at all our outward prosperity as a preparation for afflictions .”

“Therefore think thus with yourself: Lord, why may not this affliction work as great a good upon me as afflictions have done before?”

“But O how variable are his feelings; how easily discouraged is his heart.”

“If I did call to God in the time of affliction that God did send for trial, it may be God would hear me.”

“He may now seem to be taking you down, but it is only to build you up and put you together again--a fairer, lovelier, and more symmetrical temple.”

“Oh, what a test of real religion, of vital godliness, of the new nature in the soul, is the hour of trial!”

“My tears have been my meat day and night, while they continually say unto me, Where is thy God?”

“Now grief is as it were a cloud from whence the shower of tears comes, and weeping is but a distillation of that vapour.”

“If you shed tears for outward losses, it will not advantage you.”

“The meek man is like a ship that rides at anchor—is moved, but not removed: the storm moves it—the meek man is not a stock or stone under provocation—but does not remove it from its port.”

“He hath watered with His sweet comforts an oppressed prisoner.”

“When He hath led you through this water that was in your way to glory, there are fewer behind: and His order in dismissing us, and sending us out of the market, one before another, is to be reverenced.”

“In weakness of body some think grace dies, because their performances are feeble, their spirits, which are the instruments of their souls' actions, being weakened.”

“Hence we learn that we must not pass too harsh judgment upon ourselves or others when God exercises us with bruising upon bruising.”

“It is ordinary with man to charge God in his complaints in the time of affliction.”

“If we be in Christ, all that we suffer in this world, they are sufferings of conformity to make us suitable to our Head, and to fit us for glory.”

“Each sigh which rends the bosom; each frown which ploughs the brow; each pain which racks the limbs—are cradled in its arms.”

“Such things as cause others to be dejected and fretted and vexed, and take away all the comfort of their lives make no alteration at all in the spirits of these men and women.”

“The raging waves beat sorely against Noah's ark—but they touched not him.”

“To see a poor candle in the face of the boisterous winds, and liable to the frequent dashes of quenching waves, yet not blown out!”

“I can find in Scripture that an afflicted condition has been blessed by God, so that it has been an occasion to turn some to God.”

“It pleaseth Him to dine and sup with His afflicted prisoner.”

“And I have thought again that one reason why we are no better, is because God purges us no more.”

“Afflictions are God's furnace, by which he cleanses his people from their dross.”

“The world thinks, 'Blessed are they on the pinnacle!' But Christ pronounces them blessed, who are in the valley.”

“A humble soul knows, that to bless God in prosperity is the way to increase it; and to bless God in adversity is the way to remove it.”

“Remember, one of the ways of knowing how to be in want is by having our afflictions sanctified to us.”

“Crosses have right and claim to Christ in His members, till legs and arms, and whole mystical Christ, be in heaven.”

“A man that is able to deny himself in prosperity, will be able to believe in adversity; if he be prosperity proof, there is no fear but he will be adversity proof too.”

“So Job speaks, "O that my grief were thoroughly weighed, and my calamity laid in the balances together!”

“This cloudy and stormy morning will wind up in a serene and pleasant evening.”

“When God has clipped his children's wings by poverty—they fly swiftest to the throne of grace.”

“The moon and the stars are seen best when the sun is absent.”

“When a person is reduced to outward needs and straits, the devil tempts him.”

“Thus, we do not always have summer, but winter succeeds summer; we do not always have day, but day and night; we do not always have fair weather, but fair and foul.”

“When Paul says, “Have ye suffered so many things?,” he shows that we must endure manifold miseries in this life.”

“The school of the cross is the school of light; it discovers the world's vanity, baseness, and wickedness, and lets us see more of God's mind.”

“Here on earth, the saints of God are in the valley of tears, they are at the bottom of the hill, and cannot tell what God is a doing.”

“Be not thou a terror to me, for thou art my hope in the day of evil.”

“There is not a headache, not a toothache, not a fever, not a grief, not a fall, not a wrench, not a plague-sore—but is a divine warning to man to prepare to die.”

“If they did consume us, we might wish them an end; but they do purge us, let us be content.”

“Affliction only reaches the body, but sin goes further: it poisons the fancy, disorders the affections.”

“The severer the sickness in such cases, the richer the blessings following.”

“Such as go drooping under fears and discouragements cannot be violent in piety.”

“Wait for the time when His own holy hand shall hold them to your nose; and if ye would have present comfort under the cross, be much in prayer, for at that time your faith kisseth Christ and He kisseth the soul.”

“Faith pulls off the mask from his face and sees a loving heart under contrary appearances.”

“But be not discouraged; the Lord only afflicts for our good .”

“The raging waves beat sorely against Noah's ark —but they touched not him.”

“He can employ an earthquake, a flash of lightning, a thunder-clap, a sudden bereavement, to rouse the soul to the all-important concerns of eternity.”

“Now you seek God, but this is in your affliction, and will God regard you now?”

“The rod shall be cast into the fire, that we may sing as in the days of our youth.”

“Oh that I could cease to be; but to fly from existence is impossible.”

“The third remedy against this device of Satan, is, to consider, That all the cross providences which befall the saints are for some noble good that God intends to confer upon them.”

“Seventhly, sin is more opposite to mans good than affliction, because sin brings guilt upon the soul.”

“Again; so think of eternal things as continually to lay them in the balance against all the sufferings of this life.”

“Affliction is sanctified when it attains the end for which it was sent.”

“That is surely reprobate silver which becomes harder in the furnace.”

“When the lions roar, [when] the great lions of the world roar in extremity, he hath inward peace and joy, and comforts of the Holy Ghost.”

“Possibly we cannot discern this at present, but rather prejudge the works of God, and say all these things are against us; but hereafter we shall see, and with joy acknowledge them to be the happy instruments of our salvation.”

“It is true, God does chequer his work in this life—white and black.”

“You, too, may experience a stormy voyage through many billows.”

“For though I am crossed in some one particular thing, God attains His end—at least, His end may be furthered in a thousand things by this one thing that I am crossed in.”

“Take a stack of straw, great for bulk and number, and lay it upon a few coals of fire upon an hearth, and what will become of them all?”

“Probably the happiest person in many a large city in Christian lands is some child of God, whose bodily health makes him a stranger to sound sleep, and a stranger also to the house of God.”

“Whatsoever crook there is in one's lot, it is of God's making.”

“It is He that has posted every one in their relations by His providence.”

“God enriches by impoverishing; He causes the augmentation of grace by the diminution of an estate.”

“Affliction is a bitter root, but it bears sweet fruit.”