In the Christian faith, God really puts suffering front and center. He doesn’t get squeamish about it.
I’d learned that you can’t wear a crown unless you bear a cross – that if our Savior had learned obedience through suffering, we should expect the same.
God has determined to steer what He hates in a direction that He loves!
Suffering is having what you do not want, and wanting what you do not have. However, suffering is minimized when we equalize our desires to fit our circumstances. Subtract our wants, and we will be closer to contentment.
Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things. And no good thing ever dies.
Oh, how we need to grasp the soul-settling hope found in the pages of God’s Word – not only grasp it, but allow the hope of God to fill and overflow our hearts, transforming us into people who are confident and at peace with themselves, their God, and their circumstances.
Here in the sub-Sahara, it seemed that the weaker people were, the harder they had to lean on God – and the harder they leaned on him, the greater their joy.
This sin-stained planet would have ripped apart at the seams long ago were it not for the restraining hand of God.
Gradually, the unthinkable becomes tolerable, then acceptable, then legal, then praised.
With David, I sometimes sigh, “How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my hear? How long will my enemy triumph over me?”1.
Love is something more stern and splendid than mere kindness. – C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain.
Gut-wrenching questions honor God. Despair directed at God is a way of encountering him, opening ourselves up to the One and only Someone who can actually do something about our plight. And whether we, like Greg, collide with the Almighty or simply bump up against him, we cannot be the same. We never are when we experience God.
God uses chronic pain and weakness, along with other afflictions, as his chisel for sculpting our lives. Felt weakness deepens dependency on Christ for strength each day. The weaker we feel, the harder we lean. And the harder we lean, the stronger we grow spiritually, even while our bodies waste away.
Your heart, mind, hands and feet are stamped with the imprint of the Creator. Little wonder that the Devil wants you to be ashamed of your body.
The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous run to it and are safe. – PROVERBS 18:10.
It’s music that can only come from particular instruments, broken in particular ways, and yielded with particular humility. I also believe it brings God glory in a way that is completely unique on earth or in the heavens. And that’s a thought that keeps me going, too.
God’s hands stay on the wheel of your life from start to finish so that everything follows his intention for your life. This means your trials have more meaning – much more – than you realize.
Oh, the pain of earth, you half sigh. Then you smile, rising to your feet to live the life God had been preparing for you all along. Weeping may have endured for a night, but it is morning.
Your cross is your attitude about your dead-end job and your in-laws. It is your attitude about your aches and pains. Any complaints, any grumblings, any disputings or murmurings, any anxieties, any worries, any resentments or anything that hints of a raging torrent of bitterness – these are the things God calls me to die to daily.
To hunger is to be human, but to hunger for God is to feed on Him. Hunger and thirst after His righteousness and feed on Him in your heart. Taste and see that the Lord is good; it is He who will fill you to satisfaction.
There will, one day, be an existence for us that will be the ultimate in reality and experience, and we can understand this truth only by faith. What we see by faith is true reality.