Quotes about Struggle

If then, Moses so distinctly announces that there is in us not only a faculty, but also a facility for keeping all commandments, why are we sweating so much? ... What need is there now of Christ or of Spirit? We have found a passage that asserts freedom of choice, but also distinctly teaches that the keeping of the commandments is easy.

Do not be discouraged by people to whom Christ is just a joke and a laughingstock...they live on, certain of everything and untroubled by the devil. Why should he bother them? They already belong to him. You and I are the ones he would like to seize. Now how will he do that? He will continue attacking you with small things until he gets to your substance. But resist him. He who is with us is greater than he who is in the world.

So, we, at this day, when we thought we should have found favor among our own countrymen, for that we preached unto them the gospel of peace, life, and eternal salvation; instead of favor, we have found bitter and cruel hatred.

Well, there is nothing we can do about it. We have to put up with these snakes, dogs, and swine surrounding us and corrupting the Gospel both in doctrine and in life. Wherever there are faithful preachers they always have to take this. Such is the fortune of the Gospel in the world.

My temptations have been my masters in divinity.

It is far better to bear the contempt and hatred of adversaries than to fall into reproach and into the snare of the devil, as Paul says in 1 Tim. 3:7. The

For the Lord does not speak in vain, nor does He offer His Word to the lazy and smug, but to those who are in need, who toil, who are afflicted and are undergoing a very difficult conflict against the flesh and all external appearances, that is, against those things which according to human sense and reason fight against faith, as Heb. 11 says, so that the afflicted can rely on the sole protection of the Word of God and be sustained by it.

For more than twenty years I was a pious monk, read Mass daily, and so weakened myself with fasting and praying that I would not have been long for this life had I continued. Yet all this taken together cannot help me in even one little crisis to be able to say before God: 'All this I have done, now please consider it, and be gracious to me.' What else did I achieve with this than to plague myself uselessly, impair my health, and waste my time?

since God is always to be called on, therefore one must always be in trouble.

Though my enemies and all the world oppress me, persecute me, and drive me out, I still have a Lord who is, and wants to be, my Lord because God has promised this to me.

Even if Christians are completely surrounded by sin, they should still fight against it. Some people think they're Christians because they've been baptized. These people give their desires free rein and don't care about conquering their sins. They merely follow their own cravings.

So also in the terrors of sin and death, I do not exchange death with life, and Christ with the devil, although in the midst of temptation it seems like this.