Quotes about Suffering

Sometimes suffering is what's best for us, if only because it keeps us from sinning or tempting others to sin.

Nothing can render affliction so insupportable as the load of sin. Would you then be fitted for afflictions? Be sure to get the burden of your sins laid aside, and then what affliction soever you may meet with will be very easy to you.

The suffering we bring on ourselves, we can ask to be taken away from us once we repent of it. The suffering sent to instruct us, we can ask for the strength to endure, and the humbleness to be instructed.

All whom the Lord has chosen and received into the society of his saints ought to prepare themselves for a life that is hard, difficult, laborious and full of countless griefs.

Thus it is that we may patiently pass through this life with its misery, hunger, cold, contempt, reproaches, and other troubles - content with this one thing: that our King [Jesus] will never leave us destitute, but will provide for our needs until, our warfare ended, we are called to triumph.

Believers are also trained in obedience by means of the cross. For thus they are taught to live according to God's will rather than their own. If everything went according to their own plans, they would never know what it means to follow God.

God has so ordained and governed the Christian church that the cross has been the preparation for victory, and death the way to life.

It is clear that bearing the cross patiently does not mean that we harden ourselves or do not feel any sorrow; according to the old notion of the Stoic philosophers that a greathearted man is someone who has laid off his humanity, and who is not touched by adversity and prosperity, and not even by joy and sorrow, but who acts like a cold rock.

If only we were convinced deep in our hearts that persecutions are among God's blessings, what progress we should make in the knowledge of divine truth!

So long as we are adopted by God in Christ, we are destined for slaughter. If

we must realize that death was not a pleasure or a game for Christ, and that he suffered excruciation to the utmost for our sakes.

So it will be that no matter what kind of cross is placed upon us, we will steadily maintain endurance even through the narrowest straits of the soul.