We often learn more of God under the rod that strikes us than under the staff that comforts us.
HT: @sermonindex
Tag Archives: Suffering
Christ’s Sufferings Are a Rebuke
Christ’s sufferings are a rebuke to our softness and self-pleasing. It is not, indeed, wrong to enjoy the comforts and the pleasures of life. God sends these; and, if we receive them with gratitude, they may lift us nearer to Himself. But we are too terrified to be parted from them and too afraid of pain and poverty. Especially ought the sufferings of Christ to brace us up to endure whatever of pain or reproach we may have to encounter for His sake. Many would like to be Christians, but are kept back from decision by demand of the laughter of profane companions or by the prospect of some worldly loss. But we cannot look at the suffering Saviour without being ashamed of such cowardly fears. If the crown of thorns no becomes Christ so well as to be the pride and the song of men and of angels, be assured that any twig from that crown which we may have to wear will not one day turn out to be our most dazzling ornament.
James Stalker, The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1966), 64.
Our Light Affliction
Our little time of suffering is not worthy of our first night’s welcome home to Heaven.
HT: @challies
Christ Offers No Hothouse Christianity
True holiness does not make a Christian evade difficulties, but face and overcome them. Christ would have His people show that His grace is not a mere hot-house plant, which can only thrive under shelter, but a strong hardy thing which can flourish in every relation of life.
J. C. Ryle, Holiness (Carlisle, PA: Evangelical Press, 2011), 25.
“Whatever Doesn’t Kill Me Will Only Make Me Stronger”
What cannot be cured must be endured is paganism. It is wonderful that paganism ever climbed to that height. It is a great attitude, it is heroic up to a certain point, but it is not Christianity. Christianity does not say what cannot be cured must be endured, it says, rather, These things must be endured because they are part of the cure. These things are to be cheerfully borne because they have the strange and mystic power to make whole and strong, and so lead to victory and the final glory. Christianity is never the dour pessimism which submits. Christianity is the cheerful optimism which cooperates with the process, because it sees through suffering and weakness, joy and strength come.
Suffering from the Hand of a Reconciled God
Your afflictions may only prove that you are more immediately under the Father’s hand. There is no time that the patient is such an object of tender interest to the surgeon, as when he is bleeding beneath his knife. So you may be sure if you are suffering from the hand of a reconciled God, that His eye is all the more bent on you.
The Low Points in Life
God allows us to experience the low points of life in order to teach us lessons that we could learn in no other way.
Faith Is NOT Fatalism
There is a sulking submission and there is a cheerful submission. There is a fatalistic submission which takes this attitude—this is inevitable, so I must bow to it; and there is a thankful submission, receiving with gratitude whatever God may be pleased to send us. “It is good for me that I have been afflicted; that I might learn Thy statutes” (Ps. 119:71). The Psalmist viewed his chastisements with the eye of faith, and doing so he perceived the love behind them. Remember that when God brings His people into the wilderness it is that they may learn more of His sufficiency; when He casts them into the furnace it is that they may enjoy His presence.
All Things Work out for Good
We’re not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.
The Purpose of Problems
Afflicting providences are sanctified to us, when we draw near to God under them.
HT: @CJMahaney
Life Is Worship 