Tag Archives: Trials

“Whatever Doesn’t Kill Me Will Only Make Me Stronger”

Posted on by under G. Campbell Morgan

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.

original emphasis, G. Campbell Morgan in Richard Morgan, Howard Morgan & John Morgan, In the Shadow of Grace (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2007), 27.

Suffering from the Hand of a Reconciled God

Posted on by under Robert Murray McCheyne

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.

Robert Murray McCheyne (1813-1843)

HT: A Twisted Crown of Thorns

Faith Is NOT Fatalism

Posted on by under A. W. Pink

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.

Arthur Pink, Subjection Under God’s Chastisement