What we think about God must be determined by God himself, and what he has revealed about himself in his Word, and in his Son. Too many believers instead prefer to think about God in terms of their own humanistic preferences and likes. But we dare not seek to make God in our own image.
Here I simply want to offer a number of quotes from great saints, both past and present, who were very eager to praise God for all things, even when he sends affliction and trials.
RichardBaxter
“Christ leads me through no darker rooms than he went through before.”
Thomas Brooks
“Afflictions are but our Father’s goldsmiths who are working to add pearls to our crowns.”
John Bunyan
“There is a twofold hedge that God makes about his people. There is the hedge of protection, to keep evil from them; and the hedge of affliction, to keep them from evil.”
“I know that sufferings are not excellent in themselves, nor are they to be desired for any profit that they can yield, but God uses them as a teacher to make known the riches of his goodness that are seldom known by other means unto the sons of men.”
John Calvin
“You must submit to supreme suffering in order to discover the completion of joy.”
Stephen Charnock
“We often learn more of God under the rod that strikes us than under the staff that comforts us.”
Joni Eareckson Tada
“The truth of the matter is, Satan and God may want the exact same event to take place – but for different reasons. Satan’s motive in Jesus’ crucifixion was rebellion; God’s motive was love and mercy. Satan was a secondary cause behind the Crucifixion, but it was God who ultimately wanted it, willed it, and allowed Satan to carry it out. And the same holds true for disease.”
“God permits what he hates to accomplish what he loves. Jesus is ecstasy beyond compare and it’s worth anything to be his friend.”
“God uses suffering to purge sin from our lives, strengthen our commitment to him, force us to depend on grace, bind us together with other believers, produce discernment, foster sensitivity, discipline our minds, spend our time wisely, stretch our hope, cause us to know Christ better, make us long for truth, lead us to repentance of sin, teach us to give thanks in time of sorrow, increase faith, and strengthen character.”
Elisabeth Elliott
“The deepest things that I have learned in my life have come from the deepest suffering. And out of the deepest waters and the hottest fires have come the deepest things that I know about God. . . . And I would add this, that the greatest gifts of my life have also entailed the greatest suffering. The greatest gifts of my life, for example, have been marriage and motherhood. And let’s never forget that if we don’t ever want to suffer, we must be very careful never to love anything or anybody. The gifts of love have been the gifts of suffering. Those two things are inseparable.”
“I have never thanked God for cancer. I have never thanked God specifically that certain Indians murdered my husband. I don’t think I need to thank God for the cancer or for the murder. But I do need to thank God that in the midst of that very situation the world was still in His hands. The One who keeps all those galaxies wheeling in space is the very hand that holds me. The hands that were wounded on the cross are the same hands that hold the seven stars.”
Sinclair Ferguson
“Look again at his words: ‘we also are weak in him’. Paul is not saying he is weak in himself but strong in Christ, true though that is. Rather here he is saying that it is in Christ – not in himself – that he is weak! What does he mean? Union with Christ means that we come to participate not only in his death but also in his weakness. This weakness is not something from which union with Christ delivers us, but into which union with Christ brings us. Union with Christ does not protect us from suffering but commits us to suffering. Because of the closeness of our fellowship with our Lord we find ourselves sharing in weakness, suffering, persecution, trials, and shame like that experienced by Jesus Himself.”
Matthew Henry
“Extraordinary afflictions are not always the punishment of extraordinary sins, but sometimes the trial of extraordinary graces.”
Tim Keller
“[Daniel’s three friends] walk through the furnace of suffering and are not consumed. From the vantage of the New Testament, Christians know that this was the Son of God himself, one who faced his own, infinitely greater furnace of affliction centuries later when he went to the cross. This raises the concept of God ‘walking with us’ to a whole new level. In Jesus Christ we see that God actually experiences the pain of the fire as we do. He truly is God with us, in love and understanding, in our anguish.”
Benedict Joseph Labre
“God afflicts us because he loves us; and it is very pleasing to him, when in our afflictions he sees us abandon ourselves to his paternal care.”
Martin Luther
“Affliction is the best book in my library.”
GeorgeMacDonald
“Afflictions are but the shadow of His wings.”
“The Son of God suffered unto death, not that men might not suffer, but that their sufferings might be like His.”
“It comes to this, that the suffering you see around you, hurts God more than it hurts you, or the man upon whom it falls; but he hates things that most men think little of, and will send any suffering upon them rather than have them continue indifferent to them. Men may say, ‘We don’t want suffering! we don’t want to be good!’ but God says, ‘I know my own obligations! and you shall not be contemptible wretches, if there be any resource in the Godhead.”
John Murray
“The trials of life can be God’s tool for engraving the image of his Son on our character.”
J. I. Packer
“So any form of the idea that since God really loves us he must intend to keep us, or immediately to deliver us, out of all the troubles that threaten – poor health, lonely isolation, family disruption, shortage of funds, hostility, cruelty, or whatever – should be dismissed as utterly wrong. Faithful Christians will experience help and deliverance in times of trouble over and over again. But our lives will not be ease, comfort, and pleasure all the way. Burrs under the saddle and thorns in our bed will abound. Woe betide the adherent of hot tub religion who overlooks this fact!
“God uses chronic pain and weakness, along with other afflictions, as his chisel for sculpting our lives. Felt weakness deepens dependence 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. To live with your ‘thorn’ uncomplainingly—that is, sweet, patient, and free in heart to love and help others, even though every day you feel weak—is true sanctification. It is true healing for the spirit. It is a supreme victory of grace.”
J. C. Ryle
“There are no lessons so useful as those learned in the school of affliction.”
“A trial is an instrument by which our Father in heaven makes Christians more holy.”
Charles Spurgeon
“God is too good to be unkind and He is too wise to be mistaken. And when we cannot trace His hand, we must trust His heart. When you are so weak that you cannot do much more than cry, you coin diamonds with both your eyes. The sweetest prayers God ever hears are the groans and sighs of those who have no hope in anything but his love.”
“When you go through a trial, the sovereignty of God is the pillow upon which you lay your head.”
“The Lord’s mercy often rides to the door of our hearts on the black horse of affliction. Jesus uses the whole range of our experiences to wean us from earth and woo us to Heaven.”
“Mark then, Christian, Jesus does not suffer so as to exclude your suffering. He bears a cross, not that you may escape it, but that you may endure it. Christ exempts you from sin, but not from sorrow. Remember that, and expect to suffer.”
“God is chiselling you, making you into the image of Christ. None can be like the Man of Sorrow unless they have sorrows too.”
“I venture to say that the greatest earthly blessing that God can give to any of us is health, with the exception of sickness. Sickness has frequently been of more use to the saints of God than health has. . . . A sick wife, a newly-made grave, poverty, slander, sinking of spirit, might teach lessons nowhere else to be learned so well. Trials drive us to the realities of religion.”
“It would be a very sharp and trying experience for me to think that I have an affliction which God never sent me . . . that my trials were never measured out by him, nor sent to me by his arrangement of their weight and quantity.”
“‘I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction’ – This has long been the motto fixed before our eye upon the wall of our bed chamber, and in many ways it has also been written on our heart. It is no mean thing to be chosen of God. God’s choice makes chosen men choice men. . . . We are chosen, not in the palace, but in the furnace. In the furnace, beauty is marred; fashion is destroyed, strength is melted, glory is consumed; here eternal love reveals its secrets, and declares its choice. So has it been in our case . . . Therefore, if today the furnace be heated seven times hotter, we will not dread it, for the glorious Son of God will walk with us amid the glowing coals.”
John Stott
“If the first mark of a true and living church is love, the second is suffering. The one is naturally consequent on the other. A willingness to suffer proves the genuineness of love.”
Corrie ten Boom
“If God sends us on strong paths, we are provided strong shoes.”
Mother Teresa
“I know God will not give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish He didn’t trust me so much.”
Thomas Watson
“The godly have some good in them — therefore the devil afflicts them; and some evil in them — therefore God afflicts them.”
“Afflictions are sharp arrows — but are shot from the bow of a loving Father!”
“God’s afflicting rod is a pencil to draw Christ’s image more distinctly upon us.”
Smith Wigglesworth:
“If you knew the value of trials, you would praise God for them more than for anything.”
“Great faith is the product of great fights. Great testimonies are the outcome of great tests. Great triumphs can only come after great trials.”
Philip Yancey & Paul Brand
“We are, not metaphorically but in very truth, a Divine work of art, something that God is making, and therefore something with which he will not be satisfied until it has a certain character.… Over a sketch made idly to amuse a child, an artist may not take much trouble: he may be content to let it go even though it is not exactly as he meant it to be. But over the great picture of his life – the work which he loves … he will take endless trouble – and would, doubtless, thereby give endless trouble to the picture if it were sentient. One can imagine a sentient picture, after being rubbed and scraped and recommenced for the tenth time, wishing that it were only a thumbnail sketch whose making was over in a minute. In the same way, it is natural for us to wish that God had designed us for a less glorious and less arduous destiny; but then we are wishing not for more love but for less.”
