Joy is not necessarily the absence of suffering, it is the presence of God.
– Sam Storms
Joy | Suffering | God
The truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering the more you suffer because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you in proportion to your fear of being hurt.
– Thomas Merton
Suffering
Often, we endure trials seeking God’s deliverance from them. Suffering is painful for us to endure or to see those we love endure. While our instinct is to flee trials, remember that even in the midst of suffering, God’s will is being done.
– Paul Chappell
Trials | Suffering
God will not permit any troubles to come upon us, unless He has a specific plan by which great blessing can come out of the difficulty.
– Peter Marshall
Suffering | Blessings
God brings men into deep waters not to drown them, but to cleanse them.
– James H. Aughey
Suffering | Holiness | Men
Those times when you feel like quitting can be times of great opportunity, for God uses your troubles to help you grow.
– Warren Wiersbe
Suffering | Patience
Though poor in this world’s goods, though grieving the loss of loved ones, though suffering pain of body, though harassed by sin and Satan, though hated and persecuted by worldlings, whatever be the case and lot of the Christian, it is both his privilege and duty to rejoice in the Lord.
– A. W. Pink
Inspiration | Suffering
For the believer in Jesus, every trial of suffering is an opportunity to grow in the faith, to grow in our relationship with the Lord, and to see Him work in our lives in a uniquely personal way that demonstrates His compassion, His comfort, His tender mercies, His loving kindnesses, His grace, and His endless love. Only God knows what each of us needs to experience and learn in order to be “conformed to the image of his Son”.
– T.A. McMahon
Suffering | Opportunity
You need not cry very loud; he is nearer to us than we think.
– Brother Lawrence
Suffering
No character is ultimately tested until it has suffered.
– Harry Emerson Fosdick
Suffering
At the timberline where the storms strike with the most fury, the sturdiest trees are found.
– Hudson Taylor
Suffering | Perseverance
Tears are often the telescope by which men see far into heaven.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Suffering
God had one son on earth without sin, but never one without suffering.
– Augustine
Jesus | Suffering
They gave our Master a crown of thorns. Why do we hope for a crown of roses?
– Martin Luther
Suffering
Snuggle in God’s arms. When you are hurting, when you feel lonely, left out. let Him cradle you, comfort you, reassure you of His all-sufficient power and love.
– Kay Arthur
Suffering | Comfort | Hurt
Happy are they who are sick, yea, or lose their life, for having done a good work.
– John Wesley
Suffering
Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free-wills involve, and you find that you have excluded life itself.
– C.S. Lewis
Suffering | Nature
One day after a long journey, I rested in front of a house. Suddenly a sparrow came towards me blown helplessly by a strong wind. From another direction, an eagle dived to catch the panicky sparrow. Threatened from different directions, the sparrow flew into my lap. By choice, it would not normally do that. However, the little bird was seeking for a refuge from a great danger. Likewise, the violent winds of suffering and trouble blow us into the Lord’s protective hands.
– Sadhu Sundar Singh
Suffering
Whatever troubles are weighing you down are not chains. They are featherweight when compared to the glory yet to come. With a sweep of a prayer and the praise of a child’s heart, God can strip away any cobweb.
– Joni Eareckson Tada
Suffering
When God wants to do an impossible task He takes an impossible man and crushes him.
– Alan Redpath
Suffering
We want to avoid suffering, death, sin, ashes. But we live in a world crushed and broken and torn, a world God Himself visited to redeem. We receive his poured-out life, and being allowed the high privilege of suffering with Him, may then pour ourselves out for others.
– Elisabeth Elliot
Suffering | Brokenness | Redemption
This is God’s universal purpose for all Christian suffering: more contentment in God and less satisfaction in the world.
– John Piper
Suffering
Consider the matter of suffering. Why does a God of love allow us to go through suffering? That’s because suffering is a part of the syllabus in our spiritual education.
– Zac Poonen
Suffering
We must learn to regard people less in light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.
– Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Suffering
The disappointment has come – not because God desires to hurt you or make you miserable or to demoralize you or ruin your life or keep you from ever knowing happiness. He wants you to be perfect and complete in every aspect, lacking nothing. It’s not the easy times that make you more like Jesus, but the hard times.
– Kay Arthur
Suffering | Disappointment
Many men owe the grandeur of their lives to their tremendous difficulties.
– Charles Spurgeon
Suffering
I have something which enables me to take it in the face of all the buffeting that comes my way, for I can always find resources that are adequate to take the knocks.
– Alan Redpath
Suffering | Grace
When we long for life without difficulties, remind us that oaks grow strong in contrary winds and diamonds are made under pressure.
– Peter Marshall
Suffering
You don’t have to be alone in your hurt! Comfort is yours. Joy is an option. And it’s all been made possible by your Savior. He went without comfort so you might have it. He postponed joy so you might share in it. He willingly chose isolation so you might never be alone in your hurt and sorrow.
– Joni Eareckson Tada
Suffering | Comfort | Hurt
To choose to suffer means that there is something wrong; to choose God’s will even if it means suffering is a very different thing. No healthy saint ever chooses suffering; he chooses God’s will, as Jesus did, whether it means suffering or not.
– Oswald Chambers
Suffering
There is no growth without change, no change without fear or loss and no loss without pain.
– Rick Warren
Suffering | Change | Growth
Grace grows best in winter.
– Samuel Rutherford
Suffering | Grace
It is a coal from God’s altar must kindle our fire; and without fire, true fire, no acceptable sacrifice.
– William Penn
Suffering | Fire | Sacrifice
We are bid to take, not to make our cross.
– William Gurnall
Suffering | The Cross
‘Easy’ [His yoke], but only to the loving.
– Assorted Authors
Suffering
Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery’s shadow or reflection: the fact that you don’t merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief.
– C.S. Lewis
Suffering | Grief
You cannot help distresses coming. They will come, and offenses will come, but woe unto those that cause offenses. See that you do not cause offense. See that you live in a higher tide. See that your tongue cannot move.
– Smith Wigglesworth
Stress | Suffering | The Tongue
Think of the ills from which you are exempt, and it will aid you to bear patiently those which now you may suffer.
– Richard Cecil
PatienceSuffering
Jesus promised the disciples three things – that they would be completely fearless, absurdly happy and in constant trouble.
– G.K. Chesterton
Suffering
Little things console us because little things afflict us.
– Blaise Pascal
Suffering
I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.
– Assorted Authors
Suffering
If we do anything to further the kingdom of God, we may expect to find what Christ found on that road – abuse, indifference, injustice, misunderstanding, trouble of some kind. Take it. Why not? To that you were called. In Latin America someone who feels sorry for himself is said to look like a donkey in a downpour. If we think of the glorious fact that we are on the same path with Jesus, we might see a rainbow.
– Elisabeth Elliot
Suffering | Adversity
God would not rub so hard if it were not to fetch out the dirt that is ingrained in our natures. God loves purity so well He had rather see a hole than a spot in His child’s garments.
– William Gurnall
PuritySuffering
Great and small suffer the same mishaps.
– Blaise Pascal
Suffering
I have something which enables me to take it in the face of all the buffeting that comes my way, for I can always find resources that are adequate to take the knocks.
– Alan Redpath
Suffering | Grace
When God wants to do an impossible task He takes an impossible man and crushes him.
– Alan Redpath
Suffering
Power, no matter how well-intentioned, tends to cause suffering. Love, being vulnerable, absorbs it. In a point of convergence on a hill called Calvary, God renounced the one for the sake of the other.
– Philip Yancey
Power | Suffering | Love
Our sorrows are all, like ourselves, mortal. There are no immortal sorrows for immortal souls. They come, but blessed be God, they also go. Like birds of the air, they fly over our heads. But they cannot make their abode in our souls. We suffer today, but we shall rejoice tomorrow.
– Charles Spurgeon
Suffering
When you suffer and lose, that does not mean you are being disobedient to God. In fact, it might mean you’re right in the centre of His will. The path of obedience is often marked by times of suffering and loss.
– Chuck Swindoll
Suffering
Suffering is the heritage of the bad, of the penitent, and of the Son of God. Each one ends in the cross. The bad thief is crucified, the penitent thief is crucified, and the Son of God is crucified. By these signs we know the widespread heritage of suffering.
– Oswald Chambers
Suffering | The Cross
Most of the verses written about praise in God’s Word were voiced by people faced with crushing heartaches, injustice, treachery, slander, and scores of other difficult situations.
– Joni Eareckson Tada
Suffering
Suffering times are sealing times. The primitive Christians found them so, and the suffering saints in Mary’s days found them so. When the furnace is seven times hotter than ordinary, the Spirit of the Lord comes and seals up a man’s pardon in his bosom, his peace with God, and his title to heaven. Blessed Bradford looked upon his sufferings as an evidence to him that he was on the right way to heaven.
– Thomas Brooks
Suffering
Difficulty excites the mind to the dignity which sustains and finally conquers misfortunes, and the ordeal refines while it chastens.
– James H. Aughey
Suffering | Chastisement
God will mend a broken heart if you give Him all the pieces.
– Assorted Authors
God | Suffering | Brokenness
All the world is full of suffering. It is also full of overcoming.
– Helen Keller
Suffering | Overcoming
Heartache forces us to embrace God out of desperate, urgent need. God is never closer than when your heart is aching.
– Joni Eareckson Tada
Suffering
If you and I have taken the place of owning Christ as Lord, we shall be sure to have a little bit of suffering. If He is Lord over me, I must do everything to please Him, and I shall be sure to displease friends. I must give up this thing and not do the other, cost what it may, if He is Master.
– G.V. Wigram
Suffering
My overcoat is worn out; my shirts also are worn out. And I ask to be allowed to have a lamp in the evening; it is indeed wearisome sitting alone in the dark.
– William Tyndale
Suffering
We are born helpless. As soon as we are fully conscious we discover loneliness.
– C.S. Lewis
Suffering
Suffering is the strongest and closest fellowship in the world.
– Jack Hyles
Suffering
During an earthquake it sometimes happens that fresh springs break out in dry places which water and quicken the land so that plants can grow. In the same way the shattering experiences of suffering can cause the living water to well up in a human heart.
– Sadhu Sundar Singh
Suffering
We must never forget that Christ did not suffer just during His three years of public ministry or the last few days of His life when He was crucified. No, He suffered throughout His life on earth. He who was without sin lived daily with the corruption and sinfulness of lost humanity.
– A. B. Simpson
Christ | Suffering
This is one of the sad conditions of life, that experience is not transmissible. No man will learn from the suffering of another; he must suffer himself.
– James H. Aughey
Suffering
We all know people who have been made much meaner and more irritable and more intolerable to live with by suffering: it is not right to say that all suffering perfects. It only perfects one type of person – the one who accepts the call of God in Christ Jesus.
– Oswald Chambers
Suffering
It is important to receive God’s arrangement in the circumstances. This arrangement is the discipline of the Holy Spirit. To escape God’s arrangement just one time is to lose an opportunity to have our capacity enlarged. A believer can never be the same after passing through suffering.
– Watchman Nee
The Holy Spirit | Suffering | Circumstances
He who knows no hardships will know no hardihood. He who faces no calamity will need no courage. Mysterious though it is, the characteristics in human nature which we love best grow in a soil with a strong mixture of troubles.
– Harry Emerson Fosdick
Suffering
Suffering is part of the divine idea.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Suffering
For those who have not yet turned to the Lord for His salvation, their condition of suffering often creates compelling opportunities for them to cry out to God for His help. To those who do so in truth, He shows His mercy for their temporal plight and provides grace for their new life in Christ and their eternal destiny.
– T.A. McMahon
Suffering | Salvation
If I had not felt certain that every additional trial was ordered by infinite love and mercy, I could not have survived my accumulated sufferings.
– Adoniram Judson
Trials | Suffering
Why is this happening to me? Why am I having such a difficult time? One answer is that life is supposed to be difficult! It’s what enables us to grow. Remember, earth is not heaven!
– Rick Warren
Suffering
If I had not felt certain that every additional trial was ordered by infinite love and mercy, I could not have survived my accumulated sufferings.
– Adoniram Judson
Trials | Suffering
You must submit to supreme suffering in order to discover the completion of joy.
– John Calvin
Suffering | Joy
The greatest good suffering can do for me is to increase my capacity for God.
– Joni Eareckson Tada
Suffering
You may suffer and yet be un-Christlike, but no man can be Christlike and fail to suffer. If you ever, by the grace of God, become a partaker of the divine nature you must also inevitably become a partaker of His sufferings.
– Clovis G. Chappell
Suffering
Let us not be surprised when we have to face difficulties. When the wind blows hard on a tree, the roots stretch and grow the stronger, Let it be so with us. Let us not be weaklings, yielding to every wind that blows, but strong in spirit to resist.
– Amy Carmichael
Suffering
Sorrow comes soon enough without despondency. It does a man no good to carry around a lightning-rod to attract trouble.
– James H. Aughey
Suffering
The human heart is like the millstone in a mill; when you put wheat under it, it turns and grinds the wheat into flour. If you put no wheat in, it still grinds on, but then it is itself it grinds and slowly wears away.
– Martin Luther
Suffering | The Heart
If you bear the cross unwillingly, you make it a burden, and load yourself more heavily; but you must bear it.
– Thomas a Kempis
Suffering | Perseverance | The Cross
God hasn’t completely eliminated suffering from anyone’s life. Jesus, who is both God and the perfect, sinless Man, nevertheless suffered as a man on this earth.
– T.A. McMahon
Suffering
Duty does not consist in suffering everything, but in suffering everything for duty. Sometimes, indeed, it is our duty not to suffer.
– Alexandre Vinet
Service | Suffering
That which thou dost not understand when thou readest, thou shalt understand in the day of thy visitation; for many secrets of religion are not perceived till they be felt, and are not felt but in the day of calamity.
– Jeremy Taylor
Suffering
In spite of sorrow, loss, and pain, our course be onward still; we sow on Burmah’s barren plain, we reap on Zion’s hill.
– Adoniram Judson
Suffering
Real pain can alone cure us of imaginary ills.
– Jonathan Edwards
Suffering
For one drop calls another down, till we are drowned in seas of grief.
– Isaac Watts
Suffering | Grief
Be indifferent to emotion. If it is there, be thankful; if it is absent, go on doing the will of God, reckoning on Him, speaking well of Him behind His back, and, above all, giving no signs of what you are suffering, lest you be a stumbling block to others.
– F.B. Meyer
Suffering | Thankfulness
A man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green.
– Francis Bacon
Suffering | Character | Revenge
The Lord frequently leads the saint through painful experiences in order that he may not love the Lord for his own sake.
– Watchman Nee
Suffering
Our prayers are heard, not because we are in earnest, not because we suffer, but because Jesus suffered.
– Oswald Chambers
Prayer | Suffering
The godly have some good in them, therefore the devil afflicts them; and some evil in them, therefore God afflicts them.
– Thomas Watson
Suffering
No pain, no palm; no thorns, no throne; no gall, no glory; no cross, no crown.
– William Penn
Suffering | The Cross
Suffer me to become food for the wild beasts, through whose instrumentality it will be granted me to attain to God. I am the wheat of God, and let me be ground by the teeth of the wild beasts that I may be found the pure bread of Christ.
– Assorted Authors
Suffering
To endure the cross is not tragedy; it is the suffering which is the fruit of an exclusive allegiance to Jesus Christ.
– Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Suffering | Endurance | The Cross
On my door is a cartoon of two turtles. One says, ‘Sometimes I would like to ask why he allows poverty, famine and injustice when he could do something about it.’ The other turtle says ‘I am afraid that God might ask me the same question.’
– Peter Kreeft
Suffering | Service
Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.
– Helen Keller
Suffering | Character | Strength
That which is bitter to endure may be sweet to remember.
– Thomas Fuller
Suffering | Bitterness | Endurance
The real problem is not why some pious, humble, believing people suffer, but why some do not.
– C.S. Lewis
Suffering | Believing | Piety
It is seldom that God sends such calamities upon man as men bring upon themselves and suffer willingly.
– Jeremy Taylor
Suffering
A doctor once told me of a child who could not breathe when it was born. In order to make it breathe doctor gave it a slight blow. …he was really doing the kindest thing possible. As with newborn children the lungs are contracted, so are our spiritual lungs. But through suffering God strikes us in love. Then our lungs expand and we can breathe and pray.
– Sadhu Sundar Singh
Suffering
God makes crosses of great variety; He makes some of iron and lead, that look as if they must crush; some of straw, that seem so light, and yet are no less difficult to carry; some He makes of precious stones and gold, that dazzle the eye and excite the envy of spectators, but in reality are as well able to crucify as those which are so much dreaded.
– James H. Aughey
Suffering | The Cross | Envy
Humility alone unites patience with love; without which it is impossible to draw profit from suffering; or indeed, to avoid complaint, especially when we think we have given no occasion for what men make us suffer.
– John Wesley
Humility | Suffering