| Some Favorite Quotes
"Great privilege. Great pain. God's design.
This is God's way: to take the privilege of faith and strengthen it with
trials so that we worship and witness with a greater passion for
God" (dustjacket).
The title of the book comes from a hymn by William Cowper, God Moves
in a Mysterious Way.
Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,
But trust him for his grace;
Behind a frowning providence
He hides a smiling face.
"Sometimes his smile is hidden, but his arm is never shortened,
nor his light extinguished. In due season the clouds move, and the
light returns, and we are sustained. As we get older we learn to
trust the inscrutable working of his winds. May these chapters
strengthen you to wait patiently for the Lord in the seasons of
darkness, because behind a frowning providence he hides a smiling
face" (16).
David Brainerd: "My soul was sweetly resigned to God's disposal
of me, in every regard; and I saw there had nothing happened to me but
what was best for me" (27). (For the last 8 years of his
life, Brainerd suffered from tuberculosis; he died at age 29).
"We are beneficiaries today of the fruit of their
affliction. And God's design in it is that we not lose heart, but
trust him that someone also will be strengthened by the fruit of
ours. Behind a frowning providence he hides a smiling face"
(38).
"We had the sentence of death within ourselves so that we would
not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead" (2 Cor
1:9).
"Nothing glorifies God more than maintaining our stability and
joy when we lose everything but God. That day is coming for each
of us, and we do well to get ready, and to help the people we love get
ready" (46).
*****added October 8
"The smell of affliction was on most of what Bunyan wrote.
In fact, I suspect that one of the reasons the Puritans are still being
read today with so much profit is that their entire experience, unlike
ours, was one of persecution and suffering. To our chipper culture
this may seem somber at times, but the day you hear that you have
cancer, or that your child is blind, or that a mob is coming, you turn
away from the light books to the weighty ones that were written on the
precipice of eternity where the fragrance of heaven and the stench of
hell are both in the air" (61-62).
"If all is well and this world is all that matters, a pastor may
become jealous of prosperous people who spend their time in
leisure. But suffering abounds, and if prosperity is a cloak for
the true condition of frisky, fun-loving, perishing Americans, then
being a pastor may be the most important and glorious of all work"
(63).
"Two years later, commenting on John 15:2 ('Every branch that
bears fruit, He prunes'), [Bunyan] says, 'It is the will of God, that
they that go to heaven should go thither hardly or with
difficulty. The righteous shall scarcely be saved. That is,
they shall, but yet with great difficulty, that it may be the
sweeter'" (64).
"What is Bunyan's aim in this exposition of the sovereignty of
God in suffering? He tells us plainly: 'I have, in a few words,
handled this...to show you that our sufferings are ordered and disposed
by him, that you might always, when you come into trouble for this name,
not stagger nor be at a loss, but be stayed, composed, and settled in
your minds, and say, "The will of the Lord be done." Acts
21:14'" (70).
Bunyan: "How kindly, therefore, doth God deal with us, when he
chooses to afflict us but for a little, that with everlasting kindness
he may have mercy upon us. Is. 54:7-8" (71).
"The key to suffering rightly is to see in all things the hand
of a merciful and good and sovereign God and 'to live upon God that is
invisible'" (71).
Brainerd - excellent: "Such fatigues and hardship as these serve
to wean me more from the earth; and, I trust, will make heaven the
sweeter. Formerly, when I was thus exposed to cold, rain, etc., I
was ready to please myself with the thoughts of enjoying a comfortable
house, a warm fire, and other outward comforts; but now these have less
place in my heart (through the grace of God) and my eye is more to God
for comfort. In this world I expect tribulation; and it does not
now, as formerly, appear strange to me; I don't in such seasons of
difficulty flatter myself that it will be better hereafter; but rather
think how much worse it might be; how much greater trials others of
God's children have endured; and how much greater are yet perhaps
reserved for me. Blessed be God that he makes [is] the comfort to
me, under my sharpest trials; and scarce ever lets these thoughts be
attended with terror or melancholy; but they are attended frequently
with great joy" (139-40).
Edwards upon the death of his 18 year old daughter, "It has
pleased a holy and sovereign God, to take away this my dear child by
death..." (154).
"Worship is the display of the surpassing worth of God revealed
in Jesus Christ. Suffering in the path of Christian obedience,
with joy--because the steadfast love of the Lord is better than life
(Psalm 63:3)--is the clearest display of the worth of God in our
lives. Therefore, faith-filled suffering is essential in this
world for the most intense, authentic worship. When we are
most satisfied with God in suffering, he will be most glorified in us in
worship. Our problem is not styles of music. Our problem is
styles of life. When we embrace more affliction for the worth of
Christ, there will be more fruit in the worship of Christ"
(168-69).
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