Thursday 25 September 2014

REFLECTIONS

Puritans on ‘Affliction’

To know that nothing hurts the godly is a matter of comfort; but to be assured that all things which fall out shall cooperate for their good, that their crosses shall be turned into blessings, that showers of affliction water the withering root of their grace and make it flourish more. This may fill their hearts with joy till they run over.
-Thomas Watson

Now God takes away the world that the heart may cleave more to Him in sincerity.
-Thomas Watson

God sweetens outward pain with inward peace.
-Thomas Watson

Not to be afflicted is a sign of weakness; therefore God imposes no more on me, because He sees I can bear no more.
-Joseph Hall

The winter prepares the earth for the spring, so do afflictions sanctified prepare the soul for glory.
-Richard Sibbes

Do not even such things as are most bitter to the flesh tend to waken Christians to faith and prayer, to a sight of the emptiness of this world, and the fading of the best it yields? Does not God by these things (at times) call our sins to remembrance, and provoke us to amendment of life? How, then, can we be offended at things by which we reap so much good? Therefore if my enemy hungers, let me feed him; if he thirsts, let me give him drink. Now in order to do this,
(1) We must see well in that in which other men can see none.
(2) We must pass by those injuries that men would revenge.
(3) We must show, we have grace, and that we are made to bear what other men are not acquainted with.
(4) Many of our graces are kept alive by those very things that are the death of other men’s souls…the devil, (they say) is good when he is pleased; but Christ and His saints, when displeased.
-John Bunyan

As the wicked are hurt by the best things, so the godly are bettered by the worst.
-William Jenkyn

Poverty and affliction take away the fuel that feeds pride.
-Richard Sibbes

I am mended by my sickness, enriched by my poverty, and strengthened by my weakness…..thus was it with….Manasseh, when he was in affliction, “He besought the Lord his God” even that king’s iron was more precious to him than his gold, his jail a more happy lodging than his palace-Babylon a better school than Jerusalem. What fools are we, then, to frown upon our afflictions! These, how crabbed so ever, are our best friends. They are not, indeed, for our pleasure – they are for our profit.
-Abraham Wright

Labor to grow better under all your afflictions, lest your afflictions grow worse, lest God mingle them with more darkness, bitterness and terror.
-John Owen

The secret formula of the saints: When I am in the cellar of affliction, I look for the Lord’s choicest wines.
-Samuel Rutherford

-Gleaned from the internet

No comments:

Post a Comment