“Receive every inward and outward trouble, every disappointment, every darkness and desolation with both your hands, as a blessed occasion of dying to self, and entering into a fuller fellowship with your Savior. Look at no inward or outward trouble in any other way; reject every other thought about it; and then every kind of trial and distress will become the blessed day of your prosperity.”
– William Law (1686-1761)
“Health is a gift from God, but sickness is a gift greater still.”
– Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892)
“When I am in the cellar of affliction, I look for the Lord’s choicest wines.”
– Samuel Rutherford (1600-1661)
“I noted that special spiritual blessings were given to the persons who were permitted to be sick and that most of the persons, if not all of them, were finally constrained to testify that they believed that the sickness had proved to be even better than health could have been.
If I may be permitted to refer to my own experience in this connection, I would witness to the fact that the deepest and most precious and most abiding spiritual lessons which God has been pleased to teach me were learned in consequence of enduring my various experiences of sickness…
I feel it would have been nothing short of a calamity to have missed the physical suffering through which I have passed. I am positive that I have sometimes met with God’s refusal to heal when I have been most in fellowship with Him.”
– Henry Frost, Miraculous Healing: Why Does God Heal Some and Not Others?, 1931
“Dear friend, God may send you some valuable gifts wrapped in unattractive paper. But do not worry about the wrappings, for you can be sure that inside He has hidden treasures of love, kindness, and wisdom. If we will simply take what he sends and trust Him for the blessings inside, we will learn the meaning of the secrets of His providence, even in times of darkness.”
– A.B. Simpson, Streams in the Desert
Rachel Stanton 