TROUBLES
It isn’t what happens; it’s how you deal with it that’s important.
—Teen Esteem
A life freed from all obstacles and difficulties would reduce all possibilities and powers to zero.
—Zig Ziglar
The second law of spiritual thermodynamics: the greater the heat, the greater the expansion.
Colonel Bill Kehler’s son Tim was a strong Christian and had a bright future. He was attending the Air Force Academy in Colorado when he was killed in bombing practice.
“Why Tim?” asked a young man, himself disabled in a car accident. Kehler replied, “Why not Tim?”
J. Hudson Taylor was talking to a young missionary about to start work in China. “Look at this,” Taylor said as he brought his fist down hard on the table, knocking over the tea cups and spilling their contents. As he gazed at the startled young man, Taylor said, “When you begin your work, you will be buffeted in numerous ways. The trials will be like blows. Remember, those blows will only bring out what is in you.”
Lord, sometimes You have to:
… break, so You can rebuild
… wound, so You can heal
… let me walk in darkness,
so that I see Your light
… let me be confused,
so I seek Your truth
… let me feel emptiness,
so You can fill me
… let me feel lonely, so I
can see what a friend You are
… let me learn the hard things,
so I can be a gentle teacher
… let me be void of feelings,
so I must walk by faith
… take away my future plans,
to teach me to live one day at a time
… show me the futility of life,
so I will see that everything is loss
compared to the surpassing value
of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.
—Sue Knepp
People are a lot like tea bags; they don’t know their own strength until they get into hot water.
—Farmer’s Almanac
Life is hard—but God is good.
Life is unpredictable—but God is sovereign.
Life is unfair—but God is just.
Life is short—but God is eternal.
—Mary Farrar
If you pray for rain, be prepared to deal with some mud.
Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out.
—Art Linkletter
Everything is needful that He sends.
Nothing is needful that He withholds.
—John Newton
I do not know what may befall
Of sunshine or of rain;
I do not know what may be mine,
Of pleasure and of pain;
But this I know—my Savior knows,
And whatsoe’er it be,
Still I can trust His love to give
What will be best for me.
I’ll say this for adversity—people seem to be able to stand it, and that’s more than I can say for prosperity.
—Kim Hubbard
Even a blind hen finds a grain occasionally.
—Finnish proverb
If you should find your house on fire, go up and warm yourself by it.
—Spanish proverb
Life is mostly faith and bubble,
Two things stand like stone,
Kindness in another’s trouble,
Courage in your own.
—Adam Lindsay Gordon
Thomas Edison’s warehouse was burning. After the fire, he gathered his workers and said, “We are going to rebuild. Because you can always build opportunity out of tragedy.”
Great men rise above adversity and attain new heights of achievement by turning tribulations into triumphs, failures into fortunes, setbacks into successes, obstacles into opportunities, and burdens into blessings. They refuse to be hampered by handicaps, dismayed by discouragements, overcome by opponents, defeated by disappointments, or destroyed by disasters.
—William Arthur Ward
God hath not promised
Skies always blue,
Flower-strewn pathways
All our lives through.
God hath not promised
Sun without rain,
Joy without sorrow,
Peace without pain.
God hath not promised
We shall not know
Toil and temptation,
Trouble and woe.
He hath not told us
We shall not bear
Many a burden,
Many a care.
But God hath promised
Strength for the day,
Rest for the laborer,
Light for the way,
Grace for the trials,
Help from above,
Unfailing sympathy,
Undying love.
Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors.
—African proverb
The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. When we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value. I love the man who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress and grow brave by reflection.
—Thomas Paine
Thomas Edison’s manufacturing facilities in West Orange, New Jersey, were heavily damaged by fire one night in December 1914. Edison lost almost $1 million worth of equipment and the records of much of his work.
The next morning, walking about the charred embers of his hopes and dreams, the sixty-seven-year-old inventor said, “There is a value in disaster. All our mistakes are burned up. Now we can start anew.”
—Alan Loy McGinnis
The measure of a man is the way he bears up under misfortune.
—Plutarch
Two young boys were raised in the home of an alcoholic father. As young men, they each went their own way. Years later, a psychologist who was analyzing what drunkenness does to children in the home searched out these two men. One had turned out to be like his father, a hopeless alcoholic. The other had turned out to be a teetotaler. The counselor asked the first man, “Why did you become an alcoholic?” And the second, “Why did you become a teetotaler?” And they both gave the same identical answer in these words, “What else could you expect when you had a father like mine?”
A woman was driving home one evening when she noticed that a huge truck was right behind her. Thinking it was too close, she stepped on the gas. But the truck stayed right behind her. By this time she had panicked, so she drove up to a gas station and leaped out of the car, screaming. The truck driver pulled in right behind her, jumped out of his truck, ran to her car, and opened the back door. There, crouched behind her seat, was a hunted rapist. The truck driver, from his high vantage point, had seen him. He was pursuing the woman, not to harm her, but to keep her from being hurt or killed.
A little girl about four years old was traveling one day on a train. In childish glee she romped up and down the aisle, completely free from care and worry. Suddenly the train entered a long, dark tunnel. The youngster was terrified until she heard her mother call to her. Like a bird that flies to its nest, she found comfort and reassurance in her mother’s loving arms. So too, we may go through dismal tunnels of trial that strike fear into our hearts, but the Lord knows all about our anxieties.
In a storm at sea, apparent disaster was ahead. Robert Louis Stevenson’s son was on board. He went to the pilot’s cabin and started to ask if something could be done about the bad situation. Just then the pilot turned and smiled. Stevenson’s son went back to the men and said, “I have good news.” “What do you mean?” they asked. “I’ve just seen the pilot’s face, and that’s enough.”
In A View from the Zoo, Gary Richmond tells about the birth of a giraffe: “The first thing to emerge are the baby giraffe’s front hooves and head. A few minutes later the plucky newborn calf is hurled forth, falls ten feet, and lands on its back. Within seconds, he rolls to an upright position with his legs tucked under his body. From this position he considers the world for the first time and shakes off the last vestiges of the birthing fluid from his eyes and ears.
“The mother giraffe lowers her head long enough to take a quick look. Then she positions herself directly over her calf. She waits for about a minute, and then she does the most unreasonable thing. She swings her long, pendulous leg outward and kicks her baby, so that it is sent sprawling head over heels.
“When it doesn’t get up, the violent process is repeated over and over again. The struggle to rise is momentous. As the baby calf grows tired, the mother kicks it again to stimulate its efforts.… Finally, the calf stands for the first time on its wobbly legs. Then the mother giraffe does the most remarkable thing. She kicks it off its feet again. Why? She wants it to remember how it got up. In the world, baby giraffes must be able to get up as quickly as possible in order to stay with the herd, where there is safety. Lions, hyenas, leopards, and wild hunting dogs all enjoy young giraffes, and they’d get it, too, if the mother didn’t teach her calf to get up quickly and get with it.…
“I’ve thought about the birth of the giraffe many times. I can see its parallel in my own life. There have been many times when it seemed that I had just stood up after a trial, only to be knocked down again by the next. It was God helping me to remember how it was that I got up, urging me always to walk with him, in his shadow, under his care.”
Georgi Vins is another person who made the best out of life’s worst. A pastor of a small Russian Baptist church, he was exiled to the United States because of his Christian faith. But Georgi Vins had first spent eight years sleeping on a grimy concrete floor next to an open toilet and subsisting on barley extract, tea, and soup in a Russian prison.
While locked deep in the bowels of a Siberian compound, he wrote a diary of his stay titled Testament from Prison. The book contains not one description of prison cruelty, inhumane conditions, or palpable misery that pervades most writings smuggled out of Russian labor camps. Instead, Vins describes the beauty of the Siberian winters, his joy at receiving letters from his wife, his love for Russia, and intimate conversations with God. Except for the title, the book could have been written by a free man living in a penthouse overlooking the Black Sea.
—Paul W. Powell
You know, I used to try to take each day as it came. That is, I would live one day at a time. My philosophy, however, has changed! Now I’m down to a half a day at a time.
—Snoopy
First: He brought me here;
It is by His will that I am in this strait place
In that will I rest.
Next: He will keep me here in His love, and give me
grace in this trial to behave as His child.
Then: He will make the trial a blessing, teaching me
the lessons He intends me to learn and working
in me the grace He means to bestow.
Last: In his good time He can bring me out again—how
and when, He knows.
Say: I am here—
1) By His appointment.
2) In His keeping.
3) Under His training.
4) For His time.
—Paul W. Powell
An eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent an aphorism which would be true and appropriate at all times and in all situations. Their answer was, “And this, too, shall pass away.”
Trouble is only opportunity in work clothes.
—Henry J. Kaiser
As long as you keep your face toward the light, the shadow will fall behind you.
Man’s extremity is God’s opportunity.
It’s good to know that, when we think we are at the end of our rope, God is at the other end.
Are You Able?
Able to suffer without complaining,
To be misunderstood without explaining?
Able to endure without breaking,
To be forsaken without forsaking?
Able to give without receiving,
Able to ask without commanding,
To love despite misunderstanding?
Able to turn to the Lord for guarding;
Able to wait for His own rewarding?
A clay pot in the sun will always be a clay pot. It has to go through the white heat of the furnace to become porcelain.
—Mildred White Stouven
Everyone is either coming out of a storm, in a storm, or headed for a storm.
—H. Beecher Hicks Jr.
If it is true in anything, it is especially true of divine things, that what costs little is worth little.
—J. Hudson Taylor
It doesn’t matter, really, how great the pressure is; it only matters where the pressure lies. See that it never comes between you and the Lord—then, the more it presses you, it presses you closer to Him.
Difficulties provide a platform on which the Lord can display His power.
—J. Hudson Taylor
Nothing lasts forever, not even your troubles.
—Arnold H. Gleason
God does not comfort us that we may be comforted but that we may be comforters.
—Alexander Nowell
Storms make oaks take deeper root.
—George Herbert
You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, “I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.”
—Eleanor Roosevelt
Life is full of disappointments. Nothing ever comes off except buttons.
The north wind made the Vikings.
—Norwegian proverb
The Christian life is a series of troughs and peaks.
—Peter Marshall
There is no education like adversity.
—Benjamin Disraeli
God gives us burdens, and He also gives us shoulders.
—Yiddish proverb
Many men owe the grandeur of their lives to their tremendous difficulties.
—Charles H. Spurgeon
He who has a “why” to live for can bear almost any “how.”
Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out.
Crises—like sudden rainstorms—can help or hinder, enrich or engulf, depending on whether or not we have properly prepared for them.
—William Arthur Ward
Christians should be like the teakettle: sing even though we are up to our necks in hot water.
Our heavenly Father never takes anything from His children unless He means to give them something better.
—George Mueller
Affliction comes to the believer not to make him sad, but sober; not to make him sorry, but wise. Even as the plow enriches the field so that the seed is multiplied a thousandfold, so affliction should magnify our joy and increase our spiritual harvest.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Arthur Gossip, a Scottish preacher from the early 1900s, lost his wife suddenly. Upon his return to the pulpit following her death, he preached “When Life Tumbles In, What Then?” In that message, Gossip announced that he did not understand this life of ours. But still less could he understand how people facing loss could abandon the Christian faith. “Abandon it for what!” he exclaimed. Speaking from the darkest storm of life, he concluded, “You people in the sunshine may believe the faith, but we in the shadow must believe it. We have nothing else.”
—Daniel T. Hans
A little boy was leading his youngest sister up a steep mountain path. The climbing was difficult, for there were many rocks in the way. Finally, the little girl, exasperated by the hard climb, said to her brother, “This isn’t a path at all. It’s rocky and bumpy.” “Sure,” her brother replied, “but the bumps are what you climb on.”
—Our Daily Bread
He Maketh No Mistakes
My Father’s way may twist and turn,
My heart may throb and ache.
But in my soul I’m glad I know,
He maketh no mistake.
My cherished plans may go astray,
My hopes may fade away,
But still I’ll trust my Lord to lead,
For he doth know the way.
Tho’ night be dark and it may seem
That day will never break,
I’ll pin my faith, my all in Him,
He maketh no mistake.
There’s so much I cannot see,
My eyesight far too dim,
But come what may, I’ll simply trust
And leave it all to Him.
For bye and bye the mist will lift,
And plain it all He’ll make.
Through all the way, tho’ dark to me,
He maketh not one mistake!
A young marine was huddled in a foxhole with bullets whizzing overhead and shells bursting all around. He had received no mail for weeks, so he was delighted to be handed a letter even in such imminent danger. Quickly ripping open the envelope, he burst out laughing as he read this message from a business establishment in his hometown: “Your account is seven days overdue. If the balance of $25 is not paid in seven days, you will be in serious trouble!”
The Scriptures often exhort us to be filled with godly virtues—which means what? How do we know if we are “full of goodness” (Rom. 15:14), for example?
Think a moment about a water-saturated sponge. If we push down with our finger even slightly, water runs out onto the table. We immediately know what fills the interior pockets of the sponge.
The same is true of ourselves. We can tell what fills us on the inside by what comes out under pressure.
—Robert Schmidgall
A Christian man was walking with John Wesley one day and rehearsing his many troubles, saying that he did not know what to do. As they approached a stone fence over which a cow was looking, Wesley asked, “Why is that cow looking over the wall? I’ll tell you—because he can’t look through it! That is what you must do with your troubles—look over them!”
The noblest souls are the most tempted. The Devil is a sportsman and likes big game. He makes the deadliest assaults on the richest natures, the finest minds, the noblest spirits.
—John L. Lawrence
We are safer in a storm with God than anywhere else without Him.
—Jeremy Taylor
Difficulty is sand thrown on the tracks to keep you from skidding.
The only difference between stumbling blocks and stepping stones is the way you use them.
Men think God is destroying them because he is tuning them. The violinist screws up the key till the tense cord sounds the concert pitch; but it is not to break it, but to use it tunefully, that he stretches the string upon the musical rock.
—Henry Ward Beecher