Izaak Walton Quotes

Indeed, there is nothing like suffering to remind us how much we need God. What good news that His purpose and plan for our lives moves in a different direction from ours!

It is only in misery that we recognize the hand of God leading good men to good.

When afflictions arrest us, we shall murmur and grumble and struggle until we see that it is God that strikes.

God wants the world to see what God can do with his purchased possessions. So he prunes you.

God grinds the axes he intends to use.

Without you, without your onslaughts, without your uprootings of us, we should remain all our lives inert, stagnant, puerile, ignorant both of ourselves and of God. You who batter us and then dress our wounds, you who resist us and yield to us, you who wreck and build, you who shackle and liberate, the sap of our souls, the hand of God, the flesh of Christ: it is you, matter, that I bless.

Calamity is a blessing when it brings one to God. --- Hadassah

God will use your mess for good. We see a perfect mess; God sees a perfect chance to train, test , and teach.

So while he made you without you, he doesn't justify you without you.

The greatest Christians in history seem to say that their sufferings ended up bringing them the closest to God - so this is the best thing that could happen, not the worst.

In what way, or by what manner of working, God changes a soul from evil to good, how He impregnates the barren rock--the priceless gems and gold--is to the human mind an impenetrable mystery, in all cases alike.

Excess of trouble may, for a time, distract and overwhelm the soul. Our Lord himself seems to have experienced somewhat of this. Our prayers, perhaps, are never more acceptable, than when they are offered in broken accents, in sighs, and groans.

God can take anything that happens to us-even bad things-and use it to shape us and make us into a better, more Christlike person-if we let Him.

Sometimes, God uses difficult people, like sandpaper, to rub the rough edges off us.

Corn is cleaned with wind, and the Soul with chastening

Pain is a treasure, for it contains mercies.

Whenever God means to make a man great, he always breaks him in pieces first.

We're not the paragons of virtue that we'd all like to think we are. And so, to shatter that myth, God will use suffering to expose the stuff of which we're made.

One thing we may be sure of, however: For the believer all pain has meaning; all adversity is profitable. There is no question that adversity is difficult. It usually takes us by surprise and seems to strike where we are most vulnerable. To us it often appears completely senseless and irrational, but to God none of it is either senseless or irrational. He has a purpose in every pain He brings or allows in our lives. We can be sure that in some way He intends it for our profit and His glory.

Blessed art Thou, Lord, who giveth suffering As a divine remedy for our impurities.

When God sends his angel to the soul it becomes the one who knows for sure.

Your pain has a purpose. Your problems, struggles, heartaches, and hassles cooperate toward one end-the glory of God.

As children, Siddhartha and Jesus both realized that life is filled with suffering. The Buddha became aware at an early age that suffering is pervasive. Jesus must have had the same kind of insight, because they both made every effort to offer a way out. We, too, must learn to live in ways that reduce the world's suffering.

Suffering may be someones fault or it may not be anyones fault. But if given to God, our suffering becomes an opportunity to experience the power of God at work in our lives and to give glory to Him.