Francois Fenelon Quotes

Do you think that you shall enter the Garden of Bliss without such trials as came to those who passed before you?

The dark moments of our life will last only so long as is necessary for God to accomplish His purpose in us.

God's way of answering the Christian's prayer for more patience, experience, hope and love often is to put him into the furnace of affliction.

When life is good and we have no problems, we can almost let ourselves believe we have no need for God. But in my experience, sometimes the richest blessings come through pain and hard things.

God sometimes does try to the uttermost those whom he wishes to bless.

I know it's an experience that I need to have if God's putting me through it.

Most of the grand truths of God have to be learned by trouble; they must be burned into us with the hot iron of affliction, otherwise we shall not truly receive them.

How should thy patience be crowned in heaven if none adversity should befall to thee in earth? If thou wilt suffer none adversity how mayest thou be the friend of Christ?

Wave after wave of trial rolled over us; but at the end of the year some of us were constrained to confess, that we had learned more of the loving-kindness of the Lord than in any previous year of our lives.

If He put tribulation before you and said He will give you patience by giving you a little trouble along the way, wouldn't you take a little trouble? You say, 'Lord, I want all my highways paved.' the Lord says, 'I'm sorry, I can't accommodate you. I'm going to let you run over some bumps occasionally, so you will have patience.' You do not like the bumps, but you like the patience, and if you want the patience, you will have to take the bumps. And what is patience but experience?

There are many trials in life which do not seem to come from unwisdom or folly; they are silver arrows shot from the bow of God, and fixed inextricably in the quivering heart - they are meant to be borne - they were not meant, like snow or water, to melt as soon as they strike; but the moment an ill can be patiently borne it is disarmed of its poison, though not of its pain.

God will take you through hell, just to get you to heaven.

My Brethren if thou endure thy trials well though shalt be exalted.

Now, I wish to encourage those who are in the midst of hard trials, who feel their faith may be fading under the onslaught of troubles. There seems to me no better answer to the question of why trials come and what we are to do than the words of the Lord Himself, who passed through trials for us more terrible than we can imagine.

However much we do to avoid them, we shall never lack crosses in this life if we are in the ranks of the Crucified.

Troubles are often the tools by which God fashions us for better things.

When life is rosy, we may slide by with knowing about Jesus, with imitating him and quoting him and speaking of him. But only in suffering will we know Jesus.

If ever we are going to be made into wine, we will have to be crushed; you cannot drink grapes. Grapes become wine only when they have been squeezed. I wonder what kind of finger and thumb God has been using to squeeze you, and you have been like a marble and escaped?

Real faith is refined in the fires and storms of pain.

Trials make the promise sweet, Trials give new life to prayer; Trials bring me to His feet, Lay me low, and keep me there.

Patience, piety, and salutary knowledge spring up and ripen under the harrow of affliction; before there is wine or oil, the grape must be trodden and the oil pressed.

God often hides His blessing in trouble or trial, which makes it all the sweeter when it comes our way.

God measures out affliction to our need.

It is not God's way that great blessings should descend without the sacrifice first of great sufferings. If the truth is to be spread to any wide extent among the people, how can we dream, how can we hope, that trial and trouble shall not accompany its going forth.

Everything will happen as was written by the Lord," replied the prophet. "There are moments when tribulations occur in our lives, and we cannot avoid them. But they are there for some reason." "What reason?" "That is a question we cannot answer before, or even during the trials. Only when we have overcome them do we understand why they were there.