Billy Graham Quotes

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.

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

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

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.

Behind every trial and sorrow that He makes us shoulder, God has a reason.

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

Affliction of itself does not sanctify any body, but the reverse. I believe in sanctified afflictions, but not in sanctifying afflictions.

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.

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

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 measures out affliction to our need.

God is not concerned about our plans; He doesn’t ask, “Do you want to go through this loss of a loved one, this difficulty, or this defeat?” No, He allows these things for His own purpose. The things we are going through are either making us sweeter, better, and nobler men and women, or they are making us more critical and fault-finding, and more insistent on our own way. The things that happen either make us evil, or they make us more saintly, depending entirely on our relationship with God and its level of intimacy.

I believe the hard heartest, most cross grained and most unloving Christians in all the world are those who have not had much trouble in their life. And those that are the most sympathizing, loving and Christlike are generally those who have the most affliction. The worse thing that can happen to any of us is to have a path made too smooth. One of the greatest blessings the Lord ever gave us was a cross.

Trouble comes to us all in this life: we set our hearts on things which it isn't God's will for us to have, and then we go sorrowing.

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

Sanctified afflictions are spiritual promotions.

A season of suffering is a small assignment when compared to the reward. Rather than begrudge your problem, explore it. Ponder it. And most of all, use it. Use it to the glory of God.

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.

I do not believe that God has imposed suffering upon anyone to punish them or to teach them a lesson.

Pour not on the comforts you want, but upon the mercies you have. Look rather at God's ending in afflicting, than to the measure and degree of your affliction.

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!

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.

Pain is God's midwife, that helps some virtue into existence.

Adversity is the mint in which God stamps upon man his image and superscription.