Max Lucado Quotes

Suffering will get you great footage. I don't know about closer to God. Although there have been times when I've suffered to the point where I think I might be about to meet him.

The greatest good suffering can do for me is to increase my capacity for God.

In the Christian faith, God really puts suffering front and center. He doesn't get squeamish about it.

Sorrow is a fruit. God does not make it grow on limbs too weak to bear it.

There will be days when you feel defeated, exhausted, and plain old beat-up by life's whiplash. People you love will disappoint you - and you will disappoint them. You'll probably struggle with some kind of mortal appetite. Some days it will feel as though the veil between Heaven and Earth is made of reinforced concrete.

Anything that I undergo, I look at as redemptive suffering.

This is one of the great paradoxes of suffering. Those who don't suffer much think suffering should keep people from God, while many who suffer a great deal turn to God, not from him.

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.

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.

There are no times in life when opportunity, the chance to be and do, gathers so richly about the soul as when it has to suffer. Then everything depends on whether the man turns to the lower or the higher helps. If he resorts to mere expedients and tricks the opportunity is lost. He comes out harder, poorer, smaller for his pain. But, if he turns to God, the hour of suffering is the turning hour of his life.

If there were never any clouds (sorrows and sufferings) in our lives, we would have no faith. God does not come near us without clouds.

Pain is the doorway to wisdom and to truth.

It is by suffering that human beings become angels.

Some people who suffer run away from God, and I know the tendency, but instead I just run to Him.

He that will learn to pray, let him go to sea.

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 will not look you over for medals degrees or diplomas, but for scars.

You never know God is all you need until God is all you have.

I do not believe in the 'prosperity Gospel' as I've been accused of believing it. I do believe that all good things come from God, and I also believe that God teaches us so much through our suffering.

Whenever I go through any sort of bad patch, I remind myself that part of the game of cricket is God testing you.

I realize now that God has been with me every step of my life - through the suffering.

When an apprentice gets hurt, or complains of being tired, the workmen and peasants have this fine expression: "It is the trade entering his body." Each time that we have some pain to go through, we can say to ourselves quite truly that it is the universe, the order and beauty of the world, and the obedience of God that are entering our body.

We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.

As the most generous vine, if it is not pruned, runs out into many superfluous stems, and grows at last weak and fruitless; so dote the best man, if he be not cut short of his desires and pruned with afflictions. If it be painful to bleed, it is worse to wither. Let me be pruned, that I may grow, rather than be cut up to burn.