Billy Graham Quotes

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.

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 doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until He has hurt him deeply.

God never allows pain without a purpose.

If you are experiencing confusion, pain, and suffering, it may be that God is working things out for you in his own way. It is most often the sovereign work of our God unfolding a master plan known only to him.

True, God hates Alzheimer's, spinal cord injury, mental illness, autism, and the rest (these conditions are all symptoms of the Fall). Yet he permits these things to accomplish something far more precious in our lives: patience, endurance, compassion for others who hurt, and refined faith and trust in God, to name a few.

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.

I found the purpose of my existence, and also the purpose of my circumstance. There's a purpose for why you're in the fire. If God can use a man without arms and legs to be His hands and feet, then He will certainly use any willing heart!

This, I thought, is what is meant by 'thy will be done' in the Lord's Prayer, which I had prayed time and again without thinking about it. It means that your will and God's will may not be the same. It means there's a good possibility that you won't get what you pray for. It means that in spite of your prayers you are going to suffer.

God will not permit any troubles to come upon us, unless He has a specific plan by which great blessing can come out of the difficulty.

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.

Sometimes it looks like God's abandoned you, but not for any reason. To make your faith grow and to see that, no matter what happens, you come out OK... It's all for your good. It's all for love, and it's all for making you a strong person.

I know God has a plan for me. I don't know what it is.

Better to have a small role in God's story than to cast yourself as the lead in your own fiction.

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

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.

If through a broken heart God can bring His purposes to pass in the world, then thank Him for breaking your heart.

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.

Dear Child of God, I am sorry to say that suffering is not optional.

God makes the life fertile by disappointments, as he makes the ground fertile by frosts.

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

The point of the Book of Job is not suffering: where is God When It hurts? The prologue (chapters 1-2) dealt with that issue. The point of the Book of Job is faith: Where is Job when it hurts?

Suffering prepares you by training you to trust God and know that He is always at work in your life.

Helen Rosevere was a British medical missionary in the Congo years ago during an uprising. Her faith was strong and her trust was confident, yet she was raped and assaulted and treated brutally. Commenting later, she said, "I must ask myself a question as if it came directly from the Lord, 'Can you thank Me for trusting you with this experience even if I never tell you why?'" What a profound thought. God has trusted each of us with our own set of unfair circumstances and unexplained experiences to deal with. Can we still trust in Him even if He never tells us why?