D. A. Carson Quotes

Christ has no velvet crosses.

Jesus Christ was the most perfect being to ever walk this planet and he was persecuted and nailed to the cross … so please don’t be surprised when we get a little static.

The deepest need that you and I have in weakness and adversity is not quick relief, but the well-grounded confidence that what is happening to us is part of the greatest purpose of God in the universe - the glorification of the grace and power of his Son - the grace and power that bore Him to the cross and kept him there until the work of love was done.

God can be found only in suffering and the cross.

At the very center of our culture is a crucified man, a tortured man hanging on a cross of wood. You have an image of violence at the very center of our spiritual investigation.

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.

When I think of that dear rugged cross where the dear Saviour gave his all... When I feel like I'm on my last go round, see me through.

We all know people who have been made much meaner and more irritable and more intolerable to live with by suffering: it is not right to say that all suffering perfects. It only perfects one type of person ...... the one who accepts the call of God in Christ Jesus.

It is not by sidestepping or fleeing from suffering that we are healed, but rather by our capacity for accepting it, maturing through it and finding meaning through union with Christ, who suffered with infinite love.

God wrote a book on suffering, and its name is Jesus.

To be an Error and to be Cast out is a part of God's Design.

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.

But Palm Sunday tells us that ... it is the cross that is the true tree of life.

It's the notion that there is no perfection - that there is a broken world and we live with broken hearts and broken lives but still there is no alibi for anything. On the contrary, you have to stand up and say hallelujah under those circumstances.

Jesus Christ has to suffer and be rejected... Suffering and being rejected are not the same.

I don’t know why terrible things happen to us sometimes. But I have to believe that something good is going to come of this.

He who embraces the cross and bears it with patience lightens the weight of the cross. Indeed, the weight itself becomes a consolation; for God abounds with grace to all those who carry the cross with good will in order to please him.

The Cross of Christ bears the suffering and the sin of mankind, including our own. Jesus accepts all this with open arms, bearing on His shoulders our crosses and saying to us: 'Have courage! You do not carry your cross alone! I carry it with you. I have overcome death and I have come to give you hope, to give you life' (John 3:16).

When to the cross I turn my eyes,And rest on Calvary,O Lamb of God, my sacrifice,I must remember Thee.

Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom, the good thief said from his cross (Luke 23:42). There are perhaps no more human words in all of Scripture, no prayer we can pray so well.

Any discussion of how pain and suffering fit into God's scheme ultimately leads back to the cross.

There is more to be learned at the foot of the Cross than anywhere else in the world.

The world's one and only remedy is the cross.

Christ's own 'God-forsaken-ness' on the cross showed me where God is present where God had been present in those nights of deaths in the fire storms in Hamburg and where God would be present in my future whatever may come.

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