The Lord never lays more on us, in the way of chastisement, than our state of heart makes needful; so that whilst He smites with the one hand, He supports with the other.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that any challenges or hardships we face are balanced by the support we receive, reflecting our inner state of heart.
George Muller emphasizes the idea that the challenges or chastisements we experience in life are proportionate to what our hearts require for growth and development. He conveys a profound belief that while we may undergo difficulties (symbolized by being 'smitten'), there is also divine support available to us that helps us endure and overcome those challenges, suggesting a balance between hardship and aid.
In practice
During a motivational speech about overcoming adversity.
A child rightly trained may be a world-wide blessing, with an influence reaching onward to eternal years. But a neglected or misdirected directed child may live to blight and blast mankind, and leave influences of evil which shall roll on in increasing volume till they plunge into the gulf of eternal perdition.
The longer I live, the more I am enabled to realize that I have but one life to live on Earth, and that this one life is but a brief life, for sowing, in comparison with eternity, for reaping.
The less we read the Word of God, the less we desire to read it, and the less we pray, the less we desire to pray.
I desire many things concerning myself; but I desire nothing so much, as to have a heart filled with love to the Lord. I long for a warm personal attachment to Him.
The vigor of our spiritual life will be in exact proportion to the place held by the Bible in our life and thoughts.
If honest of heart and uprightness before God were lacking or if I did not patiently wait on God for instruction, or if I preferred the counsel of my fellow-men to the declarations of the Word of God, I made great mistakes.
To 'choose' dogma and faith over doubt and experience is to throw out the ripening vintage and to reach greedily for the Kool-Aid.
You can't hear a word and just hear it as raw sound; it always evokes an associated meaning and emotion in the brain.
In a healthy, normal society, people can disagree with one another, even have diametrically opposing views, and this does not at all mean that they must hate one another. The Polish authorities, however, have made the division of Poles their primary task.
Racism is a moral catastrophe, most graphically seen in the prison industrial complex and targeted police surveillance in black and brown ghettos rendered invisible in public discourse.
'Tis better to suffer wrong than do it.
I find it most true that the greatest temptation outside of hell is to live without temptations; if water stands, it rots; faith is the better for the sharp winter storm in its face and grace withers without adversity. The devil is but God's master fencer to teach us to handle our weapons.
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