Suffering times are a Christian's harvest time.
Interpretation
Christian suffering leads to spiritual growth and rewards.
This quote by Charles Spurgeon emphasizes that moments of suffering and hardship can be transformative for Christians, allowing them to grow in faith and ultimately bear fruit in their spiritual lives. Just as a farmer looks forward to harvesting after a season of toil, believers can find hope and purpose in their trials, knowing they are nurturing a deeper relationship with God.
In practice
In a sermon about perseverance, you might say, 'Remember, as Charles Spurgeon noted, suffering times are a Christian's harvest time, and we will see the blessings that follow.'
Amusement should be used to do us good “like a medicine”: it must never be used as the food of the man...Many have had all holy thoughts and gracious resolutions stamped out by perpetual trifling. Pleasure so called is the murderer of thought. This is the age of excessive amusement: everybody craves for it, like a babe for its rattle.
When you see no present advantage, walk by faith and not by sight. Do God the honor to trust Him when it comes to matters of loss for the sake of principle.
It is far easier to fight with sin in public than to pray against it in private.
You will never glory in God till first of all God has killed your glorying in yourself.
After faith comes repentance, or, rather, repentance is faith's twin brother and is born at the same time.
["All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth unto such as keep his covenant."] The original Hebrew word that has been translated "paths" means "well-worn roads' or "wheel tracks," such ruts as wagons make when they go down our green roads in wet weather and sink in up to the axles. God's ways are at times like heavy wagon tracks that cut deep into our souls, yet all of them are merciful.
What the Church needs to-day is not more machinery or better, not new organizations or more and novel methods, but men whom the Holy Ghost can use men of prayer, men mighty in prayer. The Holy Ghost does not flow through methods, but through men. He does not come on machinery, but on men. He does not anoint plans, but men, men of prayer.
Christians believe that true worship is the highest and noblest activity of which man, by the grace of God, is capable.
Liturgy, in truth, is an event by means of which we let ourselves be introduced into the expansive faith and prayer of the Church. This is the reason why the early Christians prayed facing east, in the direction of the rising sun, the symbol of the returning Christ.
Sometimes tears are the glasses that we need to see Jesus.
I testify of our Savior, Jesus Christ, whose teachings and example we seek to follow. He invites all of us who are heavy laden to come unto Him, to learn of Him, to follow Him, and thus to find rest to our souls.
In the Church of Jesus Christ there can and should be no non-theologians.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.