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.
God's hearing of our prayers doth not depend upon sanctification, but upon Christ's intercession; not upon what we are in ourselves, but what' we are in the Lord Jesus; both our persons and our prayers are acceptable in the beloved [Eph 1.6].
Worship is an act that develops feelings for God, not a feeling for God that is expressed in an act of worship.
Talk to Allah in your own language with your heart fully present. Allah doesn't need you to rhyme or speak arabic.
The cross is the foundation of the Bible: If you have not yet found out that Christ crucified is the foundation of the whole volume, you have hitherto read your Bible to very little profit. Your religion is a heaven without a sun, an arch without a keystone, a compass without a needle, a clock without a spring or weights, a lamp without oil. It will not comfort you; it will not deliver your soul from hell.
Being around a church culture, even leading a gathering of believers, I've gotten pretty good at predicting what's going to happen in a church service.
Believers keep up and maintain their walk with God by secret prayer. The spirit of grace is always accompanied with the spirit of supplication. It is the very breath of the new creature, the fan of the divine life, whereby the spark of holy fire, kindled in the soul by God, is not only kept in, but raised into a flame.
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