Wednesday, August 25, 2004

ARE YOU SUFFERING? Here is what Martin Luther said about it. “Trials teach you not only to know and understand but also to experience how right, how true, how sweet, how lovely, how mighty, how comforting God's word is: it is wisdom supreme."

"The devil will afflict you, will make a real doctor of you, and will teach you by his temptations to seek and to love God's Word. For I myself . . . owe my papists many thanks for so beating, pressing, and frightening me through the devil's raging that they have turned me into a fairly good theologian, driving me to a goal I should never have reached". What Luther Says, Vol. 3, Concordia Publishing House, 1959, p. 1360.

Suffering is not fun (or we wouldn’t call it suffering, would we), but it is a tool of instruction. Don’t dismiss it lightly. They things you learn during suffering will be learned deeply and remembered thoroughly.

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