Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
-- James 1:2-4 (ESV)
C.H. Spurgeon, Morning and Evening:
"The furnace of affliction is not sent to consume us, but to refine. God's children are never nearer to His heart than when the heat is turned up. He watches the metal, not the fire."
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship:
"The cross is laid on every Christian. The first Christ-suffering which every person must experience is the call to abandon the attachments of this world. It is that dying of the old man which is the result of encountering Christ. As we embark upon discipleship we surrender ourselves to Christ in union with His death -- we give over our lives to death."
John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Epistle to the Hebrews:
"It is not the nature of trials that destroys us, but our own cowardice. Fire does not consume gold -- it reveals it. So too with the soul: the furnace does not create faith, but it proves whether faith is real. He who flees the trial flees also the crown."
Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ:
"He who seeks anything but God alone and the salvation of his soul will find nothing but tribulation and sorrow. He who seeks no outward thing to be pleasing to himself shall have great peace. Set your heart first upon the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all the rest shall be added unto you."
What have you been avoiding because the cost of honest reckoning feels higher than the cost of continued pretense?
Epictetus, Discourses:
"It is not things that disturb us, but our judgments about things. Difficulties are the things that show what men are. Henceforth, when some difficulty befalls you, remember that God, like a trainer of wrestlers, has matched you with a rough young man."
St. Clair, MI: -- Currently 79°F and clear. High 101°F, low 79°F. Winds WSW at 7 mph. No precipitation expected today. Heat advisory conditions -- thunderstorms arrive Thursday and Friday.