To love the Lord my God with all my strength might, paradoxically, mean to love Him wholly in my weakness. By giving to Him what I thought of as my strength, realizing my actual weakness, He could then demonstrate His real strength. "My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness" (2 Corinthians 12:9) took on new meaning. It was often far from pleasant, this learning process. I learned the frightening weakness of fear during the five months of rebel captivity, and it took an African brother, Basuana, to teach me to accept deliverance from fear by faith in the unshakeable Word of God. I learned that Christ could keep me calm and fill me with His peace, even while a storm of fear raged all around me.
God never uses a person greatly until He has wounded him deeply. The privilege God offers you is greater than the price you have to pay. The privilege is greater than the price.
I do not pray that you may be delivered from your pains; but I pray God earnestly that He would give you strength and patience to bear them as long as He pleases. Comfort yourself with Him who holds you fastened to the cross: He will loose you when He thinks fit. Happy those who suffer with Him: accustom yourself to suffer in that manner, and seek from Him the strength to endure as much, and as long, as He shall judge to be necessary for you.
'As sorrowful yet always rejoicing': these precious golden worlds teach us how the joy of Christ can overrule the sorrow of the world, can make us sing while we weep, and can maintain in the heart, even when cast down by disappointment or difficulties, a deep consciousness of a joy that is unspeakable and full of glory. There is but one condition: 'I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy shall no man take from you'. The presence of Jesus, distinctly manifested, cannot but give joy.
He whose life is one even and smooth path, will see but little of the glory of the Lord, for he has few occasions of self-emptying, and hence, but little fitness for being filled with the revelation of God. They who navigate little streams and shallow creeks, know but little of the God of tempests; but they who ‘do business in great waters,’ these see his ‘wonders in the deep.’ Among the huge Atlantic-waves of bereavement, poverty, temptation, and reproach, we learn the power of Jehovah, because we feel the littleness of man. Thank God, then, if you have been led by a rough road: it is this which has given you your experience of God’s greatness and lovingkindness... Praise God that you have not been left to the darkness and ignorance which continued prosperity might have involved, but that in the great fight of affliction, you have been capacitated for the outshinings of his glory in his wonderful dealings with you.