Nothing can render affliction so insupportable as the load of sin; would you, therefore, be fitted for afflictions, be sure to get the burden of your sins laid aside; and then what afflictions so ever you may meet with will be very easy to you.
If you can hear and bear the rod of affliction which God shall lay upon you, remember this lesson, you are beaten that you may be better. The Lord uses his flail of tribulation to separate the chaff from the wheat.
The school of the cross is the school of light, it discovers the world's vanity, baseness, and wickedness, and lets us see more of God's mind. Out of dark affliction, comes a spiritual light. In times of affliction, we commonly meet with the sweetest experiences of the love of God.
Did we heartily renounce the pleasures of this world, we would be very little troubled for our afflictions; that which renders an afflicted state so insupportable to many, is because they are too much addicted to the pleasures of this life, and so cannot endure that which makes a separation between them.
[John Bunyan]
2 Corinthians 4:17 … For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory;❤
