Thomas a Kempis Quotes

Trials make the promise sweet, Trials give new life to prayer; Trials bring me to His feet, Lay me low, and keep me there.

Do you think that you shall enter the Garden of Bliss without such trials as came to those who passed before you?

Wave after wave of trial rolled over us; but at the end of the year some of us were constrained to confess, that we had learned more of the loving-kindness of the Lord than in any previous year of our lives.

If He put tribulation before you and said He will give you patience by giving you a little trouble along the way, wouldn't you take a little trouble? You say, 'Lord, I want all my highways paved.' the Lord says, 'I'm sorry, I can't accommodate you. I'm going to let you run over some bumps occasionally, so you will have patience.' You do not like the bumps, but you like the patience, and if you want the patience, you will have to take the bumps. And what is patience but experience?

There are many trials in life which do not seem to come from unwisdom or folly; they are silver arrows shot from the bow of God, and fixed inextricably in the quivering heart - they are meant to be borne - they were not meant, like snow or water, to melt as soon as they strike; but the moment an ill can be patiently borne it is disarmed of its poison, though not of its pain.

My Brethren if thou endure thy trials well though shalt be exalted.

However much we do to avoid them, we shall never lack crosses in this life if we are in the ranks of the Crucified.

The devil is but a whetstone to sharpen the faith and patience of the saints.-

Patience, piety, and salutary knowledge spring up and ripen under the harrow of affliction; before there is wine or oil, the grape must be trodden and the oil pressed.

Bear the Cross cheerfully and it will bear you.

God, he deals you blows that at sometimes you think you can't handle and in the last year there have been things that we thought we couldn't handle but we've dealt with it up until this point.

My faith was tested like Job. That's the message I try to tell other people: just because you believe in God, serve God, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, people gotta realize, it don't mean things not gonna happen to you.

As in nature, as in the arts, so in grace; it is rough treatment that gives souls as well as stones their lustre; the more the diamond is cut the brighter it sparkles; and in what seems hard dealing, their God has no end in view but to perfect His people's graces. Our Father, and and kindest of fathers, He afflicts not willingly; He sends tribulations, but hear St Paul tell their purpose, - "Tribulation worketh patience, and patience experience, and experience hope."

Trials are the soil in which faith flourishes.

Now, I wish to encourage those who are in the midst of hard trials, who feel their faith may be fading under the onslaught of troubles. There seems to me no better answer to the question of why trials come and what we are to do than the words of the Lord Himself, who passed through trials for us more terrible than we can imagine.

The dark moments of our life will last only so long as is necessary for God to accomplish His purpose in us.

When life is rosy, we may slide by with knowing about Jesus, with imitating him and quoting him and speaking of him. But only in suffering will we know Jesus.

If ever we are going to be made into wine, we will have to be crushed; you cannot drink grapes. Grapes become wine only when they have been squeezed. I wonder what kind of finger and thumb God has been using to squeeze you, and you have been like a marble and escaped?

Everyone’s a believer when things are going fine. The real faith is when one becomes patient with tribulations.

Real faith is refined in the fires and storms of pain.

Regarding trials, including of our faith and patience, there are no exemptions-only variations.

God gives us the vision, then he takes us down to the valley to batter us into the shape of the vision, and it is in the valley that so many of us faint and give way. Every vision will be made real if we will have patience.

If thou art willing to suffer no adversity, how wilt thou be the friend of Christ?

Though God take the sunne out of the Heaven, yet we must have patience.