Iron till it be thoroughly heated is incapable to be wrought; so God sees good to cast some men into the furnace of affliction, and then beats them on his anvil into what frame he pleases.
At times God's best pupils experience the most rigorous and continuous courses. Eventually those who prove to be men of Christ will thereby become distinguished alumni of life's school of affliction, graduating with honors.
Men think God is destroying them because he is tuning them. The violinist screws up the key till the tense cord sounds the concert pitch; but it is not to break it, but to use it tunefully, that he stretches the string upon the musical rack.
Lord, you are God! You made us. Who better to know how to fix us when we've gone wrong? who better to set us to rights again? Who better to love us through the fire and refine us into something beautiful and useful despite our wrongs?
A blessed spirit is a mould ever more and more patient of the bright metal poured into it, a body ever more completely uncovered to the meridian blaze of the spiritual sun.
You will have all kinds of trials to pass through. And it is quite as necessary for you to be tried as it was for Abraham and other men of God. [….] God will feel after you, and He will take hold of you and wrench your very heart strings and if you cannot stand it you will not be fit for an inheritance in the Celestial kingdom of God.
Refinement that carries us away from our fellow-men is not God's refinement.
A trial is an instrument by which our Father in heaven makes Christians more holy.
