Quotable

Even testing for correction is administered in divine faithfulness. The child of God is exhorted in Hebrews to “despise not the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him: For whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth” (Heb:12:5And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him:
See All...,6). He knows what is needed to bring us to that place of repentance and yieldedness to His divine will...dear Christian, never despair—you are in His care. The glorious exhortation to cast “all your care upon him: for he careth for you” (1 Pt 5:7) is given specifically for the believer who is in deep distress.

—D. W. Costella, “The Fiery Trial,” Foundation, May-June 1996, pp. 15-16

[Referring to the many souls being saved in America and Britain:] By how unlikely instruments has God been pleased to work from the beginning! “A few young raw heads,” said the bishop of London, “what can they pretend to do?” They pretended to be that in the hand of God, that a pen is in the hand of a man...to do the work whereunto they are sent...just what the Lord pleased.

—John Wesley (c. 1780), Sermons on Several Occasions, 1831, p. 98