"Salvation is of the LORD." -Jonah 2:9

The religious professor receives doctrines because he sees them in the Bible. The believer not only sees them in the Bible, but he feels them in his heart, put there by the Holy Spirit. The believer gets at truth through trouble. He arrives at the banquet of mercy through sharp pangs of hunger. He lays hold of the robe of righteousness chilled by nakedness. He comes to the cross because he is guilty and there is nowhere else to go. Thus the religionist and the believer (however else they may resemble one another) have an eternal distinction which the hand of God has drawn between the living and the dead. -copied

"But the God of all grace, who hath called us unto H is eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered a while, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you." - I Peter 5:10 [KJV] If "the God of all grace" has indeed "called you unto His eternal glory,"—if He has indeed touched your heart with His blessed finger,—remember you will have to walk, from beginning to end, in a path of suffering; for the whole path, more or less, is a path of tribulation. And, while walking in this path, and suffering from sin, Satan, the world, and the evil of your own heart, it is only to lead you up more unto "the God of all grace ; " it is only that God may, in His own time, "make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, and settle you." And when your soul has passed through these trials, you will see God's hand in all, praise Him for all, and will perceive how good it was for you to have been afflicted, and to have walked in this pa...