5-30. “Love Never Faileth”
“And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God” (Eph 3:19).
God led the children of Israel into the desert with its thirst, that He might bless them. “For they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ” (1 Cor. 10:4). It is for no less a reason that He takes us into the desert at times. “How shall He not with Him [Christ] also freely give us all things?” (Rom. 8:2).
“Our Father disciplines us that we may be more fully free from the old nature, and find everything in the Lord Jesus. But He begins the lesson with the assurance, ‘I love you perfectly.’
“‘I bring you into the desert to learn what you are, and what I am; but it is as those I have brought to Myself!’ He gives us a place with the Lord Jesus, but then shows us what He is and what we are. The discipline of the way teaches this; but if He, in His love, strikes the furrows in the heart, it is that He may sow the seed which shall ripen in glory.”
“Those who receive deliverance from their troubles never, grow like those who get strengthened in the difficulties.”
“How slowly one learns that His sympathy is not expressed in removing the affliction but in raising one above it to Himself, so that He becomes so endeared to the heart that He is more an object to the heart than oneself.” -J.B.S.
“The hand of God never deals but in concert with His heart of infinite love towards us.” -J.N.D.
“Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous; nevertheless, afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them who are exercised by it” (Heb. 12:11).