We must understand then, that even though God doesn't always give us what we want, He always gives us what we need for our salvation.
Let us understand that God is a physician, and that suffering is a medicine for salvation, not a punishment for damnation.
Your first task is to be dissatisfied with yourself, fight sin, and transform yourself into something better. Your second task is to put up with the trials and temptations of this world that will be brought on by the change in your life and to persevere to the very end in the midst of these things.
The wicked exist in this world either to be converted or that through them the good may exercise patience.
All those who belong to Jesus Christ are fastened with Him to the cross.
Trials and tribulations offer us a chance to make reparation for our past faults and sins. On such occasions the Lord comes to us like a physician to heal the wounds left by our sins. Tribulation is the divine medicine.
Temporal punishments are suffered by some in this life only, by some after death, by some both here and hereafter, but all of them before that last and strictest judgment. But not all who suffer temporal punishments after death will come to eternal punishments, which are to follow after that judgment.
For it is better to suffer a little want than to have too much.
Why is it that man desires to be made sad, beholding doleful and tragical things, which yet himself would by no means suffer?
A very weighty argument is this namely, that neither does the light which descends from thence, chiefly upon the world , mix itself with anything, nor admit of dirtiness or pollution, but remains entirely, and in all things that are, free from defilement, admixture, and suffering.
I will not live an instant that I do not live in love. Whoever loves does all things without suffering, or, suffering, loves his suffering.
They who shall enter into [the] joy [of the Lord] shall know what is going on outside in the outer darkness. . .The saints'. . . knowledge, which shall be great, shall keep them acquainted. . .with the eternal sufferings of the lost.
