Richard Baxter:"Your afflictions may be sharp, but they are short. Your deliverance will be eternal.""Our sufferings are but God's tools to carve His image more clearly upon us.""Affliction opens our ears to the voice of God, and shuts our hearts to the allurements of the world."William Bridge:"Every affliction is a messenger from God, teaching and correcting the soul for its eternal good.""The worst that God ever does to His children, is to whip them to Heaven.""The waters of affliction, are often the means by which we are carried nearer to Christ."John Bunyan:"In times of affliction, we discover the sufficiency of Christ and the shallowness of the world."Thomas Brooks:"The promises of God, shine brightest in the furnace of affliction."Jeremiah Burroughs:"The bitter cup of affliction, is sweetened by the pierced hand that gives it.""Sanctified afflictions, are spiritual promotions.""The burdens God lays on us, are designed to press us closer to Himself."Stephen Charnock:"God's greatest mercy, is sometimes wrapped in His sharpest judgments.""Affliction is God's flail, to separate the chaff from the wheat.""In the furnace of affliction God burns away the dross of self-reliance, and reveals the gold of His sufficiency.""Afflictions drive the soul to its knees, where it finds the richest treasures of grace."John Flavel:"The believer's afflictions are God's pruning, not His lopping. They are to make them fruitful, not to destroy them.""God's strokes are strokes of love, meant to awaken our souls and draw us closer to Him."William Gurnall:"The greatest honor God can put on a soul, is to place it in the school of affliction."