"Cross-bearing is more difficult than self-denial. . .For all whom the Lord has chosen and received into the society of his saints, ought to prepare themselves for a life that is hard, difficult, laborious, and full of countless griefs. It is the will of their heavenly Father to try them in this manner that He may test them. . .For Saint Paul tells us that if we know the fellowship of His sufferings we shall also understand the power of His resurrection; and that while we are participating in His death, we are also being prepared for sharing His glorious resurrection. . .There are many reasons why we should live under a continual cross. First, whereas we are naturally prone to attribute everything to our human flesh, unless we have, as it were, object lessons of our stupidity, we easily form an exaggerated notion of our strength, and we take for granted that, whatever hardships may happen, we will remain invincible. . .This vanity He cannot better repress than by proving to us from experience not only our folly, but also our extreme frailty. Therefore He afflicts us with humiliation, or poverty, or loss of relatives, or disease, or other calamities. Then, because we are unable to bear them, we soon are buried under them. . .For it is no small profit to be robbed of our blind self-love so that we become fully aware of our weakness; to have such an understanding of our weakness that we distrust ourselves; to distrust ourselves to such an extent that we put all our trust in God; to depend with such boundless confidence on God that we rely entirely on His help so that we may victoriously persevere to the end; to continue in His grace that we may know that He is true and faithful in His promises; and to experience the certainty of His promises so that our hope may become firmer. . .If everything proceeded according to our wishes, we would not understand what it means to follow God." -- Excerpts from John Calvin's "Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life", Chapter 3.
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