Enriching Lives through Online Training

ADVERSITY

“My people must be tried in all things, that they mat be prepared to receive the glory that I have for them …” (D&C 136:31)

“There is an aid, there is a strength, there is a power when we count our blessings as we labor under crosses that sometimes seem unreasonable and unfair but that can be for our good and for our strength.” – Marvin J. Ashton

“I rejoice in afflictions, for they are necessary to humble us and prove us, that we may comprehend ourselves … I rejoice when I triumph over them, because God answers my prayers.” – John Taylor

“Is there not wisdom in his giving us trials that we might rise above them … Suffering can make saints of people as they learn patience, long-suffering, and self-mastery. … In the face of apparent tragedy we must put our trust in God, knowing that despite our limited view his purposes will not fail. With all its troubles life offers us the tremendous privilege to grow in knowledge and wisdom, faith and works, preparing to return and share God’s glory.” – Spencer W. Kimball

“It was never intended that life should be a downhill roller coaster ride. Actually it is one of our greatest good fortunes that life is difficult. Charles Kingsley once said that we should “thank God every morning when we get up that we have something to do that day that must be done whether we like it or not. For,” said he, “being forced to work and forced to do our best will breed in us faith, virtue, temperance, self-control, and a thousand different virtues that the idle never know.” … One of the things that bothers me more than almost any other thing as I go about a little bit is the large number of people, particularly young people, who get discouraged. A discouraged person is always a weak person. I think it doesn’t matter very much whether or not there is just cause for the discouragement. Whenever we start getting discouraged we start losing our strength, and weak people do all kinds of unprofitable things. Discouragement destroys our faith, our enthusiasm, and our enjoyment. It causes us to lose interest in life. When we lose interest in life, we lose many of the blessings that go with it. Most of our difficulties are actually blessings in disguise.” – Sterling W. Sill

“One man’s disillusion may be another’s inspiration. The same exposure to pain, misery, and sorrow that coarsens the mind and callouses the soul of one may give to another a power of compassionate understanding and humility without which mere achievement remains primitive.” – Hugh B. Brown

The Lord seems to require some proof on our part, something to show that He can depend upon us when He wants us to accomplish certain things in His interest.” – Lorenzo Snow

“I used to think, if I were the Lord, I would not suffer people to be tried as they are. But I have changed my mind on that subject. Now I think I would, if I were the Lord, because it purges out the meanness and corruption that stick around the Saints, like flies around molasses.” – John Taylor

“Sometime in the eternities to come, we will see that our trials were calculated to cause us to turn to our Heavenly Father for strength and support.” – Delbert L. Stapley

“There is not a single condition of life that is entirely unnecessary; there is not one hour’s experience but what is beneficial to all those who make it their study and aim to improve upon the experience they gain.” – Brigham Young

“As to the individual trials [or] problems that befall any of us, all we need say is that in the wisdom of Him who knows all things, and who does all things well, all of us are given the particular and specific tests that we need in our personal situations.” – Bruce R. McConkie

“No pain that we suffer, no trial that we experience is wasted. It ministers to our education, to the development of such qualities as patience, faith, fortitude and humility. All that we suffer and all that we endure, especially when we endure it patiently, builds up our characters, purifies our hearts, expands our souls, and makes us more tender and charitable, more worthy to be called the children of God … and it is through sorrow and suffering, toil and tribulation, that we gain the education that we come here to acquire and which will make us more like our Father and Mother in heaven.” – Orson F. Whitney

“While I do not believe in stepping out of the path of duty to pick up a cross I don’t need, a man is a coward who refuses to pick up a cross that clearly lies within his path. No cross, no crown. No gall, no glory. No thorns, no throne.” – Ezra T. Benson

“…chastisement is a benefit to any person…. If your faults are not made known to you, how can you refrain from them and overcome them? You cannot. But if your faults are made manifest, you have the privilege of forsaking them and cleaving unto that which is good.” – Brigham Young

“I assure you that there must be ‘opposition in all things,’ just as Lehi taught, to fulfill, the purpose of mortality and to draw from us the finest effort (see 2 Nephi 2:11)…. I assure you that opposition, if met and overcome, has a refining influence upon our lives...” – Carlos E. Asay

“So much of life’s curriculum, therefore, consists of efforts by the Lord to get and keep our attention… ‘And thus we see that except the Lord doth chasten his people with many afflictions, yea, except he doth visit them with death and with terror, and with famine and with all manner of pestilence, they will not remember him.’ (Helaman 12:3). There is clearly no immunity from such stimuli or other afflictions, whether of the self-induced variety or the divine-tutorial type. Either way, however, the Lord can help us so that our afflictions can be ‘swallowed up in the joy of Christ’ (Alma 31:38)” – Neal A. Maxwell

“And if thou shouldst be cast into the pit, or into the hands of murderers, and the sentence of death passed upon thee; if thou be cast into the deep; if the billowing surge conspire against thee; if fierce winds become thine enemy; if the heavens gather blackness, and all the elements combine to hedge up the way; and above all, if the very jaws of hell shall gape open the mouth wide after thee, know thou, my son, that all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good.” (D&C 122:7)

“Are we not exposed to temptations to test our strength, sickness that we might learn patience, death that we might be immortalized and glorified?” – Spencer W. Kimball

“Be patient in afflictions, for thou shalt have many; but endure them, for, lo, I am with thee, even unto the end of thy days.” (D&C 24:8)

“If we would but take account of our personal weaknesses, then take steps to methodically overcome and learn from them (i.e. not repeat mistakes), life would not have to dish out those trials necessary to ‘compel’ us to do so!” - Bob White

(see The Power of Adversity)