Jason Scott

“The fact that Jesus came to earth where he suffered and died does not remove pain from our lives. But it does show that God did not sit idly by and watch us suffer in isolation. He became one of us. Thus, in Jesus, God gives us an up-close and personal look at his response to human suffering. All our questions about God and suffering should, in fact, be filtered through what we know about Jesus.”
― Philip Yancey, Where Is God When It Hurts?: Your Pain Is Real . . . When Will It End?

“As we rely on God, and trust his Spirit to mold us in his image, true hope takes shape within us, “a hope that does not disappoint.”We can literally become better persons because of suffering. Pain, however meaningless it may seem at the time, can be transformed. Where is God when it hurts? He is in us—not in the things that hurt—helping to transform bad into good.We can safely say that God can bring good out of evil; we cannot say that God brings about the evil in hopes of producing good.”
― Philip Yancey, Where Is God When It Hurts?: Your Pain Is Real . . . When Will It End?

“We feel pain as an outrage; Jesus did too, which is why he performed miracles of healing. In Gethsemane, he did not pray, “Thank you for this opportunity to suffer,” but rather pled desperately for an escape. And yet he was willing to undergo suffering in service of a higher goal. In the end he left the hard questions (“if there be any other way . . .”) to the will of the Father, and trusted that God could use even the outrage of his death for good.”
― Philip Yancey, Where Is God When It Hurts?: Your Pain Is Real . . . When Will It End?

“Our wants and longings and desires are at the core of our identity, the wellspring from which our actions and behavior flow.”
― James K.A. Smith, You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit