Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. James 1:2-4

Afflictions are a powerful means to make us quicken our pace in the way to our rest. They are God's rod and spur. What a difference is there between our prayers in health and in sickness; between our prosperity and our adversity repentings! Even innocent Adam is likelier to forget God in a paradise, than Joseph in a prison, or Job upon a dung-hill. Solomon fell in the midst of pleasure and prosperity, while wicked Manasseh was recovered in his irons.

God's seldom gives his people so sweet a foretaste of their future rest, as in their deep afflictions. He keeps his most precious cordials for the time of our greatest faintings and dangers. Even the best saints seldom taste of the delights of God, pure, spiritual, unmixed joys, in the time of their prosperity, as they do in their deepest troubles. ...Richard Baxter art