Trials

LDS Quotes on Trials

“Sometimes … we find that even when we do our best to serve the Lord, we still suffer. You may know someone who faces these most challenging of circumstances: consider the parent whose child becomes ill, for whom everyone prays and fasts with all their heart and soul, but who ultimately dies. Or the missionary who sacrifices to go on a mission, then develops a terrible illness that leaves him or her severely disabled or in chronic pain. … The key is to remember that faith and obedience are still the answers—even when things go wrong, perhaps especially when things go wrong.”

David E. Sorensen  |  "Faith Is the Answer," Ensign, May 2005, 73

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Elder Jeffery R. Holland of the LDS church

“The first words Jesus spoke in His majestic Sermon on the Mount were to the troubled, the discouraged and downhearted. ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit,’ He said, ‘for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’ Whether you are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or among the tens of thousands listening this morning who are not of our faith, I speak to those who are facing personal trials and family struggles, those who endure conflicts fought in the lonely foxholes of the heart, those trying to hold back floodwaters of despair that sometimes wash over us like a tsunami of the soul. I wish to speak particularly to you who feel your lives are broken, seemingly beyond repair.

To all such I offer the surest and sweetest remedy that I know. It is found in the clarion call the Savior of the world Himself gave. He said it in the beginning of His ministry, and He said it in the end. He said it to believers, and He said it to those who were not so sure. He said to everyone, whatever their personal problems might be:

‘Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.'”

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland  |  Broken Things to Mend

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“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.”

Helen Keller

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Human beings do not readily admit desperation. When they do, the kingdom of heaven draws near.

Philip Yancey  |  The Jesus I Never Knew By Philip Yancey

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“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”

Abraham Lincoln

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Neal A. Maxwell Headshot
“We could not learn love in the abstract any more than we could learn patience and the other cardinal virtues. Just as we cannot know the “fellowship of his sufferings” without suffering, we also come to know real fellowship with our fellowmen only by serving them.”

Elder Neal A. Maxwell  |  All These Things Shall Give Thee Experience

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“The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.”

J.R.R. Tolkien  |  The Fellowship of the Ring

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Neal A. Maxwell Headshot

“…the strait and narrow path, though clearly marked, is a path, not a freeway nor an escalator. Indeed, there are times when the only way the strait and narrow path can be followed is on one’s knees!”

Elder Neal A. Maxwell  |  A Brother Offended, Ensign, May 1982, 37

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Elder Jeffery R. Holland of the LDS church

Call it secularism or modernity or the technological age or existentialism on steroids—whatever you want to call such an approach to life, we do know a thing or two about it. Most important, we know that it cannot answer the yearning questions of the soul, nor is it substantial enough to sustain us in times of moral crises.

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland  |  Religion: Bound by Loving Ties

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“No matter how serious the trial, how deep the distress, how great the affliction, [God] will never desert us. He never has, and He never will. He cannot do it. It is not His character [to do so]. … He will [always] stand by us. We may pass through the fiery furnace; we may pass through deep waters; but we shall not be consumed nor overwhelmed. We shall emerge from all these trials and difficulties the better and purer for them.”

George Q. Cannon

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