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「我父所給我的那杯，我豈可不喝呢？」（聖經約翰福音十八章 11 節）
親愛的讀者，你可知道說這句話，比平靜風和海、叫死人復活更偉大嗎？
先知和使徒能行很多神蹟奇事，卻不能事事遵行忍受神的旨意。遵行忍受神的旨意是最高點的信心，是基督徒所能作到的最高一點。
有時候你光明的希望遭了永久的毀滅；每天所背負的重擔永得不著減輕；當你渴望有充足的財力能使所愛的過些幸福舒適的生活時，反遭到了貧窮拮据；或者竟被身體上不治的病症捆鎖拘禁在病榻上；赤裸裸地被剝奪了一切所愛的人們，剩下你獨自一人孤孤單單地去抵禦一切外來的襲擊 ── 在這種試煉之下，你依然能說：「我父所給我的那杯，我豈可不喝呢？」 ── 這就是最高點的信心！這就是最高點屬靈的成就！ ── 巴赫司脫（Dr. Charles Parkhurst）
我們自己不出代價，就不能幫助別人；我們的痛苦就是我們所付的代價，叫我們以後能同情於他人的難堪。要做一個幫助人的人，必須先做一個受苦的人；要做一個救人的人，必須先經過十字架的對付；我們若不喝主所喝的杯，受主所受的苦，就不能享受救助人的那種人生最高的喜樂。
大衛的詩篇中最能安慰人的幾篇，乃是在苦難中擠壓出來的；如果保羅沒有一根刺加在他肉體上，在他很多的書信上一定會失去很多溫柔！
親愛的讀者，你現在受壓的環境，就是父上帝手裡用以雕製你的一件最合適的工具。不要去推開祂──恐怕你一動就會弄壞了父的工作呢！
受苦學校畢業的學生絕少。──選
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"The cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?" (John 18:11.)
THIS was a greater thing to say and do than to calm the seas or raise the dead. Prophets and apostles could work wondrous miracles, but they could not always do and suffer the will of God. To do and suffer God's will is still the highest form of faith, the most sublime Christian achievement. To have the bright aspirations of a young life forever blasted; to bear a daily burden never congenial and to see no relief; to be pinched by poverty when you only desire a competency for the good and comfort of loved ones; to be fettered by some incurable physical disability; to be stripped bare of loved ones until you stand alone to meet the shocks of life-to be able to say in such a school of discipline, "The cup which my Father has given me, shall I not drink it?" -this is faith at its highest and spiritual success at the crowning point. Great faith is exhibited not so much in ability to do as to suffer. --- Dr. Charles Parkhurst.
To have a sympathizing God we must have a suffering Saviour, and there is no true fellow-feeling with another save in the heart of him who has been afflicted like him.
We cannot do good to others save at a cost to ourselves, and our afflictions are the price we pay for our ability to sympathize. He who would be a helper, must first be a sufferer. He who would be a saviour must somewhere and somehow have been upon a cross; and we cannot have the highest happiness of life in succoring others without tasting the cup which Jesus drank, and submitting to the baptism wherewith He was baptized.
The most comforting of David's psalms were pressed out by suffering; and if Paul had not had his thorn in the flesh we had missed much of that tenderness which quivers in so many of his letters.
The present circumstance, which presses so hard against you (if surrendered to Christ), is the best shaped tool in the Father's hand to chisel you for eternity. Trust Him, then. Do not push away the instrument lest you lose its work.
The school of suffering graduates rare scholars.
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