Late-Night-Stumblings lead to Late-Night-Thoughts

If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition
every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little
point which the world and the devil are at that moment
attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I
may be professing Christ.
Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved, and to be steady on all the battlefield besides is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point.

Martin Luther, Weimar Ausgabe Briefwechsel 3, 81f.

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Our relatedness brings us into reality, provided we are open to it. For instance, we prefer to avoid those people who annoy us, upset us, rub us the wrong way, push our buttons. Yet these are precisely the people who can help us to grow. Our reaction to them exposes the egoism we try to hide, the fear we suppress, the spite we pretend isn’t there. Let’s ask ourselves, ‘Who is the person I most hate to be around?’ We need that very person in order to be real.

Relationships show us what’s truly happening in our life, if we have the courage to face it. They reveal this separate, unreal self of ours who wants to isolate us from the rest of the human race…. If we come to church on Sunday with the notion, ‘I’m here to be alone with God, I’m here to do my private devotion,’ we’re living in a dream world. There is no such thing as a solitary Christian.

Terence Grant, The Silence of Unknowing

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Future historians--assuming there are any interested in such matters--are likely to conclude that the more we knew about Jesus the less we knew him, and the more precisely his words were translated the less we understood or heeded them.

Malcolm Muggeridge, Jesus: The Man Who Lives

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The devil, things and people being what they are, it is necessary for God to use the hammer, the file and the furnace in His holy work of preparing a saint for true sainthood. It is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until He has hurt him deeply.
A.W. Tozer, The Root of the Righteous

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There is no life without growth
There is no growth without pain