Everything is a training exercise

Everything you go through as a Christian is a training exercise behind which God has a divine purpose. He did not save you so that you could cruise into paradise on a luxury liner; He saved you to prepare you to be of use in His kingdom. The moment you were born again, He enrolled you in His school of suffering. And every affliction, every trial, is another lesson in the curriculum. 

—David Wilkerson (May 19, 1931 – April 27, 2011, American Christian evangelist, author of The Cross and the Switchblade, founder of the addiction recovery program Teen Challenge, and founding pastor of the Times Square Church in New York City).