If you are reviled for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. Therefore, let those also who suffer according to the will of God entrust their souls to a faithful Creator in doing what is right. The Gift Nobody Wants. I have come to see that pain and pleasure come to us not as opposites but as Siamese twins, strangely joined and intertwined. Nearly all my memories of acute happiness, in fact, involve some element of pain or struggle.
Nobody says that.
It isn't true. When Bernie May was the head of Wycliffe Bible Translators he visited a young family in a Muslim nation. They had been there three years working with a people group of 100,000 people and no knowledge of Christ. This couple had three children under five years old. The baby was covered with pox marks, some of which looked infected.