On a wall in his bedroom Charles Spurgeon had a plaque with Isaiah 48:10 on it: “I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction.” “It is no mean thing to be chosen of God,” he wrote. “God’s choice makes chosen men choice men....We are chosen, not in the palace, but in the furnace. In the furnace, beauty is marred, fashion is destroyed, strength is melted, glory is consumed; yet here eternal love reveals its secrets, and declares its choice.”

Wycliffe Handbook of Preaching & Preachers, W. Wiersbe, p. 223When William Sangster was told he was dying of progressive muscular atrophy, he made four resolutions and faithfully kept them: