“I pray for you very earnestly, and I am deeply pained that you keep sucking up cares like a leech and thus rendering my prayers vain. Christ knows whether it comes from stupidity or the Spirit, but I for my part am not very much troubled about our cause. Indeed, I am more hopeful than I expected to be. God, who is able to raise the dead, is also able to uphold his cause when it is falling, or to raise it up again when it has fallen, or to move it forward when it is standing. If we are not worthy instruments to accomplish that purpose, he will find others. If we are not strengthened by his promises, where in all the world are people to whom these promises apply? But more of this another time. After all, my writing this is like pouring water into the sea.”
Martin Luther, writing to despondent Philip Melanchthon, quoted in Theodore Tappert, editor, Luther: Letters of Spiritual Counsel (London, 1955), page 147.
This post was originally published on The Gospel Coalition