Learning from Luther
I came across this quote from the good doctor regarding the way in which conflict and suffering contribute to a greater understanding and appreciation of the Bible:

For as soon as God's Word becomes known through you, the devil will afflict you, will make a real doctor [teacher of doctrine] of you, and will teach you by his temptations to seek and to love God's Word. For I myself...owe my papists [Roman Catholic adversaries] many thanks for so beating, pressing, and frightening me through the devil's raging, that they have turned me into a fairly good theologian, driving me to a goal I should never have reached.

While I have no hope of becoming a doctor or even a good theologian, I can enthusiastically echo the sentiment. Looking back on a fairly intense struggle with aberrant teaching and practice in a group I found myself in a few years ago, I can now see a corollary benefit to that misery—a greater seeking and love (even desperation) for God's Word. It certainly improved my library, including the three volume edition of What Luther Says, where the above quotation can be found. (3:1360, Concordia, 1959).