A wonderful promise for all of you wonderful ladies! [lovingsmiley]

The LORD thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing." (Zep 3:17)

"A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song."

~ Maya Angelou

"And he hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God: many shall see it, and fear, and shall trust in the LORD." (Ps 40:3)

(Hallelujah! We not only have a song, but we also have an Answer!)

"When a man gets to despair he knows that all his thinking will never get him out. He will only get out by the sheer creative effort of God. consequently he is in the right attitude to receive from God that which he cannot gain for himself."

~ Oswald Chambers

And every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented, gathered themselves unto him; and he became a captain over them: and there were with him about four hundred men. (1Sa 22:2)

"Always act like you're wearing an invisible crown."

~ Unknown

The king's daughter is all glorious within: her clothing is of wrought gold. (Psalm 45:13)

"Quite often we look but we don't see. We are all passing through this world. We need to open our eyes and see."

~ Mother Teresa

"Like the cellar-growing vine is the Christian who lives in the darkness and bondage of fear. But let him go forth, with the liberty of God, into the light of love, and he will be like the plant in the field, healthy, robust, and joyful."

~ Henry Ward Beecher

"A child of God should be a visible Beatitude, for joy and happiness, and a living Doxology, for gratitude and adoration."

~ Mr. Spurgeon

"We must learn to regard people less in light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer."

~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"Your life is short, your duties many, your assistance great, and your reward sure; therefore faint not, hold on and hold up, in ways of well-doing, and heaven shall make amends for all."

~ Thomas Brooks

“The ship of Christ’s Church never sails so well as when she is rocked from side to side by the winds of persecution and when, at every lurch, she is well-near overwhelmed! Nothing has helped God’s Church so much as persecution—she has been increased and strengthened by it.”

~ Mr. Spurgeon

"In a word, live together in the forgiveness of your sins, for without it no human fellowship, least of all a marriage, can survive. Don’t insist on your rights, don’t blame each other, don’t judge or condemn each other, don’t find fault with each other, but accept each other as you are, and forgive each other every day from the bottom of your hearts…"

~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison

"Let us not underestimate how hard it is to be compassionate. Compassion is hard because it requires the inner disposition to go with others to place where they are weak, vulnerable, lonely, and broken. But this is not our spontaneous response to suffering. What we desire most is to do away with suffering by fleeing from it or finding a quick cure for it."

~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

"It takes a man who has discovered something of the measure of his own weakness to be patient with the foibles of others. Such a man also has a firsthand knowledge of the loving care of the Chief Shepherd, and His ability to heal one who has come humbly to trust Him and Him alone. Therefore he does not easily despair of others, but looks beyond sinfulness, willfulness, and stupidity, to the might of unchanging love. The Lord Jesus does not give the charge, 'Be a shepherd to My lambs. . . to My sheep,' on hearing Peter's self-confident affirmation of undying loyalty, but He gives it after he has utterly failed to keep his vows, and has wept bitterly in the streets of Jerusalem."

~ J.C. Metcalf

"Now that I come to think of it, I remember Christian teachers telling me long ago that I must hate a bad man's actions, but not hate the bad man: or, as they would say, hate the sin but not the sinner.

For a long time I used to think this a silly, straw-splitting distinction: how could you hate what a man did and not hate the man? But years later it occurred to me that there was one man to whom I had been doing this all my life - namely myself. However much I might dislike my own cowardice or conceit or greed, I went on loving myself. There had never been the slightest difficulty about it. In fact the very reason why I hated the things was that I loved the man. Just because I loved myself, I was sorry to find that I was the sort of man who did those things."

~ C.S. Lewis

"When we pray, we put God into the work. God does not involve Himself in our activity as a matter of course or on general principle; He comes by prayer. God will be found of us in the day that we seek Him with our whole heart (Jeremiah 19:13)"

~ E.M. Bounds, Power Through Prayer

"Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes."

~ Henry David Thoreau

"If you just learn a single trick, Scout, you'll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view . . . until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”

~ Harper Lee, from To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus Finch to his daughter Scout

"A perfect summer day is when the sun is shining, the breeze is blowing, the birds are singing, and the lawn mower is broken." :mrgreen:

~ James Dent

“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."

~ William Morris (British craftsman, designer and poet, 1834-1896)

"It is wholly impossible to live according to Divine order, and to make a proper application of heavenly principles, as long as the necessary duties which each day brings seem only like a burden grievous to be borne. Not till we are ready to throw our very life’s love into the troublesome little things can we be really faithful in that which is least and faithful also in much.

Every day that dawns brings something to do, which can never be done as well again. We should, therefore, try to do it ungrudgingly and cheerfully. It is the Lord’s own work, which He has given us as surely as He gives us daily bread. We should thank Him for it with all our hearts, as much as for any other gift. It was designed to be our life, our happiness. Instead of shirking it or hurrying over it, we should put our whole heart and soul into it."

~ James Reed

"Wheresoever we be, whatsoever we are doing, in all our work, in our busy daily life, in all schemes and undertakings, in public trusts, and in private retreats, He is with us, and all we do is spread before Him. Do it, then, as to the Lord. Let the thought of His eye unseen be the motive of your acts and words. Do nothing you would not have Him see. Say nothing which you would not have said before His visible presence. This is to do all in His name."

~ Henry Edward Manning

"One of the reasons that women writing about homemaking a century ago were so self-possessed is that neither they nor their readers were conflicted about the importance of their subject. A Victorian woman’s home was her eminent domain, and she ruled over it with as much confidence as Queen Victoria ruled the world."

~ Sarah Ban Breathnach, Romancing the Ordinary: A Year of Simple Splendor

“As base a thing as money often is, yet it can be transmuted into everlasting treasure. It can be converted into food for the hungry and clothing for the poor. It can keep a missionary actively winning lost men to the light of the gospel and thus transmute itself into heavenly values. Any temporal possession can be turned into everlasting wealth. Whatever is given to Christ is immediately touched with immortality.”

~ A.W. Tozer

"Keep on going, and the chances are that you will stumble on something, perhaps when you are least expecting it. I never heard of anyone ever stumbling on something sitting down."

~ Charles F. Kettering

"When things go wrong as they sometimes will;
When the road you're trudging seems all uphill;
When the funds are low, and the debts are high
And you want to smile, but have to sigh;
When care is pressing you down a bit-
Rest if you must, but do not quit.
Success is failure turned inside out;
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt;
And you can never tell how close you are
It may be near when it seems so far;
So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit-
It's when things go wrong that you must not quit."

~ Unknown

"Be master of your petty annoyances and conserve your energies for the big, worthwhile things. It isn't the mountain ahead that wears you out - it's the grain of sand in your shoe."

~ Robert Service

"Tell God all that is in your heart, as one unloads one's heart, its pleasures and its pains, to a dear friend. Tell God your troubles, that God may comfort you; tell God your joys, that God may sober them; tell God your longings, that God may purify them; tell God your dislikes, that God may help you conquer them; talk to God of your temptations, that God may shield you from them: show God the wounds of your heart, that God may heal them. If you thus pour out all your weaknesses, needs, troubles, there will be no lack of what to say. Talk out of the abundance of the heart, without consideration say just what you think. Blessed are they who attain to such familiar, unreserved intercourse with God."

~ Francois Fenelon

"Faith goes up the stairs that love has built and looks out the windows which hope has opened."

"We cannot always trace God's hand, but we can always trust God's heart."

~ Mr. Spurgeon

"Our heart oft times wakes when we sleep, and God can speak to that, either by words, by proverbs, by signs and similitudes, as well as if one was awake."

~ John Bunyan

"That which too lightly comes may be too lightly prized. Perhaps our ungrateful spirits need tutoring to thankfulness by an education of waiting. We might not loudly sing if we did not deeply sigh. Wanting and waiting lead to panting and pleading; and these in due time lead to joying and rejoicing."

"The disciples of a patient Saviour should be patient themselves. Grin and bear it is the old-fashioned advice, but sing and bear it is a great deal better."

~ Mr. Spurgeon

"Hunger may drive the runaway child home, and he may or may not be fed at home; but he needs his mother more than his dinner. Communion with God is the one need of the soul beyond all other need: prayer is the beginning of that communion, and some need is the motive of that prayer...So begins a communion, a talking with God, a coming-to-one with Him, which is the sole end of prayer, yea, of existence itself in its infinite phases. We must ask that we may receive; but that we should receive what we ask in respect of our lower needs, is not God's end in making us pray, for He could give us everything without that: to bring His child to His knee, God withholds that man may ask."

~ George Macdonald

Madre, these last few quotes have spoken to my heart so precisely. Thanks...:mrgreen:

You're welcome, Gen! [heart]

"No soul can be really at rest until it has given up all dependence on everything else and has been forced to depend on the Lord alone. As long as our expectation is from other things, nothing but disappointment awaits us. Feelings may change, and will change with our changing circumstances; doctrines and dogmas may be upset; Christian work may come to naught; prayers may seem to lose their fervency; promises may seem to fail; everything that we have believed in or depended upon may seem to be swept away, and only God is left, just God, the bare God, if I may be allowed the expression; simply and only God."

~ Hannah Whitall Smith

We turn at once, with great pleasure, to the wonderful words of our text, "He hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee." I have no doubt you are aware that our translation does not convey the whole force of the original, and that it would hardly be possible in English to give the full weight of the Greek. We might render it, "He hath said, I will never, never leave thee; I will never, never, never forsake thee;" for, though that would be not a literal, but rather a free rendering, yet, as there are five negatives in the Greek, we do not know how to give their force in any other way. Two negatives nullify each other in our language; but here, in the Greek, they intensify the meaning following one after another, as I suppose David's five stones out of the brook would have done if the first had not been enough to make the giant reel. The verse we sung just now is a very good rendering of the original—

"'The soul that on Jesus hath lean'd for repose,
I will not, I will not desert to his foes;
That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake,
I'll never, no never, no never forsake."

Here you have the five negatives very well placed, and the force of the Greek, as nearly as possible, given.

~ Mr. Spurgeon, from a sermon delivered on Sunday morning, October 26, 1862 at the Metropolitan Temple, Newington

“It seems to be to be one of the peculiar gifts of the Christian Sisterhood to be the means of holding the entire fabric of the Christian Church in sacred love! And though in our belief they ought not to do this by public speech, yet by quiet conversation, active sympathy and the patient endurance and holy tenacity of affection, they may help to keep the Church well bolted together… Happy is the Church that abounds in Christian matrons and younger women willing to be serviceable for Christ!”
~ Mr. Spurgeon, Volume 59, Sermon #3365

"Always take for yourself the lowest place, and you shall be awarded the highest; for the highest cannot stand without the lowest. The Christians stand highest in God's eyes who are lowest in their own; and the more glorious they are, the more humble is their spirit.

Filled with truth and heavenly glory, they have no desire for vain glory. Grounded and established in God, they cannot be proud. They ascribe all goodness to God; they seek no glory from one another, but the glory which comes from God alone. They desire above all things, and strive always, that God be praised in themselves and in all His children.

Be thankful for the smallest blessing, and you will receive greater. Value the least gifts no less than the greatest, and simple graces as special favors. if you remember the character of the Giver, no gift will seem small or meaningless, for nothing can be valueless that is given by the most high God.

~ Thomas A Kempis

"Charity looks at the need and not at the cause."

~ German Proverb

"Everyday courage has few witnesses. But yours is no less noble because no drum beats for you and no crowds shout your name."

~ Robert Louis Stevenson

I read this this morning and hope it blesses:


John Claypool, a prominent Episcopal pastor, used to call his congregation constantly to gratitude. Then his ten-year-old daughter died of leukemia. He wrote about his grief in a wonderful book called Tracks of a Fellow Struggler. The book portrays the depths of John's heartbreaking grief, but it also depicts his own difficult choice to be grateful.

"At least it makes things bearable when I remember that Laura Lou was a gift, pure and simple, something I neither earned, or deserved, nor had a right to. And when I remember that the appropriate response to a gift, even when it is taken away, is gratitude, then I am better able to try and thank God that I was given her in the first place. . .The way of gratitude does not alleviate pain, but it somehow puts some light around the darkness, and builds strength to begin to move on."


~ M. Craig Barnes, from Sacred Thirst

"My father's favorite story was of a Buddhist monk who had only one possession in life, his wooden bowl. The monk went from door to door and begged for pennies to put into his bowl. Then he bought rice with those pennies which he ate from the bowl with his fingers. Next he washed the bowl, and filled it with water to drink. One day our monk was at the stream washing his only possession when it slipped from his hands. It fell on a rock and broke apart. he looked down at the broken bowl in astonishment. Then he looked up at heaven and said, 'Free at last!'" :mrgreen:

~ Laura Lee, from Broke is Beautiful, Living and Loving the Cash-Strapped Life

The most pleasant and useful persons are those who leave some of the problems of the universe for God to worry about." :)

~ Don Marquis

"Revival is waiting for us on the streets. It is hiding from us in nursing homes and prisons. It is calling to us from foreign fields and obscure places. Crying, yearning for even one person that will rise from the confines of normality and pursue it. One person that will approach the throne of grace with boldness and expect a miracle. That will stand on a street corner and wait for its shadow to pass by. Knowing that at any minute the wind that blows where it listeth may touch down in that very spot. Exploding, expanding everything that it touches. revival is a fire. And souls are its kindling."

~ Chad Taylor

This may be a repeat, but I really like the "unlearn" thought. :-D

"It is not true to say that God wants to teach us something in our trials: through every cloud He brings, He wants us to unlearn something. His purpose in the cloud is to simplify our belief until our relationship to Him is exactly that of a child - God and my own soul, other people are shadows. Until other people become shadows, clouds and darkness will be mine every now and again. Is the relationship between myself and God getting simpler than ever it has been?"

~ Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest

"One evening I was meeting with an underground house church overseas, and we were discussing various issues in Scripture. A woman who lived in the city and knew some English shared. 'I have a television, and every once in a while I am able to get stations from the United States,' she said. 'Some of these stations have church services on them. I see the preachers, and they are dressed in very nice clothes, and they are preaching in very nice buildings. Some of them even tell me that if I have faith, I too can have nice things.'

She paused before continuing. 'When I come to our church meetings, I look around and most of us are very poor, and we are meeting here at great risk to our lives.' Then she looked at me and asked, 'Does this mean we do not have enough faith?'"

~ David Platt, from Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream

"If I, a poor man, simply by prayer and faith, obtained without asking any individual, the means for establishing and carrying on an Orphan-House, there would be something which, with the Lord's blessing, might be instrumental in strengthening the faith of the children of God, besides being a testimony to the consciences of the unconverted, of the reality of the things of God. This, then, was the primary reason for establishing the Orphan-House....The first and primary object of the work was (and still is: ) that God might be magnified by the fact, that the orphans under my care are provided with all they need, only by prayer and faith without anyone being asked by me or my fellow-laborers whereby it may be seen, that God is faithful still, and hears prayer still."

~ George Muller, from Answers to Prayer

"It does people good to be told how highly we value them. There is many a Christian man and woman who would do better if now and then someone would speak a kindly word to them, and let them know that they had done well."

~ Mr. Spurgeon

"Get into the habit of dealing with God about everything. Unless in the first waking moment of the day you learn to fling the door wide back and let God in, you will work on a wrong level all day; but swing the door wide open and pray to your Father in secret, and every public thing will be stamped with the presence of God."

~ Mr. Chambers

"I'm not sure God wants us to be happy. I think he wants us to love, and be loved. But we are like children, thinking our toys will make us happy and the whole world is our nursery. Something must drive us out of that nursery and into the lives of others, and that something is suffering."

~ C. S. Lewis

"After victory, tighten your helmet chord."

~ Japanese Proverb

“You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.”

~ Dale Carnegie

"There is always the temptation in life to diddle around making itsy-bitsy friends and meals and journeys for years on end. It is all so self conscience, so apparently moral...But I won't have it. The world is wilder than that in all directions, more dangerous...more extravagant and bright. We are...raising tomatoes when we should be raising Cain, or Lazarus."

~ Annie Dillard

"You can avoid having ulcers by adapting to the situation: If you fall in the mud puddle, check your pockets for fish."

~ Author Unknown

"Maturity does not automatically come with the passage of years. Some of the people we work with may be spiritually much younger than their chronological age. A prayer I pray often is: 'Lord, let me grow up, before I grow old.'"

~ John Wimber

"Leave the broken, irreversible past in God's hands, and step out into the invincible future with Him."

"I have to get to the point of the absolute and unquestionable relationship that takes everything exactly as it comes from Him. God never guides us at some time in the future, but always here and now. Realize that the Lord is here now, and the freedom you receive is immediate."

~ Oswald Chambers

"One of the good things that come of a true marriage is, that there is one face on which changes come without your seeing them; or rather there is one face which you can still see the same, through all the shadows which years have gathered upon it."

~ George MacDonald

"We regard God as an airman regards his parachute; it's there for emergencies but he hopes he'll never have to use it."

"[God] is not proud...He will have us even though we have shown that we prefer everything else to Him."

~ C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

"Make it a practice to judge persons and things in the most favorable light at all times and under all circumstances."

~ Vincent de Paul

"How often the intents of the heart are utterly pure and yet the thoughts in the head are confused."

~ Watchman Nee

"Look at God’s incredible waste of His saints, according to the world’s judgment. God seems to plant His saints in the most useless places. And then we say, 'God intends for me to be here because I am so useful to Him.' Yet Jesus never measured His life by how or where He was of the greatest use. God places His saints where they will bring the most glory to Him, and we are totally incapable of judging where that may be."

~ Oswald Chambers

"Poverty often deprives a man of all spirit and virtue; it is hard for an empty bag to stand upright."

~ Benjamin Franklin

"What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like."

~ Augustine

I think I posted this last year, but it bears repeating. :-D

Somehow, Not Only for Christmas

Somehow, not only for Christmas,
But all the long year through,
The joy that you give to others,
Is the joy that comes back to you.
And the more you spend in blessing,
The poor and lonely and sad,
The more of your heart's possessing,
Returns to you glad.

~ John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892)

"So long as we imagine that it is we who have to look for God, we must often lose heart. But it is the other way about; He is looking for us. And so we can afford to recognize that very often we are not looking for God; far from it, we are in full flight from him, in high rebellion against him. And He knows that and has taken it into account. He has followed us into our own darkness; there where we thought finally to escape him, we run straight into his arms. So we do not have to erect a false piety for ourselves, to give us the hope of salvation. Our hope is in his determination to save us, and he will not give in."

~ Simon Tugwell

"I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round, as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys."

~ Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

"Sometimes you need to hang on to someone else's hope, someone else's peace and sanity while yours is under siege. Do it. Courage, hope, faith, sanity, peace...they all come and go. Borrow them from someone else's supply until your own comes back in."

~ Linda Mundy

"O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie!
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by.
Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting Light;
The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight."

~ Phillips Brooks

Christmas Poem

There fared a mother driven forth
Out of an inn to roam;
In the place where she was homeless
All men are at home.
The crazy stable close at hand,
With shaking timber and shifting sand,
Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand
Than the square stones of Rome.

For men are homesick in their homes,
And strangers under the sun,
And they lay their heads in a foreign land
Whenever the day is done.

Here we have battle and blazing eyes,
And chance and honour and high surprise,
But our homes are under miraculous skies
Where the yule tale was begun.

A child in a foul stable,
Where the beasts feed and foam;
Only where He was homeless
Are you and I at home;
We have hands that fashion and heads that know,
But our hearts we lost---how long ago!
In a place no chart nor ship can show
Under the sky's dome.

This world is wild as an old wife's tale,
And strange the plain things are,
The earth is enough and the air is enough
For our wonder and our war;
But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings
And our peace is put in impossible things
Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings
Round an incredible star.

To an open house in the evening
Home shall all men come,
To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the wandering star,
To the things that cannot be and that are,
To the place where God was homeless
And all men are at home.

~ G. K. Chesterton

"Life's a voyage that's homeward bound."

~ Herman Melville

"Why do you want a letter from me? Why don't you take the trouble to find out for yourselves what Christianity is? You take time to learn technical terms about electricity. Why don't you do as much for theology? Why do you never read the great writings on the subject, but take your information from the secular 'experts' who have picked it up as inaccurately as you? Why don't you learn the facts in this field as honestly as your own field? Why do you accept mildewed old heresies as the language of the church, when any handbook on church history will tell you where they came from?

Why do you balk at the doctrine of the Trinity - God the three in One - yet meekly acquiesce when Einstein tells you E=mc2? What makes you suppose that the expression "God ordains" is narrow and bigoted, while your own expression, "Science demands" is taken as an objective statement of fact?

You would be ashamed to know as little about internal combustion as you know about Christian beliefs.

I admit, you can practice Christianity without knowing much theology, just as you can drive a car without knowing much about internal combustion. But when something breaks down in the car, you go humbly to the man who understands the works; whereas if something goes wrong with religion, you merely throw the works away and tell the theologian he is a liar.

Why do you want a letter from me telling you about God? You will never bother to check on it or find out whether I'm giving you personal opinions or Christian doctrines. Don't bother. Go away and do some work and let me get on with mine."

~ Dorothy L. Sayers

"Customs are generally unselfish. Habits are nearly always selfish."

~ G. K. Chesterton

The Holy Night

We sate among the stalls at Bethlehem;
The dumb kine from their fodder turning them,
Softened their horned faces
To almost human gazes
Toward the newly Born:
The simple shepherds from the star-lit brooks
Brought their visionary looks,
As yet in their astonied hearing rung
The strange sweet angel-tonge:
The magi of the East, in sandals worn,
Knelt reverent, sweeping round,
With long pale beards, their gifts upon the ground,
The incense, myrrh, and gold
These baby hands were impotent to hold:
So let all earthlies and celestials wait
Upon thy royal state.
Sleep, sleep, my kingly One!

~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning

"Don't you like a rather foggy day in a wood in autumn? You'll find we shall be perfectly warm sitting in the car."

Jane said she'd never heard of anyone liking fogs before but she didn't mind trying. All three got in.

"That's why Camilla and I got married, "said Denniston as they drove off. "We both like Weather. Not this or that kind of weather, but just Weather. It's a useful taste if one lives in England."

"How ever did you learn to do that, Mr. Denniston?" said Jane. "I don't think I should ever learn to like rain and snow."

"It's the other way round," said Denniston. "Everyone begins as a child by liking Weather. You learn the art of disliking it as you grow up. Noticed it on a snowy day? The grown-ups are all going about with long faces, but look at the children - and the dogs? They know what snow's made for."

"I'm sure I hated wet days as a child," said Jane.

"That's because the grown-ups kept you in," said Camilla. "Any child loves rain if it's allowed to go out and paddle about in it."


~ C. S. Lewis, from That Hideous Strength

His thoughts said, What if I have not much time to gather my portion?

His Father said, Hast thou only one minute? Hem it with quietness. Do not spend it in thinking how little time thou hast. I can give thee much in one minute.

Then the son remembered the Jewish tradition about the manna and the dew. The manna fell on the dew, they said, then more dew fell on the manna so that it was found between two layers of dew. And he thought of the quietness of dew and how far it was removed from bustle of an kind. And he understood the word that his Father had spoken to him.


~ Amy Carmichael, from His Thoughts Said, His Father Said

"She was the sort of person who lived for others. You could tell the others by their hunted expression." ;)

~ C. S. Lewis

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."

~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

"New Year's eve is like every other night; there is no pause in the march of the universe, no breathless moment of silence among created things that the passage of another twelve months may be noted; and yet no man has quite the same thoughts this evening that come with the coming of darkness on other nights."

~ Hamilton Wright Mabie

"Every man should be born again on the first day of January. Start with a fresh page. Take up one hole more in the buckle if necessary, or let down one, according to circumstances; but on the first of January let every man gird himself once more, with his face to the front, and take no interest in the things that were and are past."

~Henry Ward Beecher

"Daring to do what is right, not what fancy may tell you,
Valiantly grasping occasions and not cravenly doubting—
Freedom comes only through deeds, not through thoughts taking wing.
Faint not nor fear, but go out to the storm and the action, trusting in God whose commandment you faithfully follow;
Freedom, exultant, will welcome your spirit with joy."

~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Stages on the Road to Freedom)
(http://festivals.iloveindia.com/new-year/christian-quotes.html#)

"A good marriage is where both people feel like they're getting the better end of the deal."

~ Anne Lamott

"If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant's life, she will choose to save the infant's life without even considering if there are men on base."

~ Dave Barry

"Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four hours sharpening the axe."

~ Abraham Lincoln

"Anyone who ever gave you confidence, you owe them a lot."

~ Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany's, spoken by the character Holly Golightly

"Stop trying to protect, to rescue, to judge, to manage the lives around you . . . remember that the lives of others are not your business. They are their business. They are God’s business . . . even your own life is not your business. It also is God’s business. Leave it to God. It is an astonishing thought. It can become a life-transforming thought . . . unclench the fists of your spirit and take it easy . . . What deadens us most to God’s presence within us, I think, is the inner dialogue that we are continuously engaged in with ourselves, the endless chatter of human thought. I suspect that there is nothing more crucial to true spiritual comfort . . . than being able from time to time to stop that chatter . . . "

~ Frederick Buechner, Telling Secrets

And on the other hand...

"We lie in our beds in the dark. There is a picture of the children on the bureau. A patch of moonlight catches our clothes thrown over the back of a chair. We can hear the faint rumble of the furnace in the cellar. We are surrounded by the reassurance of the familiar. When the weather is bad, we have shelter. When things are bad in our lives, we have a place where we can retreat to lick our wounds while tens of thousands of people, many of them children, wander the dark streets in search of some corner to lie down in out of the wind.

Yet we are homeless even so in the sense of having homes but not being really at home in them. To be really at home is to be really at peace, and there can be no real peace for any of us until there is some measure of real peace for all of us. When we close our eyes to the deep needs of other people, whether they live on the streets or under our own roof--and when we close our eyes to our own deep need to reach out to them--we can never be fully at home anywhere."

~ Frederick Buechner, Beyond Words

"We ought to give thanks for all fortune: if it is good, because it is good, if bad, because it works in us patience, humility and the contempt of this world and the hope of our eternal country."

~ C.S. Lewis

"Since God offers to manage our affairs for us, let us once and for all hand them over to His infinite wisdom, in order to occupy ourselves only with Himself and what belongs to Him."

~ J.P. de Caussade (1675-1751)

"Since you cannot do good to all, you are to pay special attention to those who, by accidents of time, or place, or circumstance, are brought into closer connection with you."

"What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like."

~ Augustine of Hippo

"Outcomes rarely turn on grand gestures or the art of the deal, but on whether you've sent someone a thank-you note."

~ Bernie Brillstein, The Little Stuff Matters Most

"Many who would not take the last cookie would take the last lifeboat."

~ Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook

[heart] [heart] [heart] When I'm 64 [heart] [heart] [heart]

When I get older, losing my hair, many years from now
Will you still be sending me a valentine, birthday greetings, bottle of wine?
If I'd been out 'til quarter to three, would you lock the door?
Will you still need me, will you still feed me when I'm sixty-four?

You'll be older too
Ah, and if you say the word, I could stay with you

I could be handy, mending a fuse when your lights have gone
You can knit a sweater by the fireside, Sunday mornings, go for a ride
Doing the garden, digging the weeds, who could ask for more?
Will you still need me, will you still feed me when I'm sixty-four?

Every summer we can rent a cottage
In the Isle of Wight if it's not to, dear
We shall scrimp and save
Ah, grandchildren on your knee, Vera, Chuck and Dave

Send me a postcard, drop me a line stating point of view
Indicate precisely what you mean to say, yours sincerely wasting away
Give me your answer, fill in a form, mine forever more
Will you still need me, will you still feed me when I'm sixty-four?

~ Paul McCartney, John Lennon

"If I could relive my life, I would devote my entire ministry to reaching children for God!"

~ Dwight L. Moody

"What would men be without women? Scarce, sir...mighty scarce." :mrgreen:

~ Mark Twain

"The Giver"

To give a thing and take again
Is counted meanness among men;
To take away what once is given
Cannot then be the way of heaven!

But human hearts are crumbly stuff,
And never, never love enough,
Therefore God takes and, with a smile,
Puts our best thing away a while.

Thereon some weep, some rave, some scorn,
Some wish they never had been born;
Some humble grow at last and still,
And then God gives them what they will.

~ George Mac Donald, Poetical Works, Vol. 2

"Run, faithful souls, happy and tireless, keep up with your Beloved who marches with giant strides from one end of heaven to the other. Nothing is hidden from His eyes. He walks alike over the smallest blade of grass, the tallest cedars, grains of sand or rocky mountains. Where you go, He has gone before. Only follow Him and you will find Him everywhere."

~ Jean-Pierre de Caussade

"The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of confusion or despair, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing... not healing... not curing... that is a friend indeed."

~ Henri Nouwen

"Every man over forty is responsible for his face."

~ Abraham Lincoln

"Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity, or power, but self-rejection. Success, popularity, and power can indeed present a great temptation, but their seductive quality often comes from the way they are part of the much larger temptation to self-rejection. When we have come to believe in the voices that call us worthless and unlovable, then success, popularity, and power are easily perceived as attractive solutions.

The real trap, however, is self-rejection. As soon as someone accuses me or criticizes me, as soon as I am rejected, left alone, or abandoned, I find myself thinking, "Well, that proves once again that I am a nobody." ... [My dark side says,] I am no good... I deserve to be pushed aside, forgotten, rejected, and abandoned. Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the "Beloved." Being the Beloved constitutes the core truth of our existence."

~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

"He does not regard the quantity of faith, but the quality. He does not measure its degree, but its truth. He will not break any bruised reed, nor quench any smoking flax. He will never let it be said that any perished at the foot of the cross."

~ J.C. Ryle

"Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods."

~ C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

"My feelings are not God. God is God. My feelings do not define truth. God’s word defines truth. My feelings are echoes and responses to what my mind perceives. And sometimes - many times - my feelings are out of sync with the truth. When that happens - and it happens every day in some measure - I try not to bend the truth to justify my imperfect feelings, but rather, I plead with God: Purify my perceptions of your truth and transform my feelings so that they are in sync with the truth."

~ John Piper, Finally Alive

"The supreme test of our confidence in God lies, perhaps, in those moments of complete inner darkness in which we feel as though we are forsaken by God. Our heart feels blunt; our prayers for strength and inspiration sound hollow.... An inpenetrable wall separates us from God.... An ardent belief in His love; a steadfast conviction that He is near to us even though we are, or imagine ourselves to be, far away from Him; an unbroken awareness that "He hath first loved us." ... These must carry us across the chasms of darkness and lend us strength to blindly let ourselves fall into His arms."

~ Dietrich Von Hildebrand, Transformation in Christ

"One of the mightiest men of prayer of the last generation was George Mueller of Bristol, England, who in the last sixty years of his life (he lived to be ninety-two or ninety-three) obtained the English equivalent of $7,200,000.00 by prayer. But George Mueller never prayed for a thing just because he wanted it, or even just because he felt it was greatly needed for God's work. When it was laid upon George Mueller's heart to pray for anything, he would search the Scriptures to find if there was some promise that covered the case. Sometimes he would search the scriptures for days before he presented his petition to God. And then when he found the promise, with his open Bible before him, and his finger upon that promise, he would plead that promise, and so he received what he asked. He always prayed with an open Bible before him."

~ R. A. Torrey on George Müller; The Power of Prayer, 1924 (P. 81)

On thinking the best:

"We must be as courteous to a man as we are to a picture, which we are willing to give the advantage of a good light."

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

"One of the illusions of life is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive hour. Write it on your hear that every day is the best day of the year."

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The author who benefits you most is not the one who tells you something you did not know before, but the one who gives expression to the truth that has been dumbly struggling in you for utterance."

~ Oswald Chambers

"Folded in thy calm, I shall love, and not die. And ye, women, be the daughters of Him from whose heart came your mothers; be the saviors of men, and neither their torment nor their prey!"

~ George Mac Donald, Paul Faber, Surgeon

"The demand for mercy is far from being for the sake only of the man who needs his neighbour's mercy; it is greatly more for the sake of the man who must show the mercy. It is a small thing to a man whether or not his neighbour be merciful to him; it is life or death to him whether or not he be merciful to his neighbour. . . The reward of the merciful is, that by their mercy they are rendered capable of receiving the mercy of God --- yea God himself, who is Mercy."

~ George Mac Donald, The Hope of the Gospel

"To trust in spite of the look of being forgotten; to keep crying out into the vast whence comes no voice, and where seems no hearing; to struggle after light, where is no glimmer to guide in the direction of it; at every turn to find a doorless wall, yet ever seek a door; to stare at the machinery of the world pauseless grinding on as if self-moved, caring for no life, shifting no hair's breadth for all the entreaty, and yet believe that God is awake and utterly loving; to desire nothing but what comes meant for us from his hand; to wait patiently, willing to die of hunger, fearing only lest faith should fail --- such is the victory that overcomes the world; such is very faith."

~ George Mac Donald, Castle Warlock

For the dog lovers among us. :mrgreen:

"Dogs feel very strongly that they should always go with you in the car, in case the need should arise for them to bark violently at nothing right in your ear."

"You can say any fool thing to a dog and the dog will just give you this look that says, 'My GOSH, you're RIGHT! I NEVER would've thought of that!"

~ Dave Barry

"Our vision is so limited we can hardly imagine a love that does not show itself in protection from suffering.... The love of God did not protect His own Son.... He will not necessarily protect us - not from anything it takes to make us like His Son. A lot of hammering and chiseling and purifying by fire will have to go into the process."

~ Elisabeth Elliot

"I am inwardly fashioned for faith, not for fear. Fear is not my native land; faith is. I am so made that worry and anxiety are sand in the machinery of life; faith is the oil. I live better by faith and confidence than by fear, doubt and anxiety. In anxiety and worry, my being is gasping for breath - these are not my native air. But in faith and confidence, I breathe freely - these are my native air. A John Hopkins University doctor says, "We do not know why it is that worriers die sooner than the non-worriers, but that is a fact." But I, who am simple of mind, think I know; We are inwardly constructed in nerve and tissue, brain cell and soul, for faith and not for fear. God made us that way. To live by worry is to live against reality."

~ Eli E. Stanley Jones

"We hear a great deal about the rudeness of the rising generation. I am an oldster myself and might be expected to take the oldsters' side, but in fact I have been far more impressed by the bad manners of parents to children than by those of children to parents. Who has not been the embarrassed guest at family meals where the father or mother treated their grown-up offspring with an incivility which, offered to any other young people, would simply have terminated the acquaintance? Dogmatic assertions on matters which the children understand and their elders don't, ruthless interruptions, flat contradictions, ridicule of things the young take seriously sometimes of their religion insulting references to their friends, all provide an easy answer to the question "Why are they always out? Why do they like every house better than their home?" Who does not prefer civility to barbarism?"

~ C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves

"I find that many Christians are in trouble about the future; they think they will not have grace enough to die by. It is much more important that we should have grace enough to live by. It seems to me that death is of very little importance in the meantime. When the dying hour comes, there will be dying grace; but you do not require dying grace to live by."

~ D. L. Moody

"Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that God exists."

~ Blaise Pascal, Pascal's Wager

"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."

~ Mark Twain

You're Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile

:mrgreen: :-D [girlie] :) [grandma] 8) [girlprincess] [cheerful] [lovesmile]

This is Bert Healy saying ...
Hey, hobo man
Hey, Dapper Dan
You've both got your style
But Brother,
You're never fully dressed
Without a smile!

Your clothes may be Beau Brummelly
They stand out a mile --
But Brother,
You're never fully dressed
Without a smile!

Who cares what they're wearing
From Main Street,
to Saville Row,
It's what you wear from ear to ear
And not from head to toe
(That matters)

So, Senator,
So, Janitor,
So long for a while
Remember,
You're never fully dressed
Without a smile!

~ Martin Charnin and Charles Strouse, from Annie

"Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin."

~ Mother Teresa

"We change our behavior when the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of changing. Consequences give us the pain that motivates us to change."

~ Henry Cloud

Instead of complaining at his lot, a contented man is thankful that his condition and circumstances are no worse than they are. Instead of greedily desiring something more than the supply of his present need, he rejoices that God still cares for him. Such an one is "content" with such as he has (Heb. 13:5).

~ Arthur W. Pink


True contentment is the power of getting out of any situation all that there is in it.

~ G.K. Chesterton

"When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us."

~ Helen Keller

"No longer forward nor behind
I look in hope and fear;
But grateful take the good I find,
The best of now and here."

~ John Greenleaf Whittier

"You don't always have to chop with the sword of truth. You can point with it too."

~ Anne Lamott

I don't preach a social gospel; I preach the Gospel, period. The gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is concerned for the whole person. When people were hungry, Jesus didn't say, 'Now is that political or social?' He said, 'I feed you.' Because the good news to a hungry person is bread.'

~ Bishop Desmond Tutu

"But what is the use of preaching the Gospel to men whose whole attention is concentrated upon a mad, desperate struggle to keep themselves alive?"

~ Gen. William Booth

"God does nothing that is not redemptive or apart from the context of the fact that He is love."

~ Michael Wells

"On that last day I met C.S. Lewis at the Eastgate for lunch. We talked, I recall, about death or, rather, awakening after death. Whatever it would be like, we thought, our response to it would be, 'Why, of course! Of course it’s like this. How else could it have possibly been.' We both chuckled at that. I said it would be a sort of coming home, and he agreed. Lewis said that he hoped Davy and I would be coming back to England soon, for we mustn’t get out of touch. 'At all events,' he said with a cheerful grin, 'we’ll certainly meet again, here–or there.' Then it was time to go, and we drained our mugs. When we emerged onto on to the busy High with the traffic streaming past, we shook hands, and he said: 'I shan’t say good-bye. We’ll meet again.' Then he plunged into the traffic. I stood there watching him. When he reached the pavement on the other side, he turned around as though he knew somehow that I would still be standing there in front of the Eastgate. Then he raised his voice in a great roar that easily overcame the noise of the cars and buses. Heads turned and at least one car swerved, “Besides,” he bellowed with a great grin, 'Christians NEVER say goodbye!'"

~ Sheldon Vanauken, A Severe Mercy

Thanks, Ash! [hug]

"It is no use to grumble and complain;
It's just as cheap and easy to rejoice;
When God sorts out the weather and sends rain -
Why, rain's my choice."

~ James Whitcomb Riley

"The man who has no inner life is a slave to his surroundings."

~ Henri Frédéric Amiel

"We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."

~ Viktor Emil Frankl

"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root."

~ Henry David Thoreau

"Never worry about numbers. Help one person at a time, and always start with the person nearest you."

~ Mother Teresa

"Show me the man who is tender, reverential, gracious towards the children of other men, and I will show you the man who will love and tend his own best, to whose heart his own will flee for their first refuge after God, when they catch sight of the cloud in the wind."

~ George Mac Donald, from The Seaboard Parish

"'But are we not to serve him with our best?' said my wife.

'Yes, with our very hearts and souls, with our wills, with our absolute being. But all external things should be in harmony with the spirit of his revelation. And if God chose that his Son should visit the earth in homely fashion, in homely fashion likewise should be everything that enforces and commemorates that revelation. All church-forms should be on the other side from show and expense. Let the money go to build decent houses for God's poor, not to give them his holy bread and wine out of silver and gold and precious stones--stealing from the significance of the content by the meretricious grandeur of the continent. I would send all the church-plate to fight the devil with his own weapons in our overcrowded cities, and in our villages where the husbandmen are housed like swine, by giving them room to be clean and decent air from heaven to breathe. When the people find the clergy thus in earnest, they will follow them fast enough, and the money will come in like salt and oil upon the sacrifice. I would there were a few of our dignitaries that could think grandly about things, even as Jesus thought--even as God thought when he sent him. There are many of them willing to stand any amount of persecution about trifles: the same enthusiasm directed by high thoughts about the kingdom of heaven as within men and not around them, would redeem a vast region from that indifference which comes of judging the gospel of God by the church of Christ with its phylacteries and hems.'"

~ George Mac Donald

For the fathers (dads, husbands, brothers, sons...):

"He didn't tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it."

~ Clarence Budington Kelland

"A child kicks its legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, Do it again; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough... It is possible that God says every morning, Do it again, to the sun; and every evening, Do it again, to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike: it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we."

~ Gilbert Keith G. K. Chesterton

"You are confronted again and again with the choice of letting God speak or letting your wounded self cry out. Although there has to be a place where you can allow your wounded part to get the attention it needs, your vocation is to speak from the place in you where God dwells."

~ Henri J. M. Nouwen

"You cannot choose your battlefield
God does that for you;
But you can plant a standard
Where a standard never flew."

~Nathalia Crane

"'Being "contented' ought to mean in English, as it does in French, being pleased. Being content with an attic ought not to mean being unable to move from it and resigned to living in it; it ought to mean appreciating all there is in such a position."

~ G.K. Chesterton

"People from other parts of the world are often struck by Americans' seemingly unbounded willingness to take a chance on others. This is a defining American trait, just like the belief in freedom and in the rights of the individual. What is America if not the place where people can expect to be given a chance, where they are given the benefit of the doubt when they come under suspicion and a second chance after a fall? These are all forms of thinking the best of others. As a European who has lived in the United States for a long time, I continue to marvel at this mixture of idealism and radical fairness in the American soul."

~ P.M. Forni, from Choosing Civility

"Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savour to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back - in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you."

~ Frederick Buechner

"The homemaker has the ultimate career. All other careers exist for one purpose only - and that is to support the ultimate career. "

~ C. S. Lewis

"If I belittle those whom I am called to serve, talk of their weak points in contrast perhaps with what I think of as my strong points; if I adopt a superior attitude, forgetting 'Who made thee to differ? and what hast thou that thou hast not received?' then I know nothing of Calvary love."

~ Amy Carmichael

"The habit of judging is so nearly incurable, and its cure is such an almost interminable process, that we must concentrate ourselves for a long while on keeping it in check, and this check is to be found in kind interpretations. We must come to esteem very lightly our sharp eye for evil, on which perhaps we once prided ourselves as cleverness. We must look at our talent for analysis of character as a dreadful possibility of huge uncharitableness. We are sure to continue to say clever things, so long as we continue to indulge in this analysis; and clever things are equally sure to be sharp and acid. We must grow to something higher, and something truer, than a quickness in detecting evil."

~ Frederick W. Faber

"Do we not sometimes feel, in trial or perplexity, that others might help us if they would only stop and listen? But they will not, and in their constant hurry we know it is little use to speak. Let us note the lesson for ourselves, and give what we ask - leisure to hear, attentive, concentrated, not divided - calm, patient consideration.

It may be our busy work, as we think, for the Master, which so overcrowds our lives that we have not time for this 'standing still.' Sad eyes meet ours, but we cannot stay to read their story. Some look to us for help in battles which we fought long ago, but we cannot turn aside to see how it fares with them in the strife, or to whisper the secret of victory. But He would have said, even though some plans of our own for His service were put aside, 'Ye have done it unto Me.'"

~ H. Bowman

"It takes much bravery to stand up to our enemies but we need as much bravery to stand up to our friends."

~ J.K. Rowling, from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

"Humble yourself and cease to care what men think. A meek man is not a human mouse afflicted with a sense of his own inferiority. Rather,... he has stopped being fooled about himself. He knows well that the world will never see him as God sees him and he has stopped caring. He has obtained a place of soul rest. The old struggle to defend himself is over."

~ A. W. Tozer

"I think God has planned the strength and beauty of youth to be physical. But the strength and beauty of old age is spiritual. We gradually lose the strength and beauty that is temporary so we'll be sure to concentrate on the strength and beauty that is forever. And so we'll be eager to leave the temporary, deteriorating part of us and be truly homesick for our eternal home. If we stayed young and strong and beautiful, we might never want to leave."

~ J. Robertson McQuilkin

"Seeing God as parent may seem childish. But might there be, in the unadmitted sparkle of the child within you, a sometime longing to climb into God's fatherly lap, ...to nestle against God's breast, to rest for a moment in the shadow of God's wings or be held in God's strong and tender arms? If you could allow yourself to feel it, are there not times when you would love to cry on God's shoulder, to let God tell you you are worthwhile and beautiful? And is there not something in you that would be delighted if you could bring a smile to God's face?"

~ Gerald May

"Tell me how it is that in this room there are three candles and but one light, and I will explain to you the mode of the divine existence."

~ John Wesley

"The harmlessness of the dove consists in not judging another; the wisdom of the serpent in distrusting ourselves."

~ Madame Guyon

"The most dangerous leap is the leap to conclusions."

~ Woodrow Kroll

"Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart."

~ Corrie Ten Boom

"How often we thwart God's intervention on our behalf by taking up our own cause or by striking a blow in our own defense!"

~ L. B. Cowman, from Streams in the Desert

"I have to get to the point of the absolute and unquestionable relationship that takes everything exactly as it comes from Him. God never guides us at some time in the future, but always here and now. Realize that the Lord is here now, and the freedom you receive is immediate."

~ Oswald Chambers

This may be a repeat, but it's worth repeating. :)

"God trains His soldiers, not in tents of ease and luxury, but by turning them out and using them to forced marches and hard service. He makes them ford through streams, and swim through rivers and climb mountains, and walk many a weary mile with heavy knapsacks on their backs. Well, Christian, may not this account for the troubles through which you are passing? Is not this the reason why He is contending with you."

~ Mr. Spurgeon

"This is to behold God in faith, that you should look upon His fatherly, friendly heart, in which there is no anger or ungraciousness." [heartbeat]

~ Martin Luther

"For mere improvement is not redemption, though redemption always improves people even here and now and will, in the end, improve them to a degree we cannot yet imagine. God became man to turn creatures into sons: not simply to produce better men of the old kind but to produce a new kind of man. It is not like teaching a horse to jump better and better but like turning a horse into a winged creature. Of course, once it has got its wings, it will soar over fences which could never have been jumped and thus beat the natural horse at its own game. But there may be a period, while the wings are just beginning to grow, when it cannot do so: and at that stage the lumps on the shoulders - no one could tell by looking at them that they are going to be wings - may even give it an awkward appearance."

~ C. S. Lewis, from Mere Christianity

"We tend to use prayer as a last resort, but God wants it to be our first line of defense. We pray when there's nothing else we can do, but God wants us to pray before we do anything at all.

Most of us would prefer, however, to spend our time doing something that will get immediate results. We don't want to wait for God to resolve matters in His good time because His idea of 'good time' is seldom in sync with ours."

~ Oswald Chambers

"Don't forget to use the 'Heads I win, tails you lose' argument. If the thing he prays for doesn't happen, then that is one more proof that petitionary prayers don't work; if it does happen, he will, of course, be able to see some of the physical causes which led up to it, and 'therefore it would have happened anyway,' and thus a granted prayer becomes just as good a proof as a denied one that prayers are ineffective."

~ C. S. Lewis, Screwtape to Wormwood, from The Screwtape Letters

"Since the last communion here, one of our dear helpers in this presbytery from whose lips you used to hear the joyful sound, is gone away to the communion-table above; and glory be to God that he got a full gale of heavenly wind, to drive him in with holy joy and triumph to the harbor of glory."

~ Ralph Erskine

"'God sees me,' is the sweet solace of the true believer. He knows the way that I take, will make that rugged way seem smooth. If perils and distress so shake the heart that plenteous tears give evidence of suffering, these tears are marked on high, and tender compassion will wipe them all away. The day has not yet come when there shall be no more tears. But the day is always present when they awaken sympathy in the Redeemer's breast. He who wept on earth will soon wipe all tears away!"

~ Henry Law

"Oh, when we are journeying through the murky night and the dark woods of affliction and sorrow, it is something to find here and there a spray broken, or a leafy stem bent down with the tread of His foot and the brush of His hand as He passed; and to remember that the path He trod He has hallowed, and thus to find lingering fragrance and hidden strength in the remembrance of Him as 'in all points tempted like as we are,' bearing grief for us, bearing grief with us, bearing grief like us."

~ Alexander MacLaren

“Your part in intercessory prayer is not to agonize over how to intercede, but to use everyday circumstances and people God puts around you by His providence to bring them before His throne and to allow the Spirit in you the opportunity to intercede for them. In this way, God is going to touch the whole world with His saints.”

~ Oswald Chambers

"Smile at each other, smile at your wife, smile at your husband, smile at your children, smile at each other--it doesn't matter who it is--and that will help you to grow up in greater love for each other."

~ Mother Teresa

:smile: :grin: [cheerful] [multiplesmilies] [massofsmilies]

“In a word, live together in the forgiveness of your sins, for without it no human fellowship, least of all a marriage, can survive. Don’t insist on your rights, don’t blame each other, don’t judge or condemn each other, don’t find fault with each other, but accept each other as you are, and forgive each other every day from the bottom of your hearts…”

~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison

"Another possible objection is this. Why is God landing in this enemy-occupied world in disguise and starting a sort of secret society to undermine the devil? Why is He not landing in force, invading it? Is it that He is not strong enough? Well, Christians think He is going to land in force; we do not know when. But we can guess why He is delaying. He wants to give us the chance of joining His side freely. I do not suppose you and I would have thought much of a Frenchman who waited till the Allies were marching into Germany and then announced he was on our side. God will invade. But I wonder whether people who ask God to interfere openly and directly in our world quite realise what it will be like when He does. When that happens, it is the end of the world. When the author walks on to the stage the play is over. God is going to invade, all right: but what is the good of saying you are on His side then, when you see the whole natural universe melting away like a dream and something else—something it never entered your head to conceive—comes crashing in; something so beautiful to some of us and so terrible to others that none of us will have any choice left? For this time it will be God without disguise; something so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature. It will be too late then to choose your side. There is no use saying you choose to lie down when it has become impossible to stand up. That will not be the time for choosing: it will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realised it before or not. Now, today, this moment, is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It will not last for ever. We must take it or leave it."

~ C. S. Lewis, from Mere Christianity

"One of the greatest paradoxes in Christian history is that the church is most pure in times of cultural hostility. When things are easy and good, that is when the church most often goes astray. When Christianity seems identical with the culture and even when the church seems to be enjoying its greatest earthly success, then it is weakest. Conversely, when the church encounters hardship, persecution, and suffering…then it is closest to its crucified Lord, then there are fewer hypocrites and nominal believers among its members, and then the faith of Christians burns most intensely."

~ Gene Edward Veith

"Kindness has converted more sinners than zeal, eloquence, or learning."

~ Frederick W. Faber

"The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essense of inhumanity."

~ George Bernard Shaw

"If I obey Jesus Christ in the seemingly random circumstances of life, they become pinholes through which I see the face of God."

~ Oswald Chambers

“I understood that every flower created by Him is beautiful, that the brilliance of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not lessen the perfume of the violet or the sweet simplicity of the daisy. I understood that if all the lowly flowers wished to be roses, nature would no longer be enamelled with lovely hues. And so it is in the world of souls, our Lord's living garden.”

~ Therese of Lisieux

"There is no situation so chaotic that God cannot from that situation, create something that is surpassingly good. He did it at creation. He did it at the cross. He is doing it today."

~ Bishop Moule

"Never worry about numbers. Help one person at a time, and always start with the person nearest you."

~ Mother Teresa

"Bread for myself is a material question. Bread for my neighbor is a spiritual one."

~ Nicholas Berdyaev

"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root."

~ Henry David Thoreau

"His purposes will ripen fast,
Unfolding every hour,
The bud may have a bitter taste,
But sweet will be the flower."

~ William Cowper

"Most good things have already been said…
and now just need to be lived.”

~ Shane Claiborne

"The past is a guidepost, not a hitching post."

~ L. Thomas Holdcroft

"We steal if we touch tomorrow. It is God's."

~ Henry Ward Beecher

"Faith goes up the stairs that love has made and looks out of the windows which hope has opened."

~ Mr. Spurgeon

"We can walk without fear, full of hope and courage and strength to do His will, waiting for the endless good which He is always giving as fast as He can get us able to take it in." [heart]

~ George Macdonald

"Thanksgiving is the language of heaven, and we had better start to learn it if we are not to be mere dumb aliens there."

~Arthur John (A. J.) Gossip

"O Thou Who has given us so much, mercifully grant us one more thing: a grateful heart."

~George Herbert

"All I have needed Thy hand hath provided.
Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me."

~Thomas O. Chisholm

"No longer forward nor behind
I look in hope or fear;
But, grateful, take the good I find,
The best of now and here."

~John Greenleaf Whittier

"Late on a sleepy, star-spangled night, those angels peeled back the sky just like you would tear open a sparkling Christmas present. Then, with light and joy pouring out of Heaven like water through a broken dam, they began to shout and sing the message that baby Jesus had been born. The world had a Savior! The angels called it 'Good News', and it was."

~Larry Libby ("The Angels Called it Good News" in Christmas Stories for the Heart)

"The hinge of history is on the door of a Bethlehem stable."

~Ralph W. Sockman

"'At this festive season of the year, Mr Scrooge,' said the gentleman, taking up a pen, 'it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. ... We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices.'"

~Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

“Are you willing to stoop down and consider the needs and desires of little children; to remember the weaknesses and loneliness of people who are growing old; to stop asking how much your friends love you, and to ask yourself if you love them enough; to bear in mind the things that other people have to bear on their hearts; to trim your lamp so that it will give more light and less smoke, and to carry it in front so that your shadow will fall behind you; to make a grave for your ugly thougts and a garden for your kindly feelings, with the gate open? Are you willing to do these things for a day? Then you are ready to keep Christmas!”

~Henry Van Dyke

A Christmas Carol

The Christ-child lay on Mary’s lap,
His hair was like a light.
(O weary, weary were the world,
But here is all aright.)

The Christ-child lay on Mary’s breast
His hair was like a star.
(O stern and cunning are the kings,
But here the true hearts are.)

The Christ-child lay on Mary’s heart,
His hair was like a fire.
(O weary, weary is the world,
But here the world’s desire.)

The Christ-child stood on Mary’s knee,
His hair was like a crown,
And all the flowers looked up at Him,
And all the stars looked down.

~G. K. Chesterton (1900)

"We do not draw people to Christ by loudly discrediting what they believe, by telling them how wrong they are and how right we are, but by showing them a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it."

~ Madeleine L'Engle

Hmm.. this one I think I can learn from. Although I don't think there is anything wrong with stating what you believe in.. especially if you KNOW you're right! Hehe, jk. :D

No, I don't either, but I don't think too many of us have a problem with that. :)

“Here I should like to remark, for the sake of princes and princesses in general, that it is a low and contemptible thing to refuse to confess a fault, or even an error. If a true princess has done wrong, she is always uneasy until she has had an opportunity of throwing the wrongness away from her by saying: 'I did it; and I wish I had not; and I am sorry for having done it.”

~ George Mac Donald, from The Princess and the Goblin

"That man is perfect in faith who can come to God in the utter dearth of his feelings and desires, without a glow or an inspiration, with the weight of low thoughts, failures, neglects, and wandering forgetfulness, and say to Him, 'Thou art my refuge'."

~George MacDonald

“Be like the bird that, passing on her flight awhile on boughs too slight, feels them give way beneath her, and yet sings, knowing that she hath wings.” [angel]

~Victor Hugo

"Trust God and do the next thing."

~Oswald Chambers

"You are the servant of other men for His sake. If you are devoted to the cause of humanity, you will soon be exhausted and have your heart broken by ingratitude, but if the mainspring of your service is love for Jesus, you can serve men although they treat you as a door-mat. Never look for justice in this world, but never cease to give it."

~Oswald Chambers, from The Place of Help

I think this is a repeat, but worth reading again. [heart]

"Beware of looking to see where other people come short. God expects us to be exactly what we know the other person should be – when we realize that, we will stop criticizing and having a measuring rod for other people."

~Oswald Chambers, from The Place of Help

"Do not depend on the hope of results. When you are doing the sort of work you have taken on, essentially an apostolic work, you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect.

As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself."

~Thomas Merton, in a letter to Jim Forest dated February 21, 1966

"It is a beautiful privilege to work along with Christ, but we shall not serve in that blessed apprenticeship long, without learning this lesson, that He has no pleasure in service rendered to Himself or others, that does not cost us blood! This is characteristic of His own service to the world, and you will find that He will soon drop you out unless you are prepared, in your measure, to surrender yourself to the blood-letting, which alone counts in the service of humanity. As we look out on society today we can understand why so many lives are unhappy. They have never learned that the one secret of happiness is to give to the point of self-denial and self-sacrifice."

~ F. B. Meyer, from The Five Musts of the Christian Life

"Not a day passes over the earth but men and women of no note do great deeds, speak great words, and suffer noble sorrows."

~Charles Reade, The Cloister and the Hearth

"Never pass anything on about anybody else that will hurt him. “Love covers a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8 ). The talebearer has no place in God’s favor. If you know something that would hinder or hurt the reputation of one of God’s children, bury it forever. Find a little garden out back — a little spot somewhere — and when somebody comes around with an evil story, take it out and bury it and say, 'Here lies in peace the story about my brother.' God will take care of it. 'With what judgment you judge, you shall be judged.'”

If you want God to be good to you, you are going to have to be good to His children. You say, “But that’s not grace.” Well, grace gets you into the kingdom of God. That is unmerited favor. But after you are seated at the Father’s table, He expects to teach you table manners. And He won’t let you eat unless you obey the etiquette of the table. And what is that? The etiquette of the table is that you don’t tell stories about the brother who is sitting at the table with you — no matter what his denomination, or nationality, or background."

~A. W. Tozer, from Five Vows for Spiritual Power

“But we believe – nay, Lord we only hope,
That one day we shall thank thee perfectly
For pain and hope and all that led or drove
Us back into the bosom of thy love.”

~George MacDonald, A Hidden Life and Other Poems

“Being in a hurry. Getting to the next thing without fully entering the thing in front of me. I cannot think of a single advantage I've ever gained from being in a hurry. But a thousand broken and missed things, tens of thousands, lie in the wake of all the rushing.... Through all that haste I thought I was making up time. It turns out I was throwing it away.”

~Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are

“There is the great lesson of 'Beauty and the Beast,' that a thing must be loved before it is lovable.”

~ G. K. Chesterton

Long quote, but this song is on my heart. [heart]

His Eye is On the Sparrow

Why should I feel discouraged, why should the shadows come,
Why should my heart be lonely, and long for heaven and home,
When Jesus is my portion? My constant friend is He:
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me;
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.

Refrain

I sing because I'm happy,
I sing because I'm free,
For His eye is on the sparrow,
And I know He watches me.


“Let not your heart be troubled," His tender word I hear,
And resting on His goodness, I lose my doubts and fears;
Though by the path He leadeth, but one step I may see;
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me;
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.

Refrain

Whenever I am tempted, whenever clouds arise,
When songs give place to sighing, when hope within me dies,
I draw the closer to Him, from care He sets me free;
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me;
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.

Refrain

~ Civilla Martin



"Early in the spring of 1905, my husband and I were sojourning in Elmira, New York. We contracted a deep friendship for a couple by the name of Mr. and Mrs. Doolittle—true saints of God. Mrs. Doolittle had been bedridden for nigh twenty years. Her husband was an incurable cripple who had to propel himself to and from his business in a wheel chair. Despite their afflictions, they lived happy Christian lives, bringing inspiration and comfort to all who knew them. One day while we were visiting with the Doolittles, my husband commented on their bright hopefulness and asked them for the secret of it. Mrs. Doolittle's reply was simple: 'His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.' The beauty of this simple expression of boundless faith gripped the hearts and fired the imagination of Dr. Martin and me. The hymn 'His Eye Is on the Sparrow' was the outcome of that experience."

~Civilla Martin

"All God’s revelations are sealed until they are opened to us by obedience. You will never get them open by philosophy or thinking. Immediately you obey, a flash of light comes. Let God’s truth work in you by soaking in it, not by worrying into it... Obey God in the thing He shows you, and instantly the next thing is opened up. One reads tomes on the work of the Holy Spirit when... five minutes of drastic obedience would make things clear as a sunbeam. [We say,] 'I suppose I shall understand these things some day.' You can understand them now: it is not study that does it, but obedience. The tiniest fragment of obedience, and heaven opens up and the profoundest truths of God are yours straight away. God will never reveal more truth about Himself until you have obeyed what you know already. Beware of being 'wise and prudent.'”

~ Oswald Chambers, from My Utmost for His Highest

"For what are circumstances but God’s ordering for His children! It is God, not you, who appoints your lot in life, and however it may seem, if you truly believe His promises you can rest satisfied, knowing His choice is the very best for you, and that if any other lot, any other discipline, would have been better for the development of life’s great object – growth in grace – He would not have placed you where you are. Remember this, and the next time you feel discontented with circumstances, say softly to yourself; 'God knows,' and 'God is love.'

Remember also,

'Thou cam’st not to thy place by accident,
It is the very place God meant for thee;
And shouldest thou there small scope for action see
Do not for this give room to discontent;
Nor let the time thou owest to God be spent
In idly dreaming how thou mightest be,
In what concerns thy spiritual life more free,
From outward hindrance or impediment:
For presently, this hindrance thou shalt find
That without which all goodness were a task.'”

~ Rose Porter, from Life's Everydayness

"Sometimes you feel caged when really you’re only cupped."

~ Ann Voskamp

"'Ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.'
--Galatians 3:26

The fatherhood of God is common to all his children. Ah! Little-faith, you have often said, "Oh that I had the courage of Great-heart, that I could wield his sword and be as valiant as he! But, alas, I stumble at every straw, and a shadow makes me afraid." List thee, Little-faith. Great-heart is God's child, and you are God's child too; and Great-heart is not one whit more God's child than you are. Peter and Paul, the highly- favoured apostles, were of the family of the Most High; and so are you also; the weak Christian is as much a child of God as the strong one.

'This cov'nant stands secure,
Though earth's old pillars bow;
The strong, the feeble, and the weak,
Are one in Jesus now.'

All the names are in the same family register. One may have more grace than another, but God our heavenly Father has the same tender heart towards all. One may do more mighty works, and may bring more glory to his Father, but he whose name is the least in the kingdom of heaven is as much the child of God as he who stands among the King's mighty men. Let this cheer and comfort us, when we draw near to God and say, 'Our Father.'

Yet, while we are comforted by knowing this, let us not rest contented with weak faith, but ask, like the Apostles, to have it increased. However feeble our faith may be, if it be real faith in Christ, we shall reach heaven at last, but we shall not honour our Master much on our pilgrimage, neither shall we abound in joy and peace. If then you would live to Christ's glory, and be happy in His service, seek to be filled with the spirit of adoption more and more completely, till perfect love shall cast out fear."

~ Mr. Spurgeon

This spoke to me this morning. [heart]

"You would be very ashamed if you knew what the experiences you call setbacks, upheavals, pointless disturbances, and tedious annoyances really are. You would realize that your complaints about them are nothing more nor less than blasphemies--though that never occurs to you. Nothing happens to you except by the will of God, and yet [God's] beloved children curse it because they do not know it for what it is."

~ Jean-Pierre de Caussade, quoted in A Guide to Prayer for All God's People

"This is my Father’s world. O let me ne’er forget
That though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet."

~Maltbie D. Babcock

“Fairy tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten."

~ G.K. Chesterton

"All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king."

~ J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

“What God may hereafter require of you, you must not give yourself the least trouble about. Everything He gives you to do, you must do as well as ever you can, and that is the best possible preparation for what He may want you to do next. If people would but do what they have to do, they would always find themselves ready for what came next.”

~ George MacDonald

"Let nothing upset you,
Let nothing startle you.
All things pass;
God does not change.
Patience wins all it seeks.
Whoever has God lacks nothing:
God alone is enough."

~ Teresa of Avila

"Faith for my deliverance is not faith in God. Faith means, whether I am visibly delivered or not, I will stick to my belief that God is love."

~ Oswald Chambers

"God never gives strength for tomorrow, or for the next hour, but only for the strain of the minute."

~ Oswald Chambers

“If God were our one and only desire we would not be so easily upset when our opinions do not find outside acceptance.”

~ Thomas A Kempis, The Imitation of Christ

"The people who influence us the most are not those who detain us with their continual talk, but those who live their lives like the stars in the sky and “the lilies of the field”— simply and unaffectedly. Those are the lives that mold and shape us.

If you want to be of use to God, maintain the proper relationship with Jesus Christ by staying focused on Him, and He will make use of you every minute you live— yet you will be unaware, on the conscious level of your life, that you are being used of Him."

~ Oswald Chambers, from My Utmost for His Highest

"It is a great deal better to live a holy life than to talk about it. Lighthouses do not ring bells and fire cannons to call attention to their shining- they just shine."

~ D.L. Moody

"The only right a Christian has is the right to give up his rights."

~ Oswald Chambers

"Someone or something has romanced us from the beginning with creek-side singers and pastel sunsets, with the austere majesty of snowcapped mountains and the poignant flames of autumn colors telling us of something--or someone--leaving, with a promise to return.

These things can, in an unguarded moment, bring us to our knees with longing for this something or someone who is lost; someone or something only our heart recognizes."

~ Brent Curtis and John Eldredge, from Sacred Romance

"Experience is a gateway, not an end. Beware of building your faith on experience, the metallic note will come in at once, the censorious note. You can never give another person that which you have found, but you can make him homesick for what you have."

~ Oswald Chambers, from My Utmost for His Highest

"You can either practice being right or practice being kind."

~ Anne Lamott

“When I say it's you I like, I'm talking about that part of you that knows that life is far more than anything you can ever see or hear or touch. That deep part of you that allows you to stand for those things without which humankind cannot survive. Love that conquers hate, peace that rises triumphant over war, and justice that proves more powerful than greed.”

~ (Mr.) Fred Rogers

"A man is only as holy as he wants to be."

~ A. W. Tozer

"To the believer who has been taught by the Holy Spirit something of his own utter, inbred sinfulness, it comes as a message from God full of hope and encouragement. He grasps the rescue rope flung to him by the right hand of Omnipotence, and with humble thankfulness sets out to learn how he can reckon himself dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God in Jesus Christ our Lord. When he looks at the Cross he sees there the fact that not only did the Lord Jesus die for him, but that he himself was taken down into His death, in order that the practical reality of His resurrection life might transform him into the divine likeness."

~ J. C. Metcalf

"When you see and stand on your heavenly ground, you come to rest, just as the Father rests. You need not worry–only keep on that ground by your attitude of heart. If you are going to worry–if you must worry–worry lest you get down on earthly ground, for that is the ground of worry. Abide above! Heavenly things are in safe keeping–in the keeping of One who is 'far above all.'"

~ T. Austin-Sparks

"Has the Father led you into the desert? Has He plucked from under your feet all that you depended upon? Then a glorious experience is yours. See if this be not a way whereby God will glorify you! Do not complain about what you have lost, and do not yearn to have it back again, for then you are like Israel who wished to turn back to Egypt. God leads on, and instead of the flesh-pots He gives you bread from heaven, and instead of water from the Nile, water from the Rock. But you must put your trust in Him also in the desert, and through the days of darkness and difficulty. This is possible, however, only for those who have lost their self-assurance in the desert whereto God beckons His children."

"Are there sorrows that sorely test our hearts? Be assured that our Father intends every one of them to be a road for us to Christ; so that we may reach Him and know Him in some character of His love and power, that otherwise our souls had not known."

~ Charles Andrew Coates.

"Our Father never does a thing suddenly: He has always prepared long, long before. So there is nothing to murmur about, nothing to be proud of, in the calling of God. There is also no one of whom to be jealous, for other people's advantages have nothing to do with us. 'It is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that hath mercy' (Romans 9:16). Our heritage, our birth, our natural equipment: these are things already determined by God. We may pick up other things in the way, for we are always learning; but the way is His way. When we look back over our life, we bow and acknowledge that all was prepared of God. To have such an attitude of heart, that is true rest."

~ Watchman Nee

"If we have only learned the Lord at our own side, the tendency is to be occupied with ourselves, or to seek to be an object of consideration; whereas if we have been led by the Spirit to His side, His interests and concerns will singularly occupy us."

"The natural inclination is to make oneself the center of everything passing, how it pains or cheers oneself, even musing on oneself as if one were the one solitary object for the sunshine or the cloud to rest on. If I am a hero, or a martyr to myself, I look at and regard divine things as they suit my thinking about myself, and not as answering to what He is thinking of me. I am confining the Lord to myself instead of rising up and seeing myself lost in Him, and then following Him in all the greatness and blessedness of His work and ways down here."

~ J. B. Stoney

"Hope is the incubator for life. To lose it is to lose life. We are not of those that are “having no hope and without God in the world” (Ephesians 2:12b). When I have been in the place of hopelessness, I have prayed that God would open my eyes to see Him all around me. He is there, He shows no partiality, and He is in the middle of our circumstances. Often I have seen believers in a pit; it would be inaccurate to say they are not! They are! The best advice does not encourage those for whom all options appear to be gone. I simply ask them to invite Jesus into the pit with them, because He takes responsibility for everything into which we invite Him. 'Casting all your anxiety upon Him, because He cares for you . . . and after you have suffered for a little, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen, and establish you'” (1 Peter 5:7 & 10).

~ Michael Wells

"Fill your mind with the thought that God is there. And once your mind is truly filled with that thought, when you experience difficulties it will be as easy as breathing for you to remember, “My heavenly Father knows all about this!” This will be no effort at all, but will be a natural thing for you when difficulties and uncertainties arise. Before you formed this concept of divine control so powerfully in your mind, you used to go from person to person seeking help, but now you go to God about it. Jesus is laying down the rules of conduct for those people who have His Spirit, and it works on the following principle: God is my Father, He loves me, and I will never think of anything that He will forget, so why should I worry?"

~ Oswald Chambers

"The Sermon on the Mount indicates that when we are on Jesus Christ's errands, there is no time to stand up for ourselves. Jesus says, in effect, Do not be bothered with whether you are being justly dealt with or not. To look for justice is a sign of deflection from devotion to Him. Never look for justice in this world, but never cease to give it. If we look for justice, we will begin to grouse and to indulge in the discontent of self-pity - Why should I be treated like this? If we are devoted to Jesus Christ we have nothing to do with what we meet, whether it is just or unjust. Jesus says - Go steadily on with what I have told you to do and I will guard your life."

~ Oswald Chambers

"The bridge of grace will bear your weight, brother. Thousands of big sinners have gone across that bridge, yea, tens of thousands have gone over it. I can hear their trampings now as they traverse the great arches of the bridge of salvation. They come by the thousands, by their myriads, e'er since that day when Christ first entered His glory. They come and yet never a stone has sprung in that mighty bridge. Some have been the chief of sinners and some have come at the very last of their days but the arch has never yielded beneath their weight. I will go with them, trusting to the same support. It will bear me over as it has for them."

~ Mr. Spurgeon

"Serve God by doing common actions in a heavenly spirit, and then, if your daily calling only leaves you cracks and crevices of time, fill them up with holy service."

~ Mr. Spurgeon

"When you have no helpers, see your helpers in God. When you have many helpers, see God in all your helpers. When you have nothing but God, see all in God. When you have everything, see God in everything. Under all conditions, stay thy heart only on the Lord."

~ Mr. Spurgeon

"I thought I could have leaped from earth to heaven at one spring when I first saw my sins drowned in the Redeemer's blood."

~ Mr. Spurgeon

"Jesus said, 'And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to Myself' (John 12:32). When we preach our own experiences, people may be interested, but it awakens no real sense of need. But once Jesus Christ is “lifted up,” the Spirit of God creates an awareness of the need for Him. The creative power of the redemption of God works in the souls of men only through the preaching of the gospel. It is never the sharing of personal experiences that saves people, but the truth of redemption. 'The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life' (John 6:63)."

~ Oswald Chambers

"For three things I thank God every day of my life:

thanks that he has vouchsafed to me the knowledge of His works,

deep thanks that He has set in my darkness the lamp of faith;

deep, deepest thanks that I have another life to look forward to — a life joyous with light and flowers and heavenly song."

~ Helen Keller

"The more I have read the Bible and studied the life of Jesus, the more I have become convinced that Christianity spreads best not through force but through fascination."

~ Shane Claiborne

"The smallest good act today is the capture of a strategic point from which, a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed of."

~ C. S. Lewis, from Mere Christianity

"God had one Son on earth without sin, but never one without suffering."

~ Augustine

"The breaking of the alabaster box and the anointing of the Lord filled the house with the odor, with the sweetest odor. Everyone could smell it. Whenever you meet someone who has really suffered; been limited, gone through things for the Lord, willing to be imprisoned by the Lord, just being satisfied with Him and nothing else, immediately you scent the fragrance. There is a savour of the Lord. Something has been crushed, something has been broken, and there is a resulting odor of sweetness."

~ Watchman Nee

“The Gospel takes away our right forever, to discriminate between the deserving and the undeserving poor.”

~ Dorothy Day

"'Stand still”'– keep the posture of an upright man, ready for action, expecting further orders, cheerfully and patiently awaiting the directing voice; and it will not be long ere God shall say to you, as distinctly as Moses said it to the people of Israel, “Go forward.”

~ Mr. Spurgeon