Quote of the Day

"Men who do their best, always do more, though haunted by a sense of failure.  Be good and true.  Be patient, be undaunted, leave your usefulness for God to estimate.  He will see to it that you do not live in vain."  George Morrison 

Quote of the Day

Sometimes a person comes to his minister and says, ‘I am a poor specimen of Christianity. I have no patience at all. Would you please pray for me that I might have patience?’ A minister who knows the Word of God well might begin to pray at that moment, ‘Lord, please send tribulation into this person’s life,’ because the way we develop perseverance of patience is through suffering. Therefore, if misfortune enters your life, God may be using it to develop character in you that in days to come he will use to bring glory to his name. 

D. Martyn Lloyd Jones

Quote of the Day

Patience! patience! you are always in a hurry, but God is not.

  

Charles Spurgeon

Quote of the Day

To the natural man, the very notion of loving his enemies is an intolerable offense, and quite beyond his capacity:  it cuts right across his ideas of good and evil…….In the New Testament our enemies are those who harbour hostility against us, not those against whom we cherish hostility, for Jesus refuses to reckon with such a possibility.  The Christian must treat his enemy as a brother, and requite his hostility with love.  His behavior must be determined not by the way others treat him, but by the treatment he himself receives from Jesus; it has only one source, and that is the will of Jesus….Love asks nothing in return, but seeks those who need it.  And who needs our love more than those who are consumed with hatred and are utterly devoid of love?  Who in other words deserves our love more than our enemy?  Where is love more glorified than where she dwells in the midst of her enemies?  Christian love draws no distinction between one enemy and another, except that the more bitter our enemy's hatred, the greater his need of love.  Be his enmity political or religious, he has nothing to expect from a follower of Jesus but unqualified love. ……How then does love conquer? By asking not how the enemy treats her but only how Jesus treated her…Our adversaries seek to root out the Christian Church and the Christian faith because they cannot live side by side with us, because they see in every word we utter and every deed we do, even when they are not specifically directed against them, a condemnation of their own words and deeds.  They are not far wrong.  They suspect too that we are indifferent to their condemnation.  Indeed they must admit that it is utterly futile to condemn us.  We do not reciprocate their hatred and contention.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Quote of the Day

1521-1522

In Germany, the Wittenburgers had been infiltrated by so-called apostles, giving new revelation from God discounting the Bible.  And from among their own congregation, a professor named Carlstadt, though rejecting to some degree the false-prophets, was advocating the forced profession of 'Protestantism' or at least its practices(no mass, no statues…etc.), and so abusing the Catholics by destroying the statues of saints, abolishing the mass…etc. In March 1522 Luther has arrived from his exile in the Wartburg castle to speak in the pulpit in Wittenburg for the first time since his exile.  He has returned because he is concerned about what is happening with his congregation:

(the following excerpt is taken from D'aubigne's History of the Reformation in the Sixteenth Century)His language was simple, noble, yet full of strength and gentleness:  one might have supposed him to be a tender father returning to his children, inquiring into their conduct, and kindly telling them what report he had heard about them.  He candidly acknowledged the progress they had made in faith; and by this means prepared and captivated their minds.  He then continued in these words:  But we need something more than faith; we need charity… What does a mother do to her infant?  At first she

Gives it milk, then some very light food.  If she were to begin by giving it meat and wine, what would be the consequence?......So should we act towards our brethren…permit your brother to drink as long as yourself. 

…The abolition of the mass, say you, is in conformity with Scripture:  Agreed!  But what order, what decency have you observed? It behoved you to offer up fervent prayers to the Lord, and apply to the public authority; then might every man have acknowledged that the thing was of God.

The mass is a bad thing; God is opposed to it; it ought to be abolished; and I would that throughout the whole world it were replaced by the Supper of the Gospel.  But let no one be torn from it by force.  His Word must act, and not we.  And why so, will you ask?  Because I do not hold men's hearts in my hand, as the potter holds the clay.  We have a right to speak; we have not a the right to act.  Let us preach:  the rest belongs unto God.  Were I to employ force, what should I gain?  Grimace, formality, ape-ings, human ordinances, and hypocrisy…..But there would be no sincerity of heart, nor faith, nor charity.  Where these are wanting, all is wanting…

Our first object must be to win men's hearts; and for that purpose we must preach the Gospel.  To-day the Word will fall in one heart, to-morrow in another, and it will operate in such a manner that each one will withdraw from the mass and abandon it.  God does more by his Word alone than you and I and all the world by our united strength.  God lays hold upon the heart; and when the heart is taken, all is won.

I do not say this for the restoration of the mass.  Since it is down, in God's name there let it lie!  But should you have gone to work as you did?  Paul, arriving one day in the powerful city of Athens, found there alters raised to false gods.  He went from one to the other, and observed them without touching one.  But he walked peaceably to the middle of the market-place, and declared to the people that all their gods were idols.  His language took possession of their hearts, and the idols fell without Paul's having touched them. 

I will preach, discuss, and write; but I will constrain none, for faith is a voluntary act.  See what I have done!  I stood up against the pope, indulgences, and papists, but without violence or tumult.  I put forward God's Word;  I preached and wrote - this was all I did.  And yet while I was asleep, or seated familiarly at table with Amsdorff and Melancthon…the Word that I had preached overthrew popery, so that neither prince nor emperor has done it so much harm.  And yet I did nothing:  the Word alone did all.  If I had wished to appeal to force, the whole of Germany would perhaps have been deluged with blood.  But what would have been the result?  Ruin and desolation both to body and soul.  I therefore kept quiet, and left the Word to run through the world alone.  Do you know what the devil thinks when he sees men resort to violence to propagate the Gospel through the world?  Seated with folded arms behind the fire of hell, Satan says, with malignant looks and frightful grin:  'Ah!  How wise these madmen are to play my game!'  But when he sees the Word running and contending alone on the field of battle, then he is troubled, and his knees knock together; he shudders and faints with fear.

Quote of the Day

I do know that waiting on God requires the willingness to bear uncertainty, to carry within oneself the unanswered question, lifting the heart to God about it whenever it intrudes upon one’s thoughts. Its easy to talk oneself into a decision that has no permanence – easier sometimes than to wait patiently.

Quote of the Day

2 Peter 1, 'add patience/endurance'.  Not the : " "…the patience which sits down and accepts things but the patience which masters them.  It is not some romantic thing which lends us wings to fly over the difficulties and the hard places..  It is a determination, unhurrying and yet undelaying, which goes steadily on and refuses to be deflected.  Obstacles do not daunt It and discouragements do not take its hope away.  It is the steadfast endurance which carries on  until in the end it gets there.

 

William Barclay

Quote of the Day

One day at a time, with its failures and fears,

With its hurts and mistakes, with its weakness and tears,

With its portion of pain and its burden of care;

One day at a time we must meet and must bear.

One day at a time to be patient and strong,

To be calm under trial and sweet under wrong;

Then its toiling shall pass and its sorrow shall cease;

It shall darken and die, and the night shall bring peace.

One day at a time - but the day is so long,

And the heart is not brave, and the soul is not strong,

0 Thou pitiful Christ, be Thou near all the way;

Give courage and patience and strength for the day.

Swift cometh His answer, so clear and so sweet;

"Yea, I will be with thee, thy troubles to meet;

I will not forget thee, nor fail thee, nor grieve;

I will not forsake thee; I never will leave."

Not yesterday's load we are called on to bear,

Nor the morrow's uncertain and shadowy care;

Why should we look forward or back with dismay?

Our needs, as our mercies, are but for the day.

One day at a time, and the day is His day;

He hath numbered its hours, though they haste or delay.

His grace is sufficient; we walk not alone;

As the day, so the strength that He giveth His own.

Annie Johnson Flint

 

Quote of the Day

Many times in my life God has asked me to wait when I wanted to move forward.  He has kept me in the dark when I asked for light.  I like to see progress.  I look for evidence that God is at least doing something. If the Shepherd leads us beside still waters when we were hoping for whitewater excitement, it is hard to believe that anything vital is taking place.  God is silent.   The house is silent.  The phone doesn't ring.  The mailbox is empty.  The stillness is hard to bear - and God knows that.  He knows our frame and remembers that we are made of dust….Of course for most of us this test of waiting does not take place in a silent and empty house, but in the course of regular work and appointments and taxpaying and grocery buying and trying to have the car fixed and get the storm windows up; daily decisions have to go on being made, responsibilities fulfilled families provided for, employers satisfied.  Can we accept patience-taxing ordinary things alongside the four-alarm fires of our lives?................

The longer I live, the more fully I am convinced that the Lord is in charge of everything on this complicated Earth and that nothing happens without His permission.  It's one of the great advantages of old age to be so completely sure of that.  God almighty is sovereign.  He is the One who is paramount, autonomous, unlimited, supreme…the absolute ruler of everything.

It seems to me that our modern church life, with its emphasis on cozy friendship with God, has deprived us somewhat of an awe-filled appreciation for His sovereignty.  It's not that we take issue with it, exactly.  We recognize His hand at work at startling or spectacular moments.  We extol His power to save when He has just protected us from a car accident, we marvel at His glory when we visit the Grand Canon, and we remember the mystery of His ways when somebody dies.  However, as we plod through the ordinary middle ground of our lives, the long distances between the punctuation marks of exultation and desolation, we fail to appreciate God's sovereignty.  We find it particularly hard to comprehend, much less believe, that a good God could still be in charge when our ordinary life is a relentless string of difficulties or when disasters strike.

He is "Most High over the earth" (Psalm 83:18), He is most high over our ordinary muddles and He is most high over what may seem to be catastrophes.  He is most high over international affairs…and all the human squabbles that have ever cropped up.  He is in charge of destruction and He is in charge off salvation.

 

Elisabeth Elliot