A Night's Work

For you who wonder if you've played too long to change, take courage from Jacob's legacy. No man is too bad for God. To transform a riverboat gambler into a man of faith would be no easy task. But for God, it was all in a night's work.
-- Max Lucado

Careers

[King] David certainly was aware that his lust for power had become a barrier to inwardness. Careers, even religious careers, may become little more than forums for our own advancement. But how are we to deal with such ambition? Our longing after Christ must exceed our need for status in the world.

-- Calvin Miller

Struggling With Prayer

Why do so many people have struggles when it comes to prayer? ... Men and women were originally created to desire communion with God. But the effects of sin have dulled most of that original human desire. Sin turned a natural activity into an unnatural function.

-- Gordon McDonald

Rest

Does God indeed need to rest? Of course not! But did God choose to rest? Yes. Why? Because God subjected creation to a rhythm of rest and work that He revealed by observing the rhythm Himself, as a precedent for everyone else. In this way, He showed us a key to order in our private worlds.

-- Gordon McDonald

Yes, Santa Claus, there is a Virginia

"...and I thought of that old gentleman, who is dead now, but was a bishop, I think, who declared that it was impossible for any woman, past, present, or to come, to have the genius of Shakespeare. He wrote to the papers about it. He also told a lady who applied to him for information that cats do not as a matter of fact go to heaven, though they have, he added, souls of a sort. How much thinking those old gentlemen used to save one! How the borders of ignorance shrank back at their approach! Cats do not go to heaven. Women cannot write the plays of Shakespeare."

Chapter 3, A room of one's own, by Virginia Woolf

This quote is about as much as I've read of Virginia Woolf, but it cracks me up. I imagine her saying it in a way that would have made ladies laugh behind their hands. I imagine her saying it in a way that the insult would have flown right over the heads of any men present.

Wondering

Jeremiah 1:17
New International Version (NIV)
“Get yourself ready! Stand up and say to them whatever I command you. Do not be terrified by them, or I will terrify you before them."

I so do not want to be irreverent, but... doesn't this sound like the original "don't cry or I will give you something to cry about?". Or is it just me?

Loving Christ

It is possible to be so active in the service of Christ as to forget to love him. -- P.T Forsyth

This is a good warning for those of us who always need to be doing something. We need to remember to sit in awe and wonder of His complete Holiness. We need to love Him as we love no other. 

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Prayer

He said: that it was a Great delusion to think that the times of prayer ought to differ from other times; that we are as strictly obliged to adhere to God by action in the time of action, as by prayer in its season.

-- Brother Lawrence

Craving

We humans are a hungry lot. We are driven by a craving to know who we are. Yet who we are is embedded in the heart of a holy God. Unless we seek for ourselves in the epicenter of God's grace, we will be forever condemned to walk the arid edges of self-understanding. -- Calvin Miller

As an adoptee, I have spent more time than most people wondering about who I am. But who I am in God is all that really matters.

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Prophet

To be forged upon the anvil of God's purpose, to be at once His hammer, His tongs, and His molten iron; to hear words that rend the heart, see visions that pierce the chest; to be emptied like an urn, again and again and again until one desires only rest, only an end to the refilling -- and to know one cannnot live without the refilling. To be given words that one dare not speak, and to feel those words churning and boiling in the belly until one must speak them aloud, or die. To be despised, soon or late, by everyone except Adonai -- and to desire it so, while hating it. This is to be a prophet. -- Thom Lemmons

Only Hope (Not Obi-wan)

[Jesus said] 'I am the resurrection and the life ... Do you believe this?' This is a canyon question which makes sense only during an all-night vigil or in the stillness of smoke-filled waiting rooms. A question that makes sense when all of our props, crutches, and costumes are taken away. For then we must face ourselves as we really are: rudderless humans tailspinning toward disaster. And we are forced to see him for what he claims to be: our only hope. -- Max Lucado

Approachable

There is not a hint of one person who was afraid to draw near him [Jesus]. There were those who mocked him. There were those who were envious of him. There were those who misunderstood him. There were those who revered him. But there was not one person who considered him too holy, too divine, or too celestial to touch. There was not one person who was reluctant to approach him for fear of being rejected. 

-- Max Lucado

Driven or Not?

[John the Baptist said] 'He must increase, but I must decrease.' .. No driven person could ever say what John said, because driven people have to keep gaining more and more attention, more and more power, more and more material assets. The seductions of the public life would have led to a competitive posture, but the original call to commitment from within spoke louder. -- Gordon McDonald

Uniqueness

It is not the uniqueness of 'Christianity' as a system that we defend, but the uniqueness of Christ. ... So, because in no other person but Jesus of Nazareth did God first become human (in his birth), then bear our sins (in his death), then conquer death (in his resurrection) and then enter his people (by his Spirit), he is uniquely able to save sinners. Nobody else has his qualifications. -- John R. W. Stott

Conviction

The truth is, living in agreement with God will bring His conviction when we are disobedient. Conviction may feel like a negative thing, but it's just as much a part of God as His smile. He is committed to making our lives work in Him, and He will use the strength and power of His conviction to let us know when we are outside His will. It may feel bad, but conviction is God at work in us.

-- David Edwards

Repentance

Many Bible passages (such as Luke 13:3 or Acts 2:38) issue a call for repentance. Repentance? The very thought stops our hearts with chilling honesty, for it insists that we come clean before we set out to execute life's important choices. Repentance demands that we choose a path of holy living. -- Calvin Miller

Sincere Prayer

“Be not forgetful of prayer. Every time you pray, if your prayer is sincere, there will be new feeling and new meaning in it, which will give you fresh courage, and you will understand that prayer is an education.”

― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

Catch Up

We either add to the darkness of indifference ... or we light a candle to see by. -- Madeleine L'Engle

So many of my writing friends have read Madeleine L'Engle. Yet, until recently, I had never heard of her. My church upbringing seems the likely culprit - she would have been an "outsider". Of course, it might just be that we were simple folk who hadn't heard of many people, places, and things. Either way, it seems that I am going to have to catch up.

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