Signs of the Soul Living in God

IT is a sign that the soul is living in God, if it maintain calmness within through the consciousness of His Presence, while working for Him in active ministrations. Such restfulness will show itself in the commonest ways, in doing common duties at the right time, in preserving a sweetness and evenness of temper in the midst of ordinary interruptions and disturbances, in walking to and fro quietly on the day's varied errands, in speaking gentle words, in sweetly meeting unexpected calls. A calm, restful temper grows as self is learning to lose itself in God. Such grace tells gradually on the daily life; even the minutest detail may be brought under the power of God, and carried out in union with Him.

~ T. T. CARTER

Thou Must Give Success

AND grant me, Lord, to do,
With ready heart and willing,
Whate'er Thou shalt command,
My calling here fulfilling;
And do it when I ought,
With all my strength, and bless
The work I thus have wrought,
For Thou must give success.

JOHANN HEERMANN

It isn't work

It isn't work if you like to do it,
It isn't work if it gives a thrill,
If always pleasant thoughts imbue it,
If you do it gladly and with a will.

It isn't "housework" - dusting, mending,
Scrubbing floors and baking things,
Washing dishes and pans unending,
To one who laughs and smiles and sings.

It isn't work, if you find good measure
Of cheer and sun in every minute,
It isn't housework - it's home pleasure,
With a little love and laughter in it!

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (1927)

I Yet Can Trust

IF I believe in God, in a Being who made me, and fashioned me, and knows my wants and capacities and necessities, because He gave them to me, and who is perfectly good and loving, righteous, and perfectly wise and powerful,--whatever my circumstances inward or outward may be, however thick the darkness which encompasses me, I yet can trust, yea, be assured, that all will be well, that He can draw light out of darkness, and make crooked things straight.

~ THOMAS ERSKINE

The First Act on Waking

LET the first act on waking be to place yourself, your heart, mind, faculties, your whole being, in God's hands. Ask Him to take entire possession of you, to be the Guide of your soul, your Life, your Wisdom, your Strength. He wills that we seek Him in all our needs, that we may both know Him truly, and draw closer and closer to Him; and in prayer we gain an invisible force which will triumph over seemingly hopeless difficulties.

~ H. L. SIDNEY LEAR

Where There Is Injury

Have you ever found the taste of revenge sweet? Does there lurk in your heart, as in mine at times, a desire for at least the milder forms of revenge if you have been hurt--a desire to see the person apologize, an urge to remind him that he was nasty to you, or even the temptation to pay him back somehow? It was not God's plan that man should take revenge. That He has reserved for Himself, and when we seize that power we are taking a huge risk. It is, in another form, the risk Adam and Eve took when they ate the forbidden fruit--arrogating to themselves powers, lethal burdens, for which they were never designed.

What if God paid us for our sins? What if He were not Love? His mercy is everlasting and has brought us salvation and forgiveness. Remembering that, and how we ourselves have offended Him times without number, shall we dare to retaliate when someone sins against us? Think of the measure of forgiveness God has offered us. Think of the price. Think what the cross means.

Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace--

Where there is hatred, let me sow love;

Where there is injury, pardon....

For it is in forgiving that we are forgiven,

It is in dying that we are born again to eternal life.

In the Multitude of My Thoughts

In the multitude of my thoughts in mine heart, thy comforts have rejoiced my soul.

Psalm 94:19

Mending Our Faults

I think you will find that it is not by making resolutions in a difficulty that you will conquer a fault--tackling it, I mean,--but much more by opening a window to Almighty God, and letting Him speak to you. As long as we are young we set so much importance on our own efforts, whereas often, if we will just do nothing but listen quietly to what God has to say to us, we shall find that He sets us thinking and mending our faults by a quiet way which looks as though it had nothing to do with it; and then, when we come to about where our fault used to be, we find it gone, imperceptibly as it were, by our having been strengthened in another direction which lay, though we did not know it, at the real root of the matter.

HENRIETTA KERR

Christ My Armor

When faced with threat of any sort of invasion or attack, whether from human or spiritual foes, it is quite natural to draw back, throw up my guard, attempt to defend myself. The Christian has a far better defense--"Let Christ Jesus Himself be the armor that you wear" (Rom 13:14 NEB). Let me take my stand in Him, come to my enemy without fear, responding only in the power and with the love of Christ.

Who can hurt me then? And what hostility on earth or in hell can destroy me? That person whom I most dread to see, let me meet him as Christ meets him. Let Christ meet him. He is my armor, I am hidden in Him. My weakness, my fear, my hostility will be covered by his strength, his courage, his love.

Contentment

1. Allow thyself to complain of nothing, not even the weather.

2. Never picture thyself to thyself under any circumstances in which you are not.

3. Never compare thine own lot with that of another.

4. Never allow thyself to dwell on the wish that this or that had been or were, otherwise than it was, or is. God Almighty loves thee better and more wisely than thou dost thyself.

5. Never dwell on the morrow. Remember that it is God's not thine. The heaviest part of sorrow often is to look forward to it. "The Lord will provide."

E. B. Pusey (1800-1882)

Displaying Grace in the Tough Times

By "guts" I mean grace under pressure.

Ernest Hemingway

Day by Day Grace

If and when a horror turns up you will then be given Grace to help you. I don't think one is usually given it in advance. "Give us our daily bread" (not an annuity for life) applies to spiritual gifts too; the little daily support for the daily trial. Life has to be taken day by day and hour by hour.

C. S. Lewis

Grace for Others

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 WM. FABER

Grace for the New Year

BE strong and of good courage ...

fear not, nor be dismayed;

for the Lord God, even my God, will be with thee;

He will not fail thee, nor forsake thee.

1 CHRONICLES 28:20

That we should serve in newness of spirit.

ROMANS 7:6

HELP us, O Lord! behold we enter

Upon another year today;

In Thee our hopes and thoughts now centre,

Renew our courage for the way;

New life, new strength, new happiness,

We ask of Thee; oh, hear, and bless !

JOHANN RIST

THE year begins; and all its pages are as blank as the silent years of the life of Jesus Christ. Let us begin it with high resolution; then let us take all its limitations, all its hindrances, its disappointments, its narrow and common-place conditions, and meet them as the Master did in Nazareth, with patience, with obedience, putting ourselves in cheerful subjection, serving our apprenticeship. Who knows what opportunity may come to us this year? Let us live in a great spirit, then we shall be ready for a great occasion.

GEORGE HODGES

Emmanuel

A sign shall be given
A virgin will conceive
A human baby bearing
Undiminished deity
The glory of the nations
A light for all to see
And hope for all who will embrace
His warm reality

(Chorus)
Emmanuel
Our God is with us
And if God is with us
Who could stand against us
Our God is with
Emmanuel

For all those who live in the shadow of death
A glorious light has dawned
For all those who stumble in the darkness
Behold your light has come

Emmanuel
Our God is with us
And if God is with us
Who could stand against us
Our God is with us
Emmanuel

So what will be your answer?
Oh, Will you hear the call?
Of Him who did not spare His son
But gave him for us all
On earth there is no power
There is no depth or height
That could ever separate us
From the love of God in Christ

Emmanuel
Our God is with us
And if God is with us
Who could stand against us
Our God is with us
Emmanuel

Emmanuel
Our God is with us
And if God is with us
Who could stand against us
Our God is with us
Emmanuel

Song by Michael Card

O Worship the King!

O worship the King, all glorious above,
O gratefully sing His power and His love;
Our Shield and Defender, the Ancient of Days,
Pavilioned in splendor, and girded with praise.

O tell of His might, O sing of His grace,
Whose robe is the light, whose canopy space,
His chariots of wrath the deep thunderclouds form,
And dark is His path on the wings of the storm.

The earth with its store of wonders untold,
Almighty, Thy power hath founded of old;
Established it fast by a changeless decree,
And round it hath cast, like a mantle, the sea.

Thy bountiful care, what tongue can recite?
It breathes in the air, it shines in the light;
It streams from the hills, it descends to the plain,
And sweetly distills in the dew and the rain.

Frail children of dust, and feeble as frail,
In Thee do we trust, nor find Thee to fail;
Thy mercies how tender, how firm to the end,
Our Maker, Defender, Redeemer, and Friend.

Immutable Character

"His ways are everlasting."--Habakkuk 3:6


What He hath done at one time, He will do yet again. Man's ways are variable, but God's ways are everlasting. There are many reasons for this most comforting truth: among them are the following--the Lord's ways are the result of wise deliberation; He ordereth all things according to the counsel of His own will. Human action is frequently the hasty result of passion, or fear, and is followed by regret and alteration; but nothing can take the Almighty by surprise, or happen otherwise than He has foreseen. His ways are the outgrowth of an immutable character, and in them the fixed and settled attributes of God are clearly to be seen. Unless the Eternal One Himself can undergo change, His ways, which are Himself in action, must remain for ever the same. Is He eternally just, gracious, faithful, wise, tender?--then His ways must ever be distinguished for the same excellences. Beings act according to their nature: when those natures change, their conduct varies also; but since God cannot know the shadow of a turning, His ways will abide everlastingly the same. Moreover there is no reason from without which could reverse the divine ways, since they are the embodiment of irresistible might. The earth is said, by the prophet, to be cleft with rivers, mountains tremble, the deep lifts up its hands, and sun and moon stand still, when Jehovah marches forth for the salvation of His people. Who can stay His hand, or say unto Him, What doest Thou? But it is not might alone which gives stability; God's ways are the manifestation of the eternal principles of right, and therefore can never pass away. Wrong breeds decay and involves ruin, but the true and the good have about them a vitality which ages cannot diminish.

This morning let us go to our heavenly Father with confidence, remembering that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever, and in Him the Lord is ever gracious to His people.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Hearken to Our Praises

ON our way rejoicing gladly let us go;
Conquered hath our Leader, vanquished is our foe!
Christ without, our safety! Christ within, our joy!
Who, if we be faithful, can our hope destroy?
On our way rejoicing as we homeward move,
Hearken to our praises, O Thou God of love!

J. B. S. MONSELL

Of the Father's Love Begotten

Of the Father’s love begotten, ere the worlds began to be,
He is Alpha and Omega, He the source, the ending He,
Of the things that are, that have been,
And that future years shall see, evermore and evermore

Thee let old men, thee let young men, thee let boys in chorus sing;
Matrons, virgins, little maidens, with glad voices answering:
Let their guileless songs re-echo,
And the heart its music bring, evermore and evermore!

Christ, to Thee with God the Father, and, O Holy Ghost, to Thee,
Hymn and chant with high thanksgiving, and unwearied praises be:
Honor, glory, and dominion,
And eternal victory, evermore and evermore!

Selections ~ By Aurelius Predentius (5th Century)