Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Revival

“I do not preach any new truth. I do not have any new doctrine.... We must have a revival that will mean purity of heart as a normal standard for everybody. We must be clean people, and not only clean outside.”

~ A. W. Tozer

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

How much do you love the Lord?

"You only love Christ as much as the person you love the least."

~ Mother Teresa

Susanna's Rule

"Take this rule: whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, or takes off your relish of spiritual things; in short, whatever increases the strength and authority of your body over your mind, that thing is sin to you, however innocent it may be in itself."

~ Susanna Wesley (Letter, June 8, 1725)

Monday, April 28, 2008

No One is Hopeless

"When you say that a situation or a person is hopeless, you are slamming the door in the face of God."
~ Charles L. Allen

I'd like to add a quote I have kept on my computer monitor for years...from an unknown source.

"God's hand is not shortened that He cannot take the greatest apparent catastrophe and transform it for His glory."

Sunday, April 27, 2008

Soul, Body

"You don't have a Soul. You are a Soul. You have a body."

~ C.S. Lewis

Saturday, April 26, 2008

Faith...

Faith sees the invisible, believes the unbelievable, and receives the impossible.

~ Corrie Ten Boom

Faith is not...

"Faith is not a storm cellar to which men and women can flee for refuge from the storms of life. It is, instead, an inner force that gives them the strength to face those storms and their consequences with serenity of spirit."

~ Sam J. Ervin, Jr.

Friday, April 25, 2008

Love, Forgive, Faith and Hope

"To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless."

~ G. K. Chesterton

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Joy is...

"Joy is prayer - Joy is strength - Joy is love - Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls. God loves a cheerful giver. She gives most who gives with joy. The best way to show our gratitude to God and the people is to accept everything with joy. A joyful heart is the inevitable result of a heart burning with love. Never let anything so fill you with sorrow as to make you forget the joy of the Christ risen."

~ Mother Teresa

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Speck VS Log

"IF we see a speck in a brother's eye, we must first see if there is a log in our own eye; perhaps that speck in our brother's eye is only a reflection of the beam in our own."

~ David Watson

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Habits become...

"Habits are first cobwebs, then cables. The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken."

~ Samuel Johnson

Monday, April 21, 2008

Radiate Jesus

If we do not radiate the light of Christ around us, the sense of the darkness that prevails in the world will increase.

~ Mother Teresa

taken from Christian Acts of Kindness - The Random Acts of Kindness Foundation, Published by Grace House 1999

Sunday, April 20, 2008

Kindness

"I shall pass through this world but once. If, therefore, there be any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do, let me do it now, for I may never pass this way again."

~ from The Magnificent Obsession

Saturday, April 19, 2008

Kind Words and Sacrifice

Re: Mother Teresa
"I read an interview once during which she was asked this same question: How could she sacrifice so much? Her answer surprised me. She said it was a very silly question; her work was not about sacrifice at all, it was a sacred privilege that she had been given."

"Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are endless."
~ Mother Teresa

both taken from Christian Acts of Kindness - The Random Acts of Kindness Foundation, Published by Grace House 1999

Friday, April 18, 2008

Kids on Kindness

Jesus did about everything for us. Yes, it’s true. He even died for us. Jesus did all His kind deeds and miracles for us. Remember when you do a kind act, you’re doing something for Jesus.
~ Jeffery Wood, age nine

Kindness is the dove of God
Who overshadows the darkness,
As it glides along the earth with its silver wings.
Its golden eyes seek and destroy the darkness
And restore peace to the land.

~ Jim Tran, age ten

You should be kind to the world as God has been kind to you. God created the world. There are different ways to be kind to the world, like picking up garbage. I won’t tell you any more now. You think of some yourself.
~ Kara-Lynn Murphy, age seven

A fifth-grade boy writes: My act of kindness is small but pretty good. Every day, say at least one kind thing to everyone you talk to. This isn’t hard to do and it makes God, you, and the people you talk to feel good.

~ taken from Christian Acts of Kindness - The Random Acts of Kindness Foundation, Published by Grace House 1999

Thursday, April 17, 2008

How Should We Act in the World?

"To truly be a Christian means to act in the world as Christ would have acted. It means that we need to overcome our human frailties, rise above our petty concerns, and open our hearts to the very roots of our lives. It is a daunting task, one that we feel ill-equipped to perform in our current state. However, through Christ’s example we have received the simplest and most exquisite guide to living a meaningful life: Treat everyone, even the most debased sinner, with love and kindness. If we follow that simple path – love and kindness – we can never go wrong."

~ taken from Christian Acts of Kindness - The Random Acts of Kindness Foundation, Published by Grace House 1999

Christian Experience or Christian Vocabulary

Too many of us have a Christian vocabulary rather than a Christian experience. We think we are doing our duty when we're only talking about it.

~ Charles F. Banning

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Jesus is ALL you need

You may never know that JESUS is all you need, until JESUS is all you have.

~ Corrie Ten Boom

Give!

I don't know about you, but there have been times when I've felt the tugging on my heart to give and then I questioned myself as to whether it was wise to give when the recipient may not use the gift in the same way I would deem necessary. This quote below took the steam out of my thoughts...

"Then I took some time out to think about what Jesus would do and realized how simple He made it. He gave us the most perfect blueprint possible. He said, when asked, “Give!” We don’t have to assess a situation, figure out whether it is the real thing or not, worry about abuses or rip-offs. All we have to do is give. Pretty simple, eh?"

~ taken from Christian Acts of Kindness - The Random Acts of Kindness Foundation, Published by Grace House 1999

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Teaching about Prayer

Our Lord’s teaching about prayer is so amazingly simply but at the same time so amazingly profound that we are apt to miss His meaning. The danger is to water down what Jesus says about prayer and make it mean something more common sense; if it were only common sense, it was not worth His while to say it. The things Jesus says about prayer are supernatural revelation.

~ Oswald Chambers (Our Brilliant Heritage 116)

Generosity

"There is no such merchant as the charitable man; he gives trifles which he could not keep, to receive treasure which he cannot lose."

~ Francis Quarles

Monday, April 14, 2008

Love Until It Hurts

I have found the paradox that if I love until it hurts, then there is no hurt, but only more love.

~ Mother Teresa

Sunday, April 13, 2008

Only Hope...

"If you have been reduced to God being your only hope, You are in a good place."

~ Jim Laffoon

Saturday, April 12, 2008

Why Love?

I reach out to people because God has loved me and has asked me to love others in return, not because the people I am loving are “worthy” of love or because they’ll thank me for it in the end. It’s not for me to make judgments about their “worthiness.” I don’t know how I could do that anyway. It’s for me to love God by loving others.
~ Gary Thomas (Sacred Marriage: What if God Designed Marriage to Make Us Holy More than to Make Us Happy? page 188)

Friday, April 11, 2008

Work in God's Strength

Trying to do the Lord's work in your own strength is the most confusing, exhausting, and tedious of all work. But when you are filled with the Holy Spirit, then the ministry of Jesus just flows out of you.

~ Corrie Ten Boom

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Did You Know?

Have I mentioned how much I appreciate indoor plumbing?

ughhh...

"When you really feel like screaming, cursed with too much to do and too little help, remember that in manor houses of Edwardian England, the lower-ranked maids' daily duties included emptying and cleaning the family members' chamber pots with a vinegar-soaked rag kept for this purpose."

taken from - How to Clean Your Home Fast by Vicki Christian (page 67 )

Necessity versus Luxury

"Humans need Jesus Christ as a necessity and not as a luxury. You may be pleased to have flowers, but you must have bread.... Jesus is not a phenomenon, He is bread: Christ is not a curiosity, He is water. As surely as we cannot live without bread, we cannot live truly without Christ: If we know not Christ we are not living, our movement is a mechanical flutter, our pulse is but the stirring of an animal life."

~Joseph Parker

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

What is the Meaning of Suffering?

"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

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Travel Light

"We think we own our possessions, but too often they own us. Nothing makes a journey more difficult than a heavy backpack filled with nice but unnecessary things. Pilgrims travel light."

~ Randy Alcorn

Monday, April 7, 2008

A Whole Life!

D. L. Moody once said that at a certain meeting two and a half people were converted to Christ. A friend asked if he meant two adults and a child. The facts were just the opposite - two children and an adult. When a child is led to Christ, a whole life is saved!

~ Dwight L. Moody

Sunday, April 6, 2008

The Gift of a Child

"Dear God, I thank You for the gift of this child to raise, this life to share, this mind to help mold, this body to nurture, and this spirit to enrich. Let me never betray this child’s trust, dampen this child’s hope, or discourage this child’s dreams. Help me, dear God, to help this precious child become all you mean him to be. Let your grace and love fall on him like gentle breezes and give him inner strength and peace and patience for the journey ahead."

~ Marian Wright Edelman

What Good is Affliction?

The agony of man's affliction is often necessary to put him into the right mood to face the fundamental things of life. The Psalmist says. Before I was afflicted I went astray; but now I have kept Thy Word.

~ Oswald Chambers

Saturday, April 5, 2008

What Makes a Great Marriage?

Thank you Katie, for this quote:

"A great marriage is not when the 'perfect couple' comes together. It is when an imperfect couple learns to enjoy their differences."
~ Dave Meurer, "Daze of Our Wives"

How are We Meant to Live?

The Christian faith is meant to be lived moment by moment. It isn't some broad, general outline--it's a long walk with a real Person. Details count: passing thoughts, small sacrifices, a few encouraging words, little acts of kindness, brief victories over nagging sins.

~ Joni Eareckson Tada

Friday, April 4, 2008

God's Glory...

"A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word 'darkness' on the walls of his cell."

~ C. S. Lewis

Thursday, April 3, 2008

Gratitude

"Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it."

~ William Arthur Ward

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Children Are A Gift

"America needs no words from me to see how your decision in Roe v. Wade has deformed a great nation. The so-called right to abortion has pitted mothers against their children and women against men. It has portrayed the greatest of gifts - a child - as a competitor, an intrusion, and an inconvenience."
~Mother Teresa

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Created to be...

"You were created to be an instrument of God. When you are not being used as an instrument of God, neither you nor God will find satisfaction in your use. There is a word for things that are not used for their intended purpose it's call perversion. God created you for His own good. When you are used for bad your use is being perverted. And there is no satisfaction in perversion. Whether we're talking about perverting sex, perverting money, perverting time or perverting our lives there is no satisfaction in perversion."

~Randy Hunt

Who Is Your Peace?

"The Lord is my peace. I shall not live in anxiety. He puts me under his wing of comfort and calms my spirit within me. He takes all my anxieties on Himself and helps me to focus on Him. Yes, though I walk through a time of grave uncertainties and fierce anxieties, I will not fret-for You are my peace. Your Word and Your presence calm me now. You hold my uncertainties in the palm of Your hand. You soothe my anxious mind-You smooth my wrinkled brow. Surely serenity and trust in You shall fill me all the days of my life. And I shall keep my mind stayed on You forever."
~ Judy Booth