When Life Seems Out of Control

Circumstances may appear to wreck our lives and God's plans, but God is not helpless among the ruins. God's love is still working. He comes in and takes the calamity and uses it victoriously, working out His wonderful plan of love.

~ Eric Liddell

You Can Pray Anywhere

Brother, if you have two knees and even if you're stiffened up with arthritis so you can't get on your knees, you can look up in your heart. For prayer isn't getting on your knees—prayer is the elevation of the heart to God. That's all a man needs. You can pray in a prison, you can pray in an airplane, you can pray in a ship; you can pray anywhere and you can worship God, because it's Himself that we want, Himself.

~ A.W. Tozer

All things...

We may be sure that days of adversity, as well as days of prosperity, are full of blessing. The believer does not need to wait until he sees the reason of God's afflictive dealings with him [before] he is satisfied; he knows that all things work together for good to them that love God.

~ Hudson Taylor

It depends on how the gift is used

Water is a gift of God. Used properly, it gives life. Out of control, it floods, drowns, and destroys. Fire is a gift of God. Out of control, it brings horrible destruction and death. The greater a thing's potential for good when used rightly, the greater its potential for evil when used wrongly. So it is with money—it has vast potential to be used for either good or evil.

~ Randy Alcorn, (Money, Possessions and Eternity)

What is Your Pleasure

If your heart takes more pleasure in reading novels, or watching TV, or going to the movies, or talking to friends, rather than just sitting alone with God and embracing Him, sharing His cares and His burdens, weeping and rejoicing with Him, then how are you going to handle forever and ever in His presence... ? You'd be bored to tears in heaven, if you're not ecstatic about God now!

~ Keith Green

Cheap Grace

Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ.

~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

A Paradox

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

~ Mother Teresa

A Crisis Man

"Father, make of me a crisis man. Bring those I contact to decision. Let me not be a milepost on a single road; make me a fork, that men must turn one way or another on facing Christ in me."

~ Jim Elliot

What is Prayer?

"Prayer is not eloquence, but earnestness; not the definition of helplessness, but the feeling of it; not figures of speech, but compunction of soul."

~ Hannah More

Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. ~ Matthew 6:33:

Most Lasting Pleasure

"One of the most lasting pleasures you can experience is the feeling that comes over you when you genuinely forgive an enemy - whether he knows it or not."

~ O. A. Battista

A tale of woe...

"Sainthood emerges when you can listen to someone else's tale of woe and not respond with a description of your own."

~ Andrew V. Mason

As a Wife Who Should You Depend on?

"Your future depends on God, not on a fallen man. Your security rests with your caring Creator's providence, not with your husband's paycheck. Your acceptance as a person became secure when God adopted you, not when your husband proposed to you. If you truly want to love, motivate, and influence your husband, your first step must be to connect - and to stay connected - with God. Find your refuge, security, comfort, strength and hope in him."

~ Gary Thomas (Sacred Influence)

God is Using Your Marriage

"How is God using the reality of living with an imperfect man to teach you how to grow in patience and understanding? How is God using your marriage to an irritable man to teach you how to love angry people? How is God using your husband's sexual desires, your husband's vocational insecurities, or perhaps your husband's lack of social skills to teach you how to deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow him? How is he using your marriage to teach you how to love?

~ Gary Thomas (Sacred Influence)

Can You See Good in Your Husband?

"Can you see the good in your husband, even when he's at his worst? Can you pause long enough to see the hurt behind the heat and call him to his best? If you can learn to do that, you will move your man - directly into God's arms."

~ Gary Thomas (Sacred Influence)

Living with Your Spouse Involves...

"Part of living with someone is learning to accommodate them, and that includes all their nonsensical habits and rituals."

~ Gary Thomas (Sacred Influence)

You Can Only Create a Climate Conducive to Change

"...motivating a man isn't nearly as linear a process as programming a compute or fixing a car. People are shaped by degrees. You can't force someone to change, but you can create a climate conducive to change."

~ Gary Thomas (Sacred Influence)

To Confront Anger in Your Husband...

"...in order to confront anger in your man, you're going to need to put your own spiritual house in order; otherwise, you'll likely lack the strength, courage, and perspective to help your husband."

~ Gary Thomas (Sacred Influence)

How Were Wives Designed?

God designed you to live in a lifelong, committed relationship with one radically imperfect man. Can you trust God enough to believe that surrendering to this life - both the good and the seemingly negative or difficult - will, in the end, produce the most satisfying life possible: a love based in faith and built on a lifetime of memories, esteem from your children for holding your home together, and rewards from your heavenly Father for creating a family that testifies to his redemptive and reconciling love."

~ Gary Thomas (Sacred Influence)

Marriage is about...

"Marriage is about choosing to allow the strong points of your marriage to be the dominant points, the areas you choose to focus on."

~ Gary Thomas (Sacred Influence)

Obsess Beore You Say "I Do."

"The time to obsess over your husband's character is before you get married, not after. Once you exchange vows, you should focus only on your obligation to love."

~ Gary Thomas (Sacred Influence)

Don't Worry About...

Don't worry about what you do not understand... Worry about what you do understand in the Bible but do not live by.

~ Corrie Ten Boom

Marriage is about Sacrifice

"Whether your husband is spiritually mature, immature, or in between, your heavenly Father likely will call you to love him and to sacrifice on his behalf. Whether you feel frustrated by his apathy or burdened by his zeal, in the end it all comes down to the same thing: marriage is about sacrifice."

~ Gary Thomas (Sacred Influence)

What if Your Husband is Spiritually Weaker...

"If your husband is spiritually weaker than you are, your job is to bear with his failings in such a way that you build him up, not tear him down. Instead of assuming the worst, call him to his best."

~ Gary Thomas (Sacred Influence)

Satan's Plan for You

Satan has in fact a plan against the saints of the Most High which is to wear them out. What is meant by this phrase, "wear out"? It has in it the idea of reducing a little this minute, then reducing a little further the next minute. Reduce a little today, reduce a little tomorrow. Thus the wearing out is almost imperceptible; nevertheless, it is a reducing. The wearing down is scarcely an activity of which one is conscious, yet the end result is that there is nothing left. He will take away your prayer life little by little, and cause you to trust God less and less and yourself more and more, a little at a time. He will make you feel somewhat cleverer than before. Step by step, you are misled to rely more on your own gift, and step by step your heart is enticed away from the Lord. Now, were Satan to strike the children of God with great force at one time, they would know exactly how to resist the enemy since they would immediately recognize his work. He uses the method of gradualism to wear down the people of God.

~ Watchman Nee

What is Joy?

Joy is not the absence of suffering. It is the presence of God.

~ Robert Schuller

Where do you run for help?

Where do you run for help? When you are in trouble, what is your first instinct? Do you run to others or to God? Is it usually the counsel of another rather than the counsel found in waiting upon God in prayer? Why is this the way it is? Why do we run to man before we run to God?

~ Kay Arthur

When do you smell the sweetest?

Just as torches burn most brightly when swung to and fro; just as the juniper plant smells sweetest when flung into the flames; so the richest qualities of a Christian often come out under the north wind of adversity and suffering. Bruised hearts often emit the fragrance God loves to smell.

~ Anonymous

Tools Used by God

The little troubles and worries of life may be as stumbling blocks in our way, or we may make them stepping-stones to a nobler character and to Heaven. Troubles are often the tools by which God fashions us for better things.

~ Henry Ward Beecher

Children Learn from Parents

Take heed that the misdeeds for which thou correctest thy children be not learned them by thee. Many children learn that wickedness of their parents for which they beat and chastise them.

~ John Bunyan

What are you hungry for?

A man may study because his brain is hungry for knowledge, even Bible knowledge. But he prays because his soul is hungry for God.

~ Leonard Ravenhill

Why are we negligent?

Here, then, is the real problem of our negligence. We fail in our duty to study God's Word not so much because it is difficult to understand, not so much because it is dull and boring, but because it is work. Our problem is not a lack of intelligence or a lack of passion. Our problem is that we are lazy.

~ R. C. Sproul

God's Soldiers are trained...

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?

~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon