A New Year's Prayer
May God make your year a happy one!
Not by shielding you from all sorrows and pain,
But by strengthening you to bear it, as it comes;
Not by making your path easy,
But by making you sturdy to travel any path;
Not by taking hardships from you,
But by taking fear from your heart;
Not by granting you unbroken sunshine,
But by keeping your face bright, even in the shadows;
Not by making your life always pleasant,
But by showing you when people and their causes need you most,
and by making you anxious to be there to help.
God's love, peace, hope and joy to you for the year ahead.
Anonymous
January 2, 2005
Let us not be content to wait and see what will happen, but give us the determination to make the right things happen.
Peter Marshall
Spiritual Portrait
January 3, 2005
One of the most important responsibilities in the Christian life is to care about others, smile at them, and be a friend to the friendless.
James Dobson
Focus on the Family
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The New Strong-Willed Child |
January 4, 2005
Simply put, the word of the Bible has two characteristics: one, it can be easily understood, and two, it is high in quality. God's Word is so plain that even the blind will not lose his way nor will the cripple miss his step. The parables in God's word are never puzzles. God does not intend to make His Word a puzzle, hence His Word is clear and easily understandable.... God never says anything superficial, that is to say, God never says anything that is pleasing to men but lacking in spirit.
Watchman Nee
Website
January 5, 2005
No man knows how bad he is until he has tried to be good. There is a silly idea about that good people don't know what temptation means.
(Clive Staples) C. S. Lewis
Into The Wardrobe
January 6, 2005
God is always previous, God is always there first, and if you have any desire for God, and for the things of God, it is God himself who put it there.
A. W. Tozer
The Works of A. W. Tozer
January 7, 2005
A man who does nothing never has time to do anything.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
The Spurgeon Archive
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Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference? By Philip Yancey In his most powerful book since What's So Amazing about Grace? and The Jesus I Never Knew, Yancey probes the most fundamental, challenging, perplexing, and deeply rewarding aspect---the very heartbeat---of your relationship with God: prayer. In theory, prayer is the essential human act, a priceless point of contact between you and the God of the universe. In practice however, prayer is often frustrating, confusing, and fraught with mystery. Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference? explores the mysterious intersection where you and God meet and relate. Writing as a fellow pilgrim, Yancey explores the questions surrounding prayer that you may wonder about but not know how to express. Above all, Yancey shows you how to pray to a God who sees what lies ahead of you, knows what lies within you, and who invites you into an eternal partnership with Him---through prayer. |
January 8, 2005
self-preservation is the first law of nature, but self-sacrifice is the highest rule of grace.
Anonymous
January 9, 2005
Bad situations don't have to make us bitter-they can make us better! God can use the good, the bad, the happy, the sad to mold us into the people He wants us to be. Our goal should be to focus not on what man does to us but what God will do through us. Rest assured, what man may intend for evil, God will use for good.
Skip Heitzig
January 10, 2005
Just as the salt water of the sea is drawn upwards by the hot rays of the sun, and gradually takes on the form of clouds, and, turned thus into sweet and refreshing water, falls in showers on the earth (for the sea water as it rises upwards leaves behind it its salt and bitterness), so when the thoughts and desires of the man of prayer rise aloft like misty emanations of the soul, the rays of the Sun of Righteousness purify them of all sinful taint, and his prayers become a great cloud which descends from heaven in a shower of blessing, bringing refreshment to many on the earth.
Sadhu Sundar Singh
Short Biography
January 11, 2005
He that is impatient, and cannot wait on God for a mercy, will not easily submit to Him in a denial.
William Gurnall
Online Works
January 12, 2005
Laughter is the most beautiful and beneficial therapy God ever granted humanity.
Charles (Chuck) Swindoll
Insight For Living
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Great Days with the Great Lives By Charles R. Swindoll Developed from Swindoll's inspiring biographical series based on great leaders of the Bible, this devotional will remind you each day that God can do extraordinary things through ordinary men and women! Learn anew from the devoted lives and spiritual experiences of Esther, Job, Joseph, David, Moses, Elijah, and Paul More Chuck Swindoll Resources |
Those things that one cannot improve in himself or in others, he ought to endure patiently, until God arranges things otherwise. Nevertheless when you have such impediments, you ought to pray that God would help you, and that you may bear them kindly. Endeavor to be patient in bearing with the defects of others, whatever they are; for you also have many failings which must be borne by others. If you cannot make yourself be as you would like to be, how can you expect to have another person be to your liking in every way? We desire to have others perfect, and yet we do not correct our own faults. We would allow others to be severely corrected, and will not be corrected ourselves. We will have others kept under by strict laws, but in no case do we want to be restrained. And so it appears that we seldom weigh our neighbour in the same balance with ourselves.
Thomas a Kempis
Biography and Works
January 14, 2005
Howbeit your faith seeth but the black side of Providence, yet it hath a better side, and God shall let you see it. We know that all things work together for good to them that love God; hence I infer that losses, disappointments, ill tongues, loss of friends, houses or country, are God's workmen, set on work to work out good to you, out of everything that befalleth you. When the Lord's blessed will bloweth cross your desires, it is best, in humility, to strike sail to Him, and to be willing to be led any way our Lord pleaseth..
Samuel Rutherford
Selected Letters
January 15, 2005
Let no Christian parents fall into the delusion that Sunday School is intended to ease them of their personal duties. The first and most natural condition of things is for Christian parents to train up their own children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
The Spurgeon Archive
January 16, 2004
If we have not quiet in our minds, outward comfort will do no more for us than a golden slipper on a gouty foot.
John Bunyan
Online Library
January 17, 2004
From every pulpit in the land it needs to be thundered forth that God still lives, that God still observes,... still reigns. Faith is now in the crucible, it is being tested by fire, and there is no fixed... resting place for the heart and mind but in the Throne of God. What is needed now, as never before, is a full, positive, constructive setting forth of the Godhood of God.
Arthur W. Pink
Archive
January 18, 2005
Conscience comes to us in lonely hours; it wakens us in the night; it stands at the side of the bed and says, Come, wake up and listen to me! And there it holds us with its remorseless eye; and our buried sins rise out of the grave of the past; they march by in melancholy procession; and we lie in terror looking at them. Nobody knows but ourselves. Next morning we go forth to business with a smiling face; but conscience has had its revenge.
James Stalker
Writings
January 19, 2005
Christianity must be practical. Two children were afraid they would be late for school. One said, "Let's kneel down and pray to God that He may help us not to be late." The other child offered a more practical solution: "No, let's run and pray at the same time."
Anonymous
January 20, 2005
The ability to hear what God is saying, to see what God is doing, and to move in the realm of the miraculous comes as an individual develops the same intimacy with and dependence upon the Father. How did Jesus do what He did? The answer is found in His relationship with the Father. How will we do the 'greater works than these' which Jesus promised? By discovering the same relationship of intimacy, simplicity and obedience.
John Wimber
Doing The Stuff Website
January 21, 2005
Both sin and sickness came into the world through the fall of the human race. Therefore, we must look for the healing of both in the savior of the human race. God is as willing to heal believers as He is to forgive unbelievers. Know this, if He was merciful enough to forgive you when you were unconverted, He is merciful enough to heal you now that you are in His family!
T. L. Osborn
Website
January 22, 2005
We give ourselves to prayer. We preach a Gospel that saves to the uttermost, and we witness to its power. We do not argue about worldliness; we witness. We do not discuss philosophy; we preach the Gospel. We do not speculate about the destiny of sinners; we pluck them as brands from the burning. We ask no man's patronage. We beg no man's money. We fear no man's frown. Let no man join us who is afraid, and we want none but those who are saved, sanctified, and aflame.
Samuel Chadwick
Biography
January 23, 2004
The soul which has come into intimate contact with God in the silence of the prayer chamber is never out of conscious touch with the Father; the heart is always going out to Him in loving communion, and the moment the mind is released from the task upon which it is engaged, it returns as naturally to God as the bird does to its nest. What a beautiful conception of prayer we get if we regard it in this light.
Edward McKendree (E. M.) Bounds
Public Domain Texts
January 24, 2005
Loving a holy God is beyond our moral power. The only kind of God we can love by our sinful nature is an unholy god, an idol made by our own hands. Unless we are born of the Spirit of God, unless God sheds His holy love in our hearts, unless He stoops in His grace to change our hearts, we will not love Him... To love a holy God requires grace, grace strong enough to pierce our hardened hearts and awaken our moribound souls.
R. C. Sproul
Ligonier Ministries
January 25, 2005
No man or woman of the humblest sort can really be strong, gentle, pure and good without the world being better for it, without somebody being helped and comforted by the very existence of that goodness.
Phillips Brooks
Biography
January 26, 2005
The Christian life doesn't get easier; it gets better.
Anonymous
January 27, 2005
He asks nothing but death, and you desire nothing but life. How can you put up to Him a prayer for his grace, with a restriction that He shall only send it by a channel demanding no sacrifice on your part but ministering to the gratification of your carnal pride?
Francois Fenelon
Francois Fenelon Biography
January 28, 2005
Do everything in its own time; do everything in earnest; if it is worth doing, then do it with all your might. Above all, keep much in the presence of God. Never see the face of man until you have seen his face, who is our light, our all.
Robert Murray M'Cheyne
Online Information
January 29, 2005
There is an experience of the love of God which, when it comes upon us, and enfolds us, and bathes us, and warms us, is so utterly new that we can hardly identify it with the old phrase, God is love. Can this be the love of God, this burning, tender, wooing, wounding pain of love that pierces the marrow of my bones and burns out old loves and ambitions - God experienced is a vast surprise.
Thomas R. Kelly
January 30, 2005
Our wickedness shall not overpower the unspeakable goodness and mercy of God; our dullness shall not overpower God's wisdom, nor our infirmity God's omnipotence.
John of Kronstadt
Brief Biography
January 31, 2005
When as little children we have cuddled up into our mother's lap after a fall or a misfortune, and have felt her dear arms around us, and her soft kisses on our hair, we have had comfort. When, as grown-up people, after a hard day's work, we have put on our slippers and seated ourselves by the fire, in an easy chair with a book, we have had comfort. When, after a painful illness, we have begun to recover, and have been able to stretch our limbs and open our eyes without pain, we have had comfort. When someone whom we dearly love has been ill almost unto death, and has been restored to us in health again, we have had comfort. A thousand times in our lives probably, have we said, with a sigh of relief, as a toil over or burdens laid down, Well, this is comfortable, and in that word comfortable there has been comprised more a rest, and relief, and satisfaction, and pleasure, than any other word in the English language could possibly be made to express. We cannot fail, therefore, to understand the meaning of this name of God, the God of all comfort.
Hannah Whitall Smith
Online Books
December 2004 / February 2005 /
