March 1, 2007
You must consider other relationships if you would understand that which is proper to the Bride. A slave feels fear before his lord; a hireling looks for wages; a pupil gives attention to his teacher; a son honours his father. But she who asks a kiss, she loves. Love is the highest of all gifts, supremely so when it is rendered back to God, who is its source. And the mutual sweet affection between the Word and the soul cannot more sweetly be expressed than by thus callng them the Bridegroom and the Bride. For between bride and bridegroom all is held in common; neither calls anything their own or possesses a single thing the other does not share. They have but one inheritance, one home, one table and one couch; they are in fact one flesh. Fitly then, the soul who loves is called the bride.
Bernard of Clairvaux
Biography
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Talks on the Song of Songs By Bernard of Clairvaux Bernard of Clairvaux, founder of the Cistercian monastic order, devoted eighteen years of his life to composing sermons on the Song of Songs, a brief, eight-chapter secular love song in the Old Testament. In his writings, St. Bernard looks beyond the obvious literal interpretations of the text, using the passionate poetry as a springboard into a major exposition of Scripture and a detailed analysis of the spiritual life. In this volume, Bernard Bangley presents a modern, accessible edition of St. Bernard's sermons, offering a glimpse of St. Bernard's personal spiritual experience as well as his theology. A list of recommended reading is included at the back of the book. Having taken an annual retreat with Cistercian monks for the past twenty years, where collections of St. Bernard's writings abound and silence prevails, Bernard Bangley notes that his book is "one of the fruits of Cistercian hospitality." |
March 2, 2007
Satan's number one weapon is pride. God's number one defense is humility.
Larry Burkett
Money Matters
March 3, 2007
Try to give your agenda to God. Keep saying, 'Your will be done, not mine.' Give every part of your heart and your time to God and let God tell you what to do, where to go, when and how to respond. God does not want you to destroy yourself. Exhaustion, burnout, and depression are not signs that you are doing God's will. God is gentle and loving. God desires to give you a deep sense of safety in God's love. Once you have allowed yourself to experience that love fully, you will be better able to discern who you are being sent to in God's name.
Henri J. M. Nouwen
Nouwen Centre
March 4, 2007
Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. To these I commit my day. If I succeed, I will give thanks. If I fail, I will seek his grace. And then when this day is done, I will place my head on my pillow and rest.
Max Lucado
Upwords
March 5, 2007
Flee temptation and don't leave a forwarding address.
Anonymous
March 5, 2007
Threatening our children or employees is evidence of a lack of true authority. The rewards and penalties should already be clear, and if there is disobedience, discipline should be administered the first time, not further threatening. If we have to threaten to compel our children or anyone else that we are in charge of to obey us, then somehow it has already been established that our "yes" did not really mean "yes," and our "no" did not really mean "no."
Rick Joyner
MorningStar Ministries
March 6, 2007
It is not a sign of weakness to look for confirmation. It is often a good idea to get a prayer partner who can validate your sense of God's will.
Jim Cymbala
The Brooklyn Tabernacle
March 7, 2007
The way to stimulate and provoke others unto good works is to strive to outrun them in the race. The way to rebuke the cold and indifferent is to be always full of zeal and 'abounding in the work of the Lord' yourself. Men will be much more ready to answer a call to come up to your level, than a command to advance beyond you.
Anonymous
March 8, 2007
Our entire being is fashioned as an instrument of praise. Just as a master violin maker designs an instrument to produce maximum aesthetic results, so God tailor-made our bodies, souls and spirits to work together in consonance to produce pleasing expressions of praise and worship. When we use body language to express praise, that which is internal becomes visible.
Don McMinn
March 9, 2007
Without the work of the Cross we would be quite helpless. The Cross enables us to come out free from under the heaviest and most powerful mental bondage. Not all the power of Satan, or sin, or habit can hold us captive any longer.
Tom Marshall
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Understanding Leadership By Tom Marshall Based on years of proven leadership and scholarly biblical insight, Tom Marshall opens up fresh perspectives on the essence of leadership. He describes how and why it is distinct from management, administration, or ministry and provides readers with the tools necessary to implement successful, long-term leadership. Christian leaders will find clear guidance on topics such as foresight, trust, criticism, caring, status, timing, failure, honor, and the dangers of power. Packed with contemporary examples and New Testament truths, this book also identifies the critical capacities and characteristics of a leader. It emphasizes lifestyle, attitudes, and relationships helping today's leaders foster interdependence while maintaining identity and integrity within their church, business, or community. |
March 10, 2007
There are seasons when to be still demands immeasurably higher strength than to act. Composure is often the highest result of power. To the vilest and most deadly charges Jesus responded with deep, unbroken silence, such as excited the wonder of the judge and the spectators. To the grossest insults, the most violent ill-treatment and mockery that might well bring indignation into the feeblest heart, He responded with voiceless complacent calmness. Those who are unjustly accused, and causelessly ill-treated, know what tremendous strength is necessary to keep silence to God.
Margaret Bottome
Biography
March 11, 2007
Many people not only lose the benefit, but are even the worse for their mortifications [i.e., sacrifices, abstensions],...because they mistake the whole nature and worth of them: they practice them for their own sakes, as things good in themselves, they think them to be real parts of holiness, and so rest in them and look no further, but grow full of a self-esteem and self-admiration for their own progress in them. This makes them self-sufficient, morose, severe judges of all those that fall short of their mortifications. And thus their self-denials do only that for them which indulgences do for other people: they withstand and hinder the operation of God upon their souls, and instead of being really self-denials, they strengthen and keep up the kingdom of self.
William Law
Biography And Works
March 12, 2007
Furnish thyself with arguments from the promises to enforce thy pravers, and make them prevalent with God. The promises are the ground of faith, and faith, when strengthened, will make thee fervent, and such fervency ever speeds and returns with victory out of the field of prayer...The mightier any is in the Word, the more mighty he will be in prayer.
William Gurnall
Online Works
March 13, 2007
Dear Father, take this day's life into Thine own keeping. Control all my thoughts and feelings. Direct all my energies. Instruct my mind. Sustain my will. Take my hands and make them skilful to serve Thee. Take my feet and make them swift to do Thy bidding. Take my eyes and keep them fixed upon Thine everlasting beauty. Take my mouth and make it eloquent in testimony to Thy love. Make this day a day of obedience, a day of spiritual joy and peace. Make this day's work a little part of the work of the Kingdom of my Lord Christ, in whose name these my prayers are said. Amen.
John Baillie
Biography
March 14, 2007
The cost of true greatness is humble, selfless, sacrificial service. The Christian who desires to be great and first in the kingdom is the one who is willing to serve in the hard place, the uncomfortable place, the lonely place, the demanding place, the place where he is not appreciated and may even be persecuted. Knowing that time is short and eternity is long, he is willing to spend and be spent. He is willing to work for excellence without becoming proud, to withstand criticism without becoming bitter, to be misjudged without becoming defensive, and to withstand suffering without succumbing to self pity.
John MacArthur
Grace to You
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Saved Without a Doubt: Being Sure of Your Salvation By John MacArthur With pastoral love and concern, John MacArthur carefully examines classical biblical texts affirming the forever quality of salvation, but does not ignore the troubling passages that seem to indicate otherwise. From there he shows how those truths apply to you by presenting eleven biblical tests to help determine whether you've experienced salvation once and for all. He concludes by showing how you can match up your feelings with your faith and by taking an encouraging look at victory in the Spirit and the promise of God to help you persevere.
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March 15, 2007
When life knocks you to your knees, and it will, why, get up! If it knocks you to your knees again, as it will, well, isn't that the best position from which to pray?
Anonymous
March 16, 2007
I have always believed that, when God touches a human being, the experience will survive three tests: 1.) The time test: The person touched by God will never be the same again...2.) The reality test: The soul which has been touched by God will not be drawn up into an other-worldly posture or into bowered ivory towers of private ecstasy but will be deepened in awareness of the world around...3.) The charity test: The human being who has opened to God's touch will be made more God-like by reason of that contact.
John Powell
Profile
March 17, 2007
Our problem is that we assume prayer is something to master the way we master algebra or auto mechanics. That puts us in the "on-top" position, where we are competent and in control. But when praying, we come "underneath," where we calmly and deliberately surrender control and become incompetent... The truth of the matter is, we all come to prayer with a tangled mass of motives altruistic and selfish, merciful and hateful, loving and bitter. Frankly, this side of eternity we will never unravel the good from the bad, the pure from the impure. God is big enough to receive us with all our mixture. That is what grace means, and not only are we saved by it, we live by it as well. And we pray by it.
Richard J. Foster
Brief Biography and List of Works
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Prayers from the Heart By Richard Foster Is your heart yearning for meaningful communion with God --- in the midst of your hectic day? With this beautiful collection of prayers and Foster's encouragement, you can develop a prayer life that's relevant and renewing to the moments of your day and events in your life. With prayers and meditations that express wonder and stillness you'll be able to look inward to your heart, reach upward to God, and move outward to care for those around you every day. |
Purchase Richard Foster Resources. Help support the DCQ mailing list as we receive a small percentage of every sale made from our book listings.
March 18-19, 2007
There are often bound to us, in the closest intimacy of social or family ties, natures hard and ungenial, with whom sympathy is impossible, and whose daily presence necessitates a constant conflict with an adverse influence. There are, too, enemies, - open or secret, - whose enmity we may feel yet cannot define. Our Lord, going before us in this hard way, showed us how we should walk. It will be appropriate to the solemn self-examination of the period of Lent to ask ourselves, Is there any false friend or covert enemy whom we must learn to tolerate, to forbear with, to pity and forgive?(continued tomorrow)
Jean Ingelow
Biography
March 20, 2007
The believer's death with Christ upon His Cross therefore means being crucified to the world in all its aspects. Not to be a miserable, joyless person, but one filled with the joy and glory of another world. It is not the "cross" that makes us miserable, but the absence of it. It is a delivering Cross - a Cross that liberates you to have the very foretaste of heaven in you, as already sharers of the power of the age to come.... Glory to God for the Cross that severs us from the world, and the world- spirit, and makes a way for us into another world where all is peace and joy and love.
Jessie Penn-Lewis
The Centrality Of The Cross
March 21, 2007
Someone gave me a bit of brick and a little slab of marble from Rome. It was wonderful to touch one of them and think, Perhaps the Apostle Paul or one of the martyrs touched this as they passed. But how much more wonderful is it to think that we have, for our own use, the very same sword our Lord used when the Devil attacked Him. [Brooke Foss] Westcott says "The Word of God" in Ephesians 6:17 means "a definite utterance of God". We know these "definite utterances" - we have the same Book that He had, and we can do as He did. So let us learn the "definite utterances" that they may be ready in our minds; ready for use at the moment of need - our sword which never grows dull and rusty, but is always keen and bright. So once more I say, let us not expect defeat but victory. Let us take fast hold and keep fast hold of our sword, and we shall win in any assault of the enemy.
Amy Carmichael
Biography And Bibliography
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God's Missionary By Amy Carmichael This little book seemed to set an utterly impossible standard. It was however, the same standard I found in the words of Jesus: If you want to be my disciple, you must give up right to yourself, take up the Cross, and follow. |
March 22, 2007
Prayer is asking for the rain and faith is carrying the umbrella.
Anonymous
March 23, 2007
We want, in fact, not so much a father in heaven as a grandfather in heaven: a senile benevolence who, as they say, "liked to see young people enjoying themselves" and whose plan for the universe was simply that it might be truly said at the end of each day, "a good time was had by all.
(Speaking of man's reluctance to accept God's correction and discipline.)
(Clive Staples) C. S. Lewis
Into The Wardrobe
March 24, 2007
You must learn, you must let God teach you, that the only way to get rid of your past is to make a future out of it. God will waste nothing.
Phillips Brooks
Biography
March 25, 2007
If I disobey the inner voice of His Spirit, I will lose the fullness. I can never lose the relationship, but I will lose the fullness. When there's disobedience in the Christian life the fullness ceases. He is there but He is grieved. And you soon know when you've lost the fullness, because the joy is gone. The fellowship is gone. The reality of the presence of Christ is gone. It's Satan's delight to tell me that once he's got me, he will keep me. But at that moment I can go back to Him. And I know that if I confess my sins, God is faithful and just to forgive me.
Alan Redpath
Brief Biography And List Of Works
March 26, 2007
Thou, O Lord, canst transform my thorn into a flower. And I want my thorn transformed into a flower. Job got the sunshine after the rain, but has the rain been all waste? Job wants to know, I want to know, if the shower had nothing to do with the shining. And Thou canst tell me - Thy Cross can tell me. Thou hast crowned Thy sorrow. Be this my crown, O Lord. I only triumph in Thee when I have learned the radiance of the rain.
George Matheson
Biography
March 27, 2007
Oh what a happy soul am I although I cannot see, I am resolved that in this world contented I shall be. How many blessings I enjoy that other people don't. To weep and sigh, because I'm blind? I cannot and I won't.
Fanny Crosby
Website
Read More about Fanny Crosby
March 28, 2007
The supreme test of goodness is not in the greater but in the smaller incidents of our character and practice; not what we are when standing in the searchlight of public scrutiny, but when we reach the firelight flicker of our homes; not what we are when some clarion-call rings through the air, summoning us to fight for life and liberty, but our attitude when we are called to sentry-duty in the grey morning, when the watch-fire is burning low. It is impossible to be our best at the supreme moment if character is corroded and eaten into by daily inconsistency, unfaithfulness, and besetting sin.
Frederick Brotherton ( F. B. ) Meyer
Online Works
March 29, 2007
Grace is the incomprehensible fact that God is well pleased with a man, and that a man can rejoice in God. Only when grace is recognized to be incomprehensible is it grace. Grace exists, therefore, only where the Resurrection is reflected. Grace is the gift of Christ, who exposes the gulf which separates God and man, and, by exposing it, bridges it.
Karl Barth
An Introduction to Karl Barth
March 30, 2007
...There is a season of establishing, settling and testing, during which we must "stay put" until the new relationship gets so fixed as to become a permanent habit. It is just the same as when the surgeon sets the broken arm. He puts it in splints to keep it from vibration. So God has His spiritual splints that He wants to put upon His children and keep them quiet and unmoved until they pass the first stage of faith. It is not always easy work for us, "but the God of all grace, who hath called us unto his eternal glory by Christ, after that ye have suffered awhile, stablish, strengthen, settle you.
A. B. Simpson
Biography/Bibliography
March 31, 2007
Never worry about numbers. Help one person at a time, and always start with the person nearest you.
Mother Teresa
Informational Website
February 2007 / April 2007
