Great quotes from other folks about living well
“See the man at midnight [described in Luke 11:5-8]. Imitate that man. Act it all alone at midnight. Hear his loud cry, and cry it after him. He needed three loaves. What is your need? Name it. Name it out loud. Let your own ears hear it. . . . The shameful things you have to ask for. The disgraceful, the incredible things you have to admit and confess. The life you have lived. The way you have spent your days and nights. And what all that has brought you to. It kills you to have to say such things even with your door shut. Yes, but better say all these things in closets than have them all proclaimed from the housetops of the day of judgment. Knock, man! Knock for the love of God! Knock as they knock to get into heaven after the door is shut! Knock, as they knock to get out of hell!”
Alexander Whyte, “The Man Who Knocked At Midnight,” in Lord, Teach Us To Pray (New York, n.d.), pages 174-176.(via)
***
What do you have going for you when everything is against you? What will not fail you when what you thought was true and solid and real collapses beneath you? Who will stand by you when friends forsake you and enemies see their opportunity? What works when everything is on the line but nothing else is working?This experience is inevitable. We don’t have to go looking for it. It will come find us. God himself wrote it into our scripts. But when this happens, we are forced to ask the basic question: What can I count on when I can’t count on anything else?Psalm 139 is where to go for the answer. When David found himself in that catastrophic place, he dug down into the foundations of his very existence. This is the unchanging bedrock he found there:God, you know me (verses 1-6).God, you are with me (verses 7-12).God, you made me (verses 13-18).The psalm then turns on the hinge of verse 18b: “I awake, and I am still with you.” David wakes up from his contemplations, lost for awhile in his thoughts, and he is still with God as he returns mentally to “the real world” where nothing has changed. But he has changed. He has been renewed by meditating on God’s intensely personal care for him. His boldness returns:God, I am wholeheartedly for you (verses 19-24).“How precious to me are your thoughts, O God” (Psalm 139:17).(via)
***
Have you ever “gone out” in this way? If so, there is no logical answer possible when anyone asks you what you are doing. One of the most difficult questions to answer in Christian work is, “What do you expect to do?”You don’t know what you are going to do. The only thing you know is that God knows what He is doing(via)
***
Beams of heaven as I gothrough this wilderness belowguide my feet in peaceful waysturn my midnights into daysWhen in the darkness I would gropefaith always sees a star of hopeand soon from all life’s grief and dangerI shall be free somedayBurdens now may crush me downdisappointments, they’re all aroundtroubles speak in mournful sighsorrow through a tear-stained eyeThere is a world where pleasure reignsno mourning soul shall roam its plainsand to that land of peace in gloryI’ve got to go somedayI do not know how long it will benor what the future holds for mebut this I know, this I know:if Jesus leads meI shall go home someday(via)
***
Some will tell us that a man may receive spiritual life, and yet may die eternally. That is to say, a man may be forgiven, and yet be punished afterwards. He may be justified from all sin, and yet after that his transgression can be laid on his shoulders again. A man may be born of God, and yet die. A man may be loved of God, and yet God may hate him tomorrow. . . . As for me, I so deeply believe in the immutable love of Jesus that I suppose that if one believer were to be in hell, Christ himself would not long stay in heaven but would cry, "To the rescue!"
Charles Haddon Spurgeon, “The Two Effects of the Gospel,” 27 May 1855.(via)
***
Jesus said there are times when God cannot lift the darkness from you, but you should trust Him. At times God will appear like an unkind friend, but He is not; He will appear like an unnatural father, but He is not; He will appear like an unjust judge, but He is not. Keep the thought that the mind of God is behind all things strong and growing. Not even the smallest detail of life happens unless God’s will is behind it. Therefore, you can rest in perfect confidence in Him. Prayer is not only asking, but is an attitude of the mind which produces the atmosphere in which asking is perfectly natural. “Ask, and it will be given to you . . .” (Matthew 7:7).
***
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in Life Together, writes, “You are a sinner, a great, desperate sinner; now come, as the sinner that you are, to God who loves you. He wants you as you are; he does not want anything from you, a sacrifice, a work; he wants you alone. . . . You can hide nothing from God. The mask you wear before men will do you no good before him. He wants to see you as you are, he wants to be gracious to you.” God will give you the very blessings you ask if you refuse to go any further without them, but His silence is the sign that He is bringing you into an even more wonderful understanding of Himself. Are you mourning before God because you have not had an audible response? When you cannot hear God, you will find that He has trusted you in the most intimate way possible— with absolute silence, not a silence of despair, but one of pleasure, because He saw that you could withstand an even bigger revelation. If God has given you a silence, then praise Him— He is bringing you into the mainstream of His purposes. The actual evidence of the answer in time is simply a matter of God’s sovereignty. Time is nothing to God. For a while you may have said, “I asked God to give me bread, but He gave me a stone instead” (see Matthew 7:9). He did not give you a stone, and today you find that He gave you the “bread of life” (John 6:35).(via)
***
***
Personality is the characteristic mark of the inner, spiritual man, just as individuality is the characteristic of the outer, natural man. Our Lord can never be described in terms of individuality and independence, but only in terms of His total Person— “I and My Father are one” (John 10:30).(via)
***
In dealing with other people, our stance should always be to drive them toward making a decision of their will. That is how surrendering to God begins. Not often, but every once in a while, God brings us to a major turning point— a great crossroads in our life. From that point we either go toward a more and more slow, lazy, and useless Christian life, or we become more and more on fire, giving our utmost for His highest— our best for His glory.(via)
***
Leave the broken, irreversible past in His hands, and step out into the invincible future with Him.(via)