Conference yukon::christian_v7

    Re: .0
    
    Jah, (God) is doing a new thing in me.
    
    
    
    Lorenzo
    

    "Before long there came to me also the two same questions you asked:
    How do I know there is a God at all? and How am I to know that such a
    man as Jesus ever lived?  I could answer neither. But in the meantime
    I was reading the story - was drawn to the Man, and was trying to
    understand his being, and character, and the principles of his life and
    action. To sum it all up, not many months had passed before I had
    forgotten to seek an answer to either question: they were in fact no
    longer questions. I had seen the man Jesus Christ, and in him had known
    the Father of him and of me."
    
    "My dear sir, no conviction can be got - or if it could be got, would be
    of any lasting value - through that dealer in secondhand goods the
    intellect. If by it we could prove there is a God, it would be of small
    avail indeed. We must see him and know him. And I know of no other way
    of knowing there is a God but that which reveals what he is - and that
    way is Jesus Christ as he revealed himself on earth, and as he is
    revealed afresh to every heart that seeks to know the truth about
    him"....
    
    "Your business," emphasized Polwarth, "is to acquaint yourself with the
    man Jesus: he will be to you the one to reveal the Father. Take your
    New Testament as if you had never seen it before, and read to find out.
    The point is, there was a man who said he knew God and that if you
    would give heed to him, you should know Him too. The record left of him
    is indeed scanty, yet enough to disclose what kind of man he was - his
    principles, his ways of looking at things, his thoughts of his Father
    and his brothers and the relations between them, of man's business in
    life, his destiny, and his hopes."
    
    
    
    
    George MacDonald, The Curate's Awakening, edited by Michael R. Phillips 
    (Minneapolis: Bethany House Publishers, 1985).  Originally published as
    Thomas Wingfold, Curate in 1876 by Hurst and Blackett Publishers,
    London.  

    "Blessed is the man who loves Thee, O God, and his friend in Thee and
    his enemy for Thee. For he alone loses no one who is dear to him, for
    all are dear in God, Who is never lost."           
    
                                              St. Augustine

		"Lord, send me anywhere, only go with me.
		Lay any burden on me, only sustain me.
		Sever any tie but the tie that binds me to Thyself."

    The words of David Livingston, the famous 19th century Missionary,
    inspire us to answer God's call.

    A woman in our church, sang those words, I wondered where they came
    from... they moved me to tears, caused me to pause for thought and
    rejoice that no matter how alone I am, God is with me!
    
    Thanks for sharing that!

    "'Be still, and know that I am God.' 'Be still.' But noone seemed to be
    still, these days. 'Be still!' ... It spoke of eternal verities, of
    eternal movement yet eternal rest. 'Be still.' Where could stillness be
    found in these days of fragmentation, of tiny little frantic pieces
    which could never seem to fit in a pattern that was meaningful? 'The
    more activities,' he thought, 'the less accomplished, the less
    serenity, the less significance.' Movement in itself, frenzied movement,
    louder and faster voices, more clicking heels moving rapidly but
    without purpose or real goal, more clatter, more pounding, more, more,
    more, always more, always 'new' - these had become the frenetic
    cacophony of the feverish way of modern mankind. Where, in this
    mechanical confusion, could man be still, and 'Know that I am God?'" 
    
    "Even when men were alone at night with themselves...they could not
    rest. Nameless anxiety filled them; they wondered, with a book idle on
    their knees, or in their beds, if they had left something important
    undone that day. And they certainly had left something undone: prayer,
    communication with God. The bright shadow of His wing hovered on their
    uneasy spiritual horizon, but they did not see it. Or perhaps they did
    see it, and were afraid. To contemplate God would negate that howling
    insistence from press and pulpit and books and magazines and radios to
    be up and doing, no matter how useless. Just to be doing. 'Keep busy!'
    exclaimed the psychiatrists, looking disapprovingly and with suspicion
    on the reflective man, who sat alone in blessed silence and thought.
    More, more, more. No longer were men's consciences perturbed about 
    evildoing or neglect of God. Conscience, too, had been perverted. Now it 
    demanded how many 'contacts' a man had had that day, how much money he 
    had been able to make, how 'adjusted' he had been, how 'social-minded', 
    how 'warm in human relationships.' To be deliberately idle, to be 
    deliberately alone and contemplative, was to be considered antisocial, a 
    mark of emotional disturbance....Was there a sinister pattern in this, too,
    so to fill a man's life with enormous trivialities and stupidities that in
    the house of his mind there was no room for God?"
    
    
    Taylor Caldwell, Tender Victory, (New York, McGraw-Hill Book Company,
    Inc., 1957) 
                                       

    "'Time is a storm. Times past and times to come, they heave and flow and
    leap their bounds like Wear. Hours are clouds that change their shapes
    before your eyes...But beyond time's storm and clouds there's timelessness.
    Godric, the Lord of Heaven changes not, and even when our view's most dark,
    he's there above us fair and golden as the sun.' And so it is."
    
    "'God's never gone,' my gentle, ailing Ailred said. 'It's only men go
    blind.'"
           
    
    
    Frederick Buechner, Godric, (Saddle Brook, American Book-Stratford
    Press, 1980)

    "...in trying to content himself beforehand with whatever fate the Lord
    might intend for him.  As yet he was more of a Christian philospher
    than a philosophical Christian.  The thing most disappointing to him he
    would treat as the will of God for him, and try to make up his mind to
    it, persuading himself it was the right and best thing - as if he knew
    it the will of God.  He was thus working in the region of supposition,
    and not of revealed duty; in his own imagination, and not in the will
    of God.  If this should not prove the will of God concerning him, then
    he was spending his strength for nought.  There is something in the
    very presence and actuality of a thing to make one able to bear it; but
    a man may weaken himself for bearing what God intends him to bear, by
    trying to bear what God does not intend him to bear.  The chief was
    forestalling the morrow like an unbeliever - not without some moral
    advantage, I dare say, but with spiritual loss.  We have no right to
    school ourselves to an imaginary duty.  When we do not know, then what
    He lays upon us is not to know, and to be content not to know."
    
    
    
    George MacDonald   (I don't remember which book - sorry).
    

    "And with that he saw how useless it would be to discuss the question
    with anyone who, not seeing God, had no desire to see Him.  The only
    good to be gleaned out of any discussion would have to come by sharing
    doubts and conjectures with another who shared the common desire of
    knowing and finding the truth.  Otherwise, the discussion would be but
    the vain exchange of differing viewpoints, leading nowhere."
    
    
    
    George MacDonald, (edited by Michael R. Phillips, The Curate's
    Awakening, Bethany House Publishers, Minneapolis, 1985). Originally
    published as Thomas Wingfold, Curate in 1876 by Hurst and Blackett
    Publishers, London.

"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that
 people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral
 teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.'  That is the one thing we
 must not say.  A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus
 said would not be a great moral teacher.  He would either be a lunatic -
 on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg - or else he would be
 the Devil of Hell.  You must make your choice.  Either this man was, and is,
 the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse.  You can shut Him up for
 a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His
 feet and call Him Lord and God.  But let us not come up with any patronising
 nonsense about His being a great human teacher.  He has not left that open to
 us.  He did not intend to." - C.S. Lewis

    We are and remain such creeping Christians, because we look at
    ourselves and not at Christ; because we gaze at the marks of our own
    soiled feet, and the trail of our own defiled garments....Each, putting
    his foot in the footprint of the Master, and so defacing it, turns to
    examine how far his neighbor's footprint corresponds with that which he
    still calls the Master's, although it is but his own. Or, having
    committed a petty fault, I mean a fault such as only a petty creature
    could commit, we mourn over the defilement to ourselves, and the shame
    of it before our friends, children, or servants, instead of hastening
    to make the due confession and amends to our fellow, and then,
    forgetting our own paltry self with its well-earned disgrace, lift up
    our eyes to the glory which alone will quicken the true man in us, and
    kill the peddling creature we so wrongly call our self.
    
    
    
    George MacDonald, An Anthology, C.S. Lewis, Editor (New York, MacMillan
    Publishing Co., Inc., 1978.)   [Unspoken Sermons, First Series, 
    The Eloi, 1867.]

    "Every one of us is something that the other is not, and therefore
    knows something - it may be without knowing that he knows it - which no
    one else knows: and...it is everyone's business, as one of the kingdom
    of light and inheritor in it all, to give his portion to the rest."
    
    
    
    
    George MacDonald, An Anthology, C.S. Lewis, Editor, (New York,
    Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc. 1978) [Unspoken Sermons, Third Series,
    The Inheritance, 1889]
                          

    "If God sees that heart corroded with the rust of cares, riddled into
    caverns and films by the worms of ambition and greed, then your heart
    is as God sees it, for God sees things as they are.  And one day you
    will be compelled to see, nay, to feel your heart as God sees it."
    
    
    
    
    George MacDonald, An Anthology, C.S. Lewis, Editor (New York, Macmillan
    Publishing Co., Inc., 1978)  [Unspoken Sermons, First Series, The Heart
    with the Treasure, 1867]
                            

    "Thy hand be on the latch to open the door at His first knock. Shouldst
    thou open the door and not see Him, do not say He did not knock, but
    understand that He is there, and wants thee to go out to Him.  It may
    be He has something for thee to do for Him.  Go and do it, and perhaps
    thou wilt return with a new prayer, to find a new window in thy soul."
    
    
    
    
    George MacDonald, An Anthology, C.S. Lewis, Editor, (New York,
    Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1978)  [Unspoken Sermons, Third Series,
    Righteousness, 1889.]

    Hours later the Un-man [Weston] began to speak.  It did not even
    look in Ransom's direction; slowly and cumberously, as if by some
    machinery that needed oiling, it made its mouth and lips pronounce
    his name.

    "Ransom," it said.

    "Well?" said Ransom.

    "Nothing," said the Un-man.  He shot an inquisitive glance at it. 
    Was the creature mad?  But it looked, as before, dead rather than
    mad, sitting there with head bowed and the mouth a little open,
    and some yellow dust from the moss settled in the creases of its
    cheeks, and the legs crossed tailor-wise, and the hands, with
    their long metallic-looking nails, pressed flat together on the
    ground before it.  He dismissed the problem from his mind and
    returned to his own uncomfortable thoughts.

    "Ransom," it said again.

    "What is it?" said Ransom sharply.

    "Nothing," it answered.

    Again there was silence; and again, about a minute later, the
    horrible mouth said:

    "Ransom!"  This time he made no reply.  Another minute and it
    uttered the name again; and then, like a minute gun, "Ransom...
    Ransom... Ransom...," perhaps a hundred times.

    "What the hell do you want?" he roared at last.

    "Nothing," said the voice.  Next time he determined not to answer;
    but when it had called on him a thousand times he found himself
    answering whether he would or no, and "Nothing," came the reply. 
    He taught himself to keep silent in the end: not that the torture
    of resisting his impulse to speak was less than the torture of
    response but because something within him rose up to combat the
    tormentor's assurance that he must yield in the end.  If the
    attack had been of some more violent kind it might have been
    easier to resist.  What chilled and almost cowed him was the union
    of malice with something nearly childish.  For temptation, for
    blasphemy, for a whole battery of horrors, he was in some sort
    prepared: but hardly for this petty, indefatigable nagging as of
    a nasty little boy at a preparatory school.  Indeed no imagined
    horror could have surpassed the sense which grew within him as the
    slow hours passed, that this creature was, by all human standards,
    inside out - its heart on the surface and its shallowness at the
    heart.  On the surface, great designs and antagonism to Heaven
    which involved the fate of worlds: but deep within, when every
    veil had been pierced, was there, after all, nothing but a black
    puerility, an aimless empty spitefulness content to sate itself
    with the tiniest cruelties, as love does not disdain the smallest
    kindness?  What kept him steady, long after all possibility of
    thinking about something else had disappeared, was the decision
    that if he must hear either the word Ransom, or the word Nothing a
    million times, he would prefer the word Ransom.

       .
       .
       .
    Then all at once it was night.  "Ransom... Ransom... Ransom...
    Ransom" went on the voice.  And suddenly it crossed his mind that
    though he would some time require sleep, the Un-man might not.

    "By the end of the month it had dawned on him that the peace of Jesus
    must have been a peace that came from doing the will of his Father. 
    From the account he gave of the discoveries he then made, I will
    venture to represent them here. They were these Jesus taught:
      First - That a man's business is to do the will of God.
      Second - That God will care for the man.
      Third - That a man, therefore, must not be afraid but be at peace;
              and so,
      Fourth - be left free to love God with all his heart, and his
               neighbor as himself."
    
    
    
    
    George MacDonald, The Musician's Quest, Michael R. Phillips, Editor
    (Minneapolis, Bethany House Publishers, 1984). [Originally published in
    1968 under the title of Robert Falconer by Hurst and Blackett, London.]
    

    "Let patience have her perfect work. Statue under the chisel of the
    sculptor, stand steady to the blows of his mallet. Clay on the wheel,
    let the fingers of the divine potter model you at their will. Obey the
    Father's lightest word: hear the Brother who knows you and died for
    you."
    
    
    
    
    George MacDonald, An Anthology, C.S. Lewis, Editor (New York, Macmillan
    Publishing Co., Inc., 1978) [Unspoken Sermons, Third Series,
    Righteousness, 1889].

    "But how can we love a man or a woman who is cruel and unjust to us? -
    who sears with contempt, or cuts off with wrong every tendril we would
    put forth to embrace? - who is mean, unlovely, carping, uncertain,
    self-righteous, self-seeking, and self-admiring? - who can even sneer,
    the most inhuman of human faults, far worse in its essence than mere
    murder?
    
    These things cannot be loved. The best man hates them most; the worst
    man cannot love them. But are these the man? Does a woman bear that
    form in virtue of these? Lies there not within the man and the woman a
    divine element of brotherhood, of sisterhood, a something lovely and
    lovable - slowly fading, it may be, dying away under the fierce heat of
    vile passions, or the yet more fearful cold of selfishness - but there?
    Shall that divine something - which, once awakened to be its own holy
    self in the man, will loathe these unlovely things tenfold more than we
    loathe them now - shall this divine thing have no recognition from us?
    
    It is the very presence of this fading humanity that makes it possible
    for us to hate....We hate the man just because we are prevented from
    loving him. We push over the verge of the creation - we damn - just
    because we cannnot embrace. For to embrace is the necessity of our
    deepest being. That foiled, we hate.
    
    Yet within the most obnoxious to our hate, lies that which, could it
    but show itself as it is, and as it will show itself one day, would
    compel from our hearts a devotion of love. It is not the unfriendly, the 
    unlovely, that we are told to love, but the brother, the sister, who is 
    unkind, who is unlovely. Shall we leave our brother to his desolate fate? 
    Shall we not rather say, 'With my love at least you shall be compassed 
    about, for you have not your own lovingness to infold you; love shall come
    as near you as it may; and when yours comes forth to meet mine, we shall 
    be one in the indwelling God'?...
    
    Begin to love now, and help him into the loveliness which is his."
    
    
    
    
    George MacDonald, Creation in Christ, edited by Rolland Hein, (Wheaton,
    Harold Shaw Publishers, 1976). [The Unspoken Sermons first published in
    three volumes, 1870, 1885, and 1891.]
                          

    "The next hour, the next moment, is as much beyond our grasp and as
    much in God's care, as that a hundred years away. Care for the next
    minute is just as foolish as care for the morrow, or for a day in the
    next thousand years - in neither can we do anything, in both God is
    doing everything. Those claims only of the morrow which have to be
    prepared today are of the duty of today: the moment which coincides
    with work to be done, is the moment to be minded; the next is nowhere
    till God has made it."
    
    
    
    
    
    
    George MacDonald, An Anthology, Edited by C.S. Lewis, (New York,
    Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc. 1978).  [Unspoken Sermons, Second
    Series, The Cause of Spiritual Stupidity, 1885.]

    "But if God is so good as you represent Him, and if He knows all that
    we need, and better far than we do ourselves, why should it be
    necessary to ask Him for anything?" I answer, What if He knows Prayer
    to be the thing we need first and most? What if the main object in
    God's idea of prayer be the supplying of our great, our endless need -
    the need of Himself?...Hunger may drive the runaway child home, and he
    may or may not be fed at once, but he needs his mother more than his
    dinner. Communion with God is the one need of the soul beyond all other
    need: prayer is the beginning of that communion, and some need is the
    motive of that prayer....So begins a communion, a taking with God, a
    coming-to-one with Him, which is the sole end of prayer, yea, of
    existence itself in its infinite phases. We must ask that we may
    receive: but that we should receive what we ask in respect of our lower
    needs, is not God's end in making us pray, for He could give us
    everything without that: to bring His child to his knee, God withholds
    that man may ask.
    
    
    
    
    
    
    George MacDonald, An Anthology, Edited by C.S. Lewis, (New York,
    Macmillan Publishing, 1978). [Unspoken Sermons, Second Series, The Word
    of Jesus on Prayer, 1885].
    

    Perhaps, indeed, the better the gift we pray for, the more time is
    necessary for its arrival. To give us the spiritual gift we desire, God
    may have to begin far back in our spirit, in regions unknown to us, and
    do much work that we can be aware of only in the results; for our
    consciousness is to the extent of our being but as the flame of the
    volcano to the world-gulf whence it issues; in the gulf of our unknown
    being God works behind our consciousness. With His holy influence, with
    His own presence (the one thing for which most earnestly we cry) He may
    be approaching our consciousness from behind, coming forward through
    regions of our darkness into our light, long before we begin to be aware
    that He is answering our request - has answered it, and is visiting His
    child.
    
    
    
    George MacDonald, An Anthology, edited by C.S. Lewis, (New York,
    Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1978)  [Unspoken Sermons, Second
    Series, Man's Difficulty Concerning Prayer, 1885].

	The following is an excerpt from the book: The Applause of Heaven
						   by Max Lucado




		It's a prophetic picture of the final day: "Many
	will say to me on that day,'Lord,Lord did we not prophesy
	in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform
	miracles?'"
		Astounding. These people are standing before the
	throne of God and bragging about themselves.  The great 
	trumpet has sounded, and they are still tooting their
	own horns.  Rather than sing his praises, they sing their
	own.  Rather than worship God, they read their resumes.
	When they should be speechless, they speak.  IN the very 
	aura of the King they boast of self.  What is worse--their
	arrogance or their blindness?

		You don't impress the officials of NASA with a 
	paper airplane.  You don't boast about your crayon sketches
	in the presence of Picasso.  You don't claim equality with
	Einstein because you can write "H2O."  And you don't boast
	about your goodness in the presence of the Perfect.

		"Then I will tell them plainly,'I never knew you.
	Away from me, you evildoers.'"

		Mark it down. God does not save us because of
	what we have done.  Only a puny god could be bought with
	tithes.  Only an egotistical god would be impressed with 
	our pain.  Only a tempermental god would be satisfied with 
	sacrafices.  Only a heartless god would sell salvation to
	the highest bidders.

		And only a great God does for his children what 
	they can't do for themselves.
    

Hey folks,

In my teacher's guide for this Sunday's bible study, I was reading the author's
introduction.  The passage is Ephesians 5:1-20.  The topic is "New Behavior"
(one  of a series of "new" things in the Christian life).  Several of the
author's statements (based upon this passage) struck me as being particularly
well said and unlike so many things today, very direct and simple to understand.

"...Paul was writing primarily to Gentile converts in the Ephesian Church. He
was dealing with their new behavior as God's children...*Our effectiveness as
Christians is only as good as our behavior as Christians*.  No one can ignore
what God demands and, at the same time, expect God's blessings.  Too many 
Christians readily adopt society's behavior patterns instead ofa lifestyle
built on biblical standards..."

..."A look at Paul's life reveals that his effectiveness as a Christian came
out of his character and commitment after his conversion."

"God had a purpose when He called us to service in His kingdom.  He knew what
we needed in that special service...Our salvation from God and our service for
Him both are cooperative efforts with Him.  He cannot save us without our
submission.  We cannot serve Him without His leadership."

"God's plan is that our lives will undergird and enhance our ministries for
Him. His work requires a certain kind of behavior that issues from our
salvation experience but is not an automatic result of it.  We have to be
involved in and work at God's behavior pattern in order for it to become a
reality in our lives."

    Swami Shivananda, a famous swami in India, used to tell his disciples:
    "Kill the mind and then, and then only, can you meditate."  The
    Christian position is "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy
    mind" - the intellectual nature; "with all thy heart" - the emotional
    nature; "with all thy soul" - the willing nature; and "with all thy
    strength" - the physical nature.  The total person is to love him -
    mind, emotion, will, strength.  But the "strength" might mean the
    strength of all three.  Some love him with the strength of the mind
    and the weakness of the emotion - the intellectualist in religion; some
    love him with the strength of emotion and the weakness of the mind -
    the sentimentalist in religion; some love him with the strength of the
    will and the weakness of emotion - the man of iron who is not very
    approachable.  But loving God with the strength of the mind, the
    strength of the emotion, and the strength of the will - that makes the
    truly Christian and the truly balanced and the truly strong character.
    
    
    
    
    
    
    E. Stanley Jones, Song of Ascents (Nashville: Abingdon, 1968), p. 189.
    
    

    When we read the lives of the saints, we are struck by a certain large
    leisure which went hand in hand with a remarkable effectiveness.  They
    were never hurried; they did comparatively few things, and these not
    necessarily striking or important; and they troubled very little about
    their influence.  Yet they always seemed to hit the mark; every bit of
    their life told; their simplest actions had a distinction, an
    exquisiteness which suggested the artist.  The reason is not far to
    seek.  Their sainthood lay in their habit of referring the smallest
    actions to God.  They lived in God; they acted from a pure motive of
    love towards God.  They were as free from self-regard as from slavery
    to the good opinion of others.  God saw and God rewarded: what else
    needed they?  They possessed God and possessed themselves in God. 
    Hence the inalienable dignity of these meek, quiet figures that seem to
    produce such marvelous effects with such humble materials.
    
    
    
    
    E. Herman, Creative Prayer (Cincinnati: Forward Movement. n.d.), p. 16.
    

    Re.24               
    
    The term that Swami Shivananda uses for 'mind' and the Christian term
    for 'mind' in the Bible are totally different.  
    
    When Swamiji talks about 'mind', it is a reference to the ego-mind (the 
    'self'), not the 'mind' that one is able to love and contemplate God 
    with.  
    
    Therefore, the statement 'Kill the mind and then, and then only, can 
    you meditate.' is closer to and similar to, "Let go and let God."
    
    There is an equivalent to "love God with all thy mind' in yoga, and
    that is referred to as 'Jnana Yoga', the loving of God through
    knowledge and intellect.  This is different from the way Swamiji 
    refers to 'mind' in the quote.
    
    Cindy

    "What have you done this day because it was the will of Christ?  Have
    you dismissed, once dismissed, an anxious thought for the morrow?  Have
    you ministered to any needy soul or body, and kept your right hand from
    knowing what your left hand did?  Have you begun to leave all and
    follow Him?  Did you set yourself to judge righteous judgment?  Are you
    being wary of covetousness?  Have you forgiven your enemy?  Are you
    hungering and thirsting after righteousness?  Have you given to some one
    that asked of you?"
    
    
    
    
    George MacDonald, Edited by Rolland Hein, Creation in Christ,
    (Wheaton: Harold Shaw Publishers, 1976). From the Unspoken Sermons first
    published in three volumes, 1870, 1885, 1891.  

                "Obedience *always* knows the will of God."
    
    Pastor Jack Trieber
    North Valley Baptist Church
    Sermon:  "How to make Godly Decisions"

    "What can be said about man's part in this great work but that he must
    continually surrender himself and continually trust? But when we come
    to God's side of the question, what is there that may not be said as to
    the manifold and wonderful ways, in which He accomplishes the work
    entrusted to Him? It is here that the growing comes in. The lump of
    clay could never grow into a beautiful vessel if it stayed in the clay
    pit for thousands of years; but when it is put into the hands of the
    skilful potter it grows rapidly, under his fashioning, into the vessel
    he intends it to be. And in the same way the soul, abandoned to the
    working of the Heavenly Potter, is made into a vessel unto honor,
    sanctified, and meet for the Master's use. 
    
    Having, therefore, taken the step of faith by which you have put
    yourself wholly and absolutely into His hands, you must now expect Him
    to begin to work. His way of accomplishing that which you have
    entrusted to him may be different from your way; but He knows, and you
    must be satisfied.
    
    I knew a lady who had entered into this life of faith with a great
    outpouring of the Spirit, and a wonderful flood of light and joy. She
    supposed, of course, this was a preparation for some great service, and
    expected to be put forth immediately into the Lord's harvest field.
    Instead of this, almost at once her husband lost all his money, and she
    was shut up in her own house to attend to all sorts of domestic duties,
    with no time or strength left for any Gospel work at all. She accepted
    the discipline, and yielded herself up as heartily to sweep, and dust,
    and bake, and sew, as she would have done to preach, or pray, or write
    for the Lord. And the result was that, through this very training, He
    made her into a vessel 'meet for the master's use, and prepared unto
    every good work.'
    
    Another lady, who had entered this life of faith under similar
    circumstances of wondrous blessing, and who also expected to be sent
    out to do some great work, was shut up with two peevish invalid
    children to nurse, and humor, and amuse all day long. Unlike the first
    one, this lady did not accept the training, but chafed and fretted, and
    finally rebelled, lost all her blessing, and went back into a state of
    sad coldness and misery. She had understood her part of trusting to
    begin with, but, not understanding the Divine process of accomplishing
    that for which she had trusted, she took herself out of the hands of
    the Heavenly Potter, and the vessel was marred on the wheel....
    
    ...In the divine order, God's working depends upon our co-operation. Of
    our Lord it was declared that at a certain place He could do there no
    mighty work because of their unbelief. It was not that He would not,
    but He could not. I believe we often think of God that He will not,
    when the real truth is that He cannot. Just as the potter, however
    skilful, cannot make a beautiful vessel out of a lump of clay that is
    never put into his hands, so neither can God make out of me a vessel
    unto His honor unless I put myself into His hands. My part is the
    essential correlation of God's part in the matter of my salvation; and
    as God is sure to do His part all right, the vital thing for me is to
    find out what my part is, and then do it."
    
    
    
    Hannah Whitall Smith, The Christian's Secret of a Happy Life,
    (Tarrytown, Fleming H. Revell Company). 

Thanks Rebecca - much appreciated.

							Andrew

    "Up, sanctify the people," is always God's command. "Lie down and be
    discouraged," is always our temptation. Our feeling is that it is
    presumptuous, and even almost impertinent, to go at once to the Lord,
    after having sinned against Him. It seems as if we ought to suffer the
    consequences of our sin first for a little while, and endure the
    accusings of our conscience; and we can hardly believe that the Lord
    *can* be willing at once to receive us back into loving fellowship with
    Himself.
    
    A little girl once expressed this feeling to me, with a child's
    outspoken candor. She had asked whether the Lord Jesus always forgave
    us our sins as soon as we asked Him, and I had said, "Yes, of course He
    does." "*Just* as soon?" she repeated doubtingly. "Yes," I replied,
    "the very minute we ask, He forgives us." "Well," she said
    deliberately, "I cannot believe that. I should think He would make us
    feel sorry for two or three days first. And then I should think He
    would make us ask Him a great many times, and in a very pretty way too,
    not just in common talk. And I believe that *is* the way He does, and
    you need not try to make me think He forgives me right at once, no
    matter what the Bible says." She only said what most Christians think,
    and what is worse, what most Christians act on, making their
    discouragement and their very remorse separate them infinitely further
    off from God than their sin would have done. Yet it is so totally
    contrary to the way we like our children to act toward us, that I
    wonder how we ever could have conceived such an idea of God. How a
    mother grieves when a naughty child goes off alone in despairing
    remorse, and doubts her willingness to forgive; and how, on the other
    hand, her whole heart goes out in welcoming love to the repentant
    little one who runs to her at once and begs her forgiveness! Surely our
    God felt this yearning love when He said to us, "Return, ye backsliding
    children, and I will heal your backslidings."
    
    The fact is, that the same moment which brings the consciousness of sin
    ought to bring also the confession and the consciousness of
    forgiveness.
    
    
    
    
    
    
    Hannah Whitall Smith, The Christian's Secret of a Happy Life,
    (Tarrytown, Fleming H. Revell Company)

  From Tal Brooke's "When the World Will Be as One"
     Chapter 11 - The Halls of Caricature

  ...Indeed, as a major Ivy League seminary deducted in a required theology
  class, the cause of societal evil can be boiled down to the patriarchal
  system, especially as seen with white men who are "chronic
  oppressors."...

  ...Implicit in this is that women would have done a far better job.  They
  would have created utopia if given the chance.  The new myth is this:
  "Women's superior "caringness," "nurturingness," and "feminine intuition
  and attunement to earth rhythms" would never have allowed war or other
  forms of oppression...

  ...Are women less bent than men, or are their dark sides merely expressed
  differently,... A woman may not necessarily be physically violent with
  another woman, but she can be coercive, manipulative, treacherous, and
  jealous.  She can oppress her fellow sisters as much as the most abusive
  of men....

  ...For example, imagine you are a college girl going to the campus
  women's center run by older women.  Most universities have them.  There
  are no men's centers.  Women's solidarity is in view.  The center shows
  an endless round of films and seminars on domestic violence and wife
  abuse, then films on fathers molesting daughters.  After a while, your
  only perception of men will be a reductionist stereotype that denies all
  differences among men as individuals.  Suddenly all men will seem almost
  biologically predetermined to rape and abuse women.  Marrying one of them
  would be like marrying a wild animal
    If the young college girl in question is truly hurting in side from a
  dysfunctional family, perhaps a remote or alcoholic parent, then she is
  even more vulnerable.  But rather than being helped, in the long run she
  will be more alienated and angry.  Women's groups use a legitimate
  argument that women are abused, then they engage in overkill.  They fail
  to show the 20-to-1 other instances of homes in which men to NOT abuse
  women for each one they show that is abusive.
    After this "conscienceness-raising" process at the women's center, the
  average college girl will harbor such anger that her chances of a
  workable marriage are further lessened.  If the man is less than perfect,
  it is almost doomed -- especially if he has some anger of his own.  The
  woman is now trigger sensitive about male abuses and on the lookout for
  infractions.  Rather than exhibiting trust, the relationship will be
  based on acute suspicion....

 "If you think sin is fun, wait til you try holiness"



 Heard that in a message by John MacCarthur this morning..





Jim

    "America is great because she is good.  If America ceases to be good,
    she will no longer be great." - Alexis de Tocqueville
    
    "If God doesn't judge America, He'll have to apologize to Sodom and
    Gomorrah." - Billy Graham

   I asked God to take away my pride, and God said "No".
	He said it was not for Him to take away, but for me to give up.
   I asked God to make my handicapped body whole, and God said "No".
	He said my spirit is whole, my body is only temporary.
   I asked God to grant me patience, and God said "No".
	He said that patience is a by-product of tribulation.
	It isn't granted, it's earned.
   I asked God to give me happiness, and God said "No".
	He said He gives blessings and happiness is up to me.
   I asked God to spare me pain, and God said "No".
	He said "Suffering draws you apart from worldly cares and 
	brings you closer to Me."
   I asked God to make my spirit grow, and God said "No".
	He said that I must grow on my own,
	but He will prune me to make me fruitful.
   I asked God if He loves me, and God said "Yes".
	He gave me His only Son who died for me (yes, even me!*),
	and I will be in heaven someday because I believe.
   I asked God to help me love others as much as He loves me.
	And God said "Ah, finally you have the idea!"
							[Source unknown]
   * added by me.

Thanks Ron - that's impressive.  Can I print & use, please?

							Andrew

Beautiful.  Thank you.

In case you missed it the first time, here's one of my favorite Chuck Missler
quotes in full (emphasis is mine):
    
"The most important discovery of my life was the insight that the Bible is a
highly *integrated message system.*  We possess 66 books, penned by 40 authors
over thousands of years, yet the more we investigate, the more we discover
that they are a unified whole.  Every word, every detail, every number, every
place and name, the elemental structures within the text itself, even the
implied punctuation are clearly the result of intricate and skillful
supernatural 'engineering.'  The more we look, the more we realize that there
is still much more hidden and thus reserved for the diligent inquirer.  Would
you expect anything less in the Word of God Himself?"

    
    Found a bunch in my women's devotional calendar that I like.
    
    "Whatever gifts you have been given, whatever likes or talents,
    use them, give them, spend yourself on God's world as Jesus 
    spent Himself on you."

    
    "God has called you to be a very specific, very special person, and
    your story, your life, is a testimony to God's goodness, His grace,
    His forgiveness."

    
    "We think our bad has to be full before we can share love and
    encouragement with others.  Your bag doesn't have to be full to
    share your blessing with others.  You don't have to be wealthy
    to give a portion of your time, your talent or your resources to
    help someone less fortunate.  If your bag isn't full, it doesn't
    matter.  Use what you have to enrich the lives of others, and you
    will soon find your own cup running over with joy."

    
    "Thank God for His sovereign intrusion into your life!  Thank Him
    that He loves you too much to let you wander, wasting your life and
    energies.  Your circumstances - even the pushing, squeezing,
    distressing ones - are part of His plan.  It's a plan to make your
    life more productive than you ever dreamed possible."

    
    "There are people around us whom God longs to touch through us - 
    people that only we can reach with our particular style and 
    personality, people whom we have been called to."
    

    
    "God enables the "naturals" to do the supernatural, and uses the
    ordinary people to accomplish the extraordinary."
    

    
    That one was for you Daddy.  '44'
    
    Jill

    
    "Through the overpowering of the Holy Spirit, we are implanted with
    the very personality and life and mind of Jesus Christ."

    
    "There is sublime joy in holy boasting of the power of God in a life
    that is totally dependent on Him.  There is sublime peace in accepting
    the sufficiency of God's grace by allowing Him to be strong in us 
    where we are weak."
    

    
    "Surrender your mind to Him.  Tell Him you want to learn to think
    well, to think biblically, to walk in truth, to be established and
    settled in His doctrine."
    

    
    "Every temptation to worry or fear is an opportunity for victory.
     It is a signal to fly the flag of our Victor.  It is the chance
     to make the tempter know anew that he is defeated."
    
    

    
    "There is a great market for religious experience in our world;
     there is little enthusiasm for the patient acquisition of virtue,
     little inclination to sign up for a long apprenticeship in what 
     earlier generations of Christians called holiness."
    

    
    "The key to patience under provocation is to seek to develop God's
    own trait of being 'slow to anger' (Exodus 34:6...The best way to 
    develop this slowness to anger is to reflect frequently on the 
    patience of God toward us.  The parable of the unmerciful servant
    (Matt. 18:21-35) is designed to help us recognize our own need of
    patience toward others by recognizing the patience of God toward
    us...We are like the unmerciful servant when we lose our patience
    under provocation.  We ignore God's extreme patience with us.  We
    discipline our children out of anger, while God disciplines us out
    of love.  We are eager to punish the person who provokes us, while
    God is eager to forgive.  We are eager to exercise our authority,
    while God is eager to exercise his love.  This kind of patience
    does not ignore the provocations of others; it simply seeks to 
    respond to them in a godly manner."
    

    
    "The call to love those around us is in part a call to identify
     their needs.  Once we have some understanding of their needs, we
     must find ways to meet them that are natural for us."
    

    
    "Great faith isn't the ability to believe long and far into the 
     misty future.  It's simply taking God at His word and taking 
     the next step."

    
    "You have absolutely unlimited power for godly living, and
     when you draw on it every minute from here to eternity, the
     amount you'll use will be laughably, ridiculously small
     compared with the amount that's left still available for you."
    

    
    "When we worry, we are carrying tomorrow's load with today's
     strength; carrying two days in one.  We are moving into
     tomorrow ahead of time.  There is just one day in the calendar
     of action - today."
    

    
    "The trouble with darkness is that it seems to be stronger...denser...
    and deeper...than light.  We are almost fooled into believing that it
    is just as it seems.  
    
    But just as one small candle can dispel the darkness in an arena,
    so can the entrance of light into our souls dispel the black and 
    deary darkness lurking there.  And how much greater that light -
    the light of the Lord - then one little candle."
    

    
    "We must never forget that to be a follower of Jesus is to be 
     dominated by love.  We may not be well versed in scripture or
     have a seminary background; we may be timid and unsure of
     ourselves.  But have have arms and hearts that were meant to
     be used."
    

    
    "Growing is a lifetime job and we grow most when we're down in the
     valleys, where the fertilizer is."
    

    - where the fertilizer is
    I can relate to that right now! 

    
    "As you refresh others, you relieve your own pain.  you may be going
     through a painful time right now or trying to get over a tremendous
     loss.  If so, try "refreshing or watering" another person's life,
     and as you encourage that person, you will find that your own pain
     is lessened."

    
    "By living in Christ's Spirit we joyfully submit to God's law,
     because it tells us what is pleasing to God, what the things of
     the Spirit are and what it means practically to walk in the Spirit."
    

    
    "Whatever God asks you to be, He enables you to be!"
    

"God seldom uses a man greatly until He has wounded that man deeply."

								A.W. Tozer

    
    "God is listening.  In one sense, He is always communing.
     It is we ourselves who are inept at honest communication
     with our Heavenly Parent.  It only seems as though He's
     silent; many times He's waiting for us to "keepin' talkin"
     so that we can finally become honest.  
    

    
    "The way we treat others reveals what we think God is like.
     People will understand as much of the love of God as they
     see in our own lives."

    
    "When the heart has learned to trust Him as He should be trusted,
     utterly without reservations, then the Lord throws wide the doors
     of the treasure house of grace."
    

    
    "God's love in us must extend across all boundaries."
    

    Life is short - eternity is long

"The church always grows stronger under persecution.  When persecuted, a
person examines their beliefs to see if they are really worth dying for. 
That is a scrutiny which Christ can always withstand."

			An unknown christian behind the iron curtian
			in the 1950's, to bible-smuggler Brother Andrew

    "How can we expect peace in the world, sanity in our cities, when as
    Christians we cannot live creatively together with all our wonderfully
    diverse ways of affirming our love of God? Why are we so concerned
    about those who do not express their faith in exactly the same way that
    we do?...When we worry about someone's denomination, we sometimes
    forget that this person may be a superb surgeon, or pianist, or car
    mechanic. We sometimes forget that our own vocations are not limited by
    denominational boundaries. Our responsibility as faithful people of God
    is in every area of our lives, not only in our church-going....Jesus
    did not limit his love to those accepted by the establishment. 
    
    Perhaps we have been giving too many answers instead of asking
    questions, of ourselves, of each other, of God...The most brilliant
    people really don't know very much. We will not move along on our
    journey if we are afraid to ask questions. What is my place in this
    glorious universe?...What do you want me to do? How can
    I criticize less and love more? How can I show in my own life the
    loveliness of creativity? Can I call a Christian from another
    denomination less Christian than those in my own without further
    battering the broken bride of Christ? How do I help to heal and not to
    separate?
    
    Never with pride. Never with being sure that I am right and everybody
    else is wrong."
    
    
    Madeleine L'Engle, A Stone for a Pillow (Journeys with Jacob), Harold
    Shaw Publishers, Wheaton, IL,  1986.
    
    

    She writes some good stuff, doesn't she? It sounds so easy, so good
    pleasant, but is so difficult to actually achieve. Thanks for 
    introducing me to her Crosswick journals, Rebecca.

    Leslie

    >Never with pride. Never with being sure that I am right and everybody
    > else is wrong."
    
    
    Pastor spoke about pride last night.  Its interesting the paradox that
    pride truly is.  For instance, my Pastor said a person without pride in
    themselves, family, or career, proabably doesn't have much character. 
    But at the same too much pride is what causes a fall.  He also stated
    that those who say they have no pride usually have the most.
    
    Here are the verses:
    
    Proverbs 8:13  The fear of the LORD is to hate evil: pride, and
    arrogancy, and the evil way, and the froward mouth, do I hate. 
    
    Proverbs 11:2  When pride cometh, then cometh shame: but with the lowly
    is wisdom. 
    
    Proverbs 13:10  Only by pride cometh contention: but with the well
    advised is wisdom. 
    
    Proverbs 14:3  In the mouth of the foolish is a rod of pride: but the
    lips of the wise shall preserve them. 
    
    Proverbs 16:18  Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit
    before a fall. 
    
    Proverbs 29:23  A man's pride shall bring him low: but honour shall
    uphold the humble in spirit. 
    

    You're welcome Leslie. Is the good stuff ever easy?:-) More from
    Madeleine....
    
    "When I meet people who are truly Christian, which is often my
    privilege and my joy, I see people who are wiling to bear the light, to
    *be* the light of the world - not just their own denomination's, not
    just the light of Christians, or of Americans, but of the world. To
    love where love is not easy. To bring people to Christ not through fear
    and coercion, but through love.
    
    What are we looking for? The love of Christ which comes to us through
    the power of the Holy Spirit, that Spirit who blew in the very
    beginning, before there was anything at all, who spoke through the
    prophets, who always was, is and will be."
    
    
    Madeleine L'Engle, A Stone for a Pillow (Journeys with Jacob), Harold
    Shaw Publishers, Wheaton, IL, 1986.
                                       

    "Thus the load, or weight, or burden of my neighbor's glory should be
    laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it,
    and the backs of the proud will be broken. It is a serious thing to
    live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the
    dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a
    creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to
    worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at
    all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping
    each other to one or other of these destination. It is in the light of
    these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the
    circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings
    with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. 
    There are no *ordinary* people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.
    Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their
    life span is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we
    joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit - immortal horrors or
    everlasting splendours. This does not mean that we are to be
    perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that
    kind (and it is in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people
    who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously - no flippancy,
    no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and
    costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love
    the sinner - no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as
    flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself,
    your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is
    your Christian neighbour he is holy in almost the same way, for in him
    also Christ  vere latitat - the glorifier and the glorified, Glory
    Himself, is truly hidden."
    
    C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory (Grand Rapids: William B. Eardmans
    Publishing Company, 1974), pp. 14,15.
                                                                

Thanks Rebecca.  That's a tremendous one.  It's many years since I read it, 
but it came back with all the punch of that first reading...  The value of  
a soul.  The ones in His image...

								Andrew

 "If our faith can live without God, that faith is not from God; it is only
  a dream"...Charles H. Spurgeon.


  
 I picked up Spurgeon's devotional "Morning and Evening" over the weekend,
 to use through this next year.  Here I am on the second day, and I
 find a treasure trove of wisdom from this great man of God.  When I get
 time, perhaps I'll post other quotes from today's text, which has blessed
 me a great deal.



 Jim

 "great thoughts of your sin will drive you to despair.  Great thoughts of
  Christ will pilot you to the haven of peace"

                                       Charles Spurgeon

 "You can con a con, you can fool a fool, but you can't kid a kid"



             Josh MacDowell, speaking of the importance of the example
             we set for our children and living what we try to teach them.





Jim