There is a stream, whose gentle flow...

There is a stream, whose gentle flow

Supplies the city of our God;

Life, love, and joy, still gliding through,

And wat’ring our Divine abode.

That sacred stream, Thy holy Word,

Supports our faith, our fears controls;

Sweet peace Thy promises afford,

And give new strength to fainting souls.

Loud may the troubled ocean roar:

In sacred peace our souls abide;

While every nation, ev’ry shore.

Trembles, and dreads the swelling tide.

-Isaac Watts

His Robes for Mine...

His Robes for Mine

It is as if the Spirit stands behind us...

It is as if the Spirit stands behind us, throwing light over our shoulder, on Jesus, who stands facing us. The Spirit’s message to us is never, “Look at me; listen to me; come to me; get to know me,” but always, “Look at him, and see his glory; listen to him and hear his word; go to him and have life; get to know him and taste his gift of joy and peace.” The Spirit, we might say, is the matchmaker, the celestial marriage broker, whose role it is to bring us and Christ together and ensure that we stay together. -James I. Packer Image

Jesus, Thou joy of loving hearts...

Jesus, Thou joy of loving hearts,

Thou fount of life, Thou Light of men,

From the best bliss that earth imparts

We turn unfilled to Thee again.

 

We taste Thee, O Thou living Bread,

And long to feast upon Thee still;

We drink of Thee, the Fountain-head,

And thirst our souls from Thee to fill.

 

O Jesus, ever with us stay,

Make all our moments calm and bright;

Chase the dark night of sin away,

Shed o’er the world Thy holy light.

-Bernard of Clairvaux

The Night Song...

 

The Night Song

"Christianity in America is 3,000 miles wide and half an inch deep" -- Dr. J.I. Packer

By David Virtue, Virtueonline

September 19, 2023

Excerpt:

In an article entitled "What is the Future of Evangelicalism?: Evangelicalism Now", the late Dr J. I. Packer, a distinguished Canadian Anglican theologian and author, lamented that North American evangelicalism had entered a "winter" from which it is unlikely to emerge any time soon.

A recent book The Dechurching of America by three authors, Jim Davis, Ryan Burge, and Michael Graham argue that 40 million Americans have left the church with most not likely to return any time soon, if ever.

"We are currently experiencing the largest and fastest religious shift in U.S. history," an excerpt from the book summary reads. "It is greater than the First and Second Great Awakening and every revival in our country combined but in the opposite direction."

Sex abuse and corruption scandals that have rocked the evangelical community -- also well-documented by the media -- have played a role in growing disillusionment with the church. It is not just about COVID. The Gospel Coalition research team found that the dechurching phenomenon is far more complex. They drew their conclusions from an in-depth analysis of data drawn from a trio of surveys of 1,000 individuals, with100 data points per person surveyed. These data points included "demographics, size, core concerns, church off-ramps, historical roots, and the gravity of what is at stake."

Read it all-excellent!

Jesus, Strong and Kind...

 

CityAlight - Jesus, Strong and Kind/Jesus Loves Me

Our God Will Go Before Us...

 

 Our God Will Go Before Us (Lyric Video)  

Keith & Kristyn Getty, Matt Boswell, Matt Papa

God Is Not Prissy...

God Is Not Prissy

God is not prissy. God is not proud. “Immanuel” means God repairs the ruin of the world by humbling himself. The high One shows just how high he is by taking the lowest seat. Sometimes the Lord comes in glory—in a fiery cloud on Sinai, in a pillar of fire in the wilderness, surrounded by blazing angelic chariots and horsemen. Not when he comes as Immanuel. When he comes to be with us, he doesn’t enter the world in a blaze of light, astride a winged stallion. He comes inauspiciously, in weakness and dependence. “Immanuel” means God is with us in our very flesh. He doesn’t recoil even from becoming one of us. He doesn’t despise Mary’s uterus. He doesn’t refuse to become a man, or to live a human life, or to die a human death. Immanuel is the God who became baby and dwelt among us. He lived and suffered all we live and suffer. He knows creation, he knows humanity, from the inside. Immanuel reveals the breathtaking humility of God....

...He’s with us in our sin and brokenness, in our joys and triumphs, in our failures and sorrows. Nothing we can do can make him recoil or leave. He won’t be God at all if it means being God-without-us. He’s determined to be God only as God-with-us. No matter what it takes or what it costs, he’ll stay with us. He will go to hell and back—he has gone to hell and back—to be Immanuel. 

That’s what God is like. (Read it all!)

Yet Not I but Through Christ in Me...

 

Yet Not I but Through Christ in Me

I Set My Hope On Jesus...

 

 I Set My Hope: Keith & Kristyn Getty, Matt Boswell, Matt Papa

God has called us to shine...

God has called us to shine, just as much as Daniel was sent into Babylon to shine. Let no man or woman say that they cannot shine because they have not so much influence as some others may have. What God wants you to do is to use the influence you have. Daniel probably did not have much influence down in Babylon at first, but God soon gave him more because he was faithful and used what he had.  

-Dwight Lyman Moody

My God is All I Need...

 

 CityAlight: My God is All I Need/My God is So Big

Highlights Of The 1904-1905 Welsh Revival

Bill Muehlenberg

September 8, 2023

Excerpt: 

There are plenty of highlights one can look at when discussing the issue of revival. Here I want to look at one of the two major revivals that broke out in Wales – the one of 1904-1905. There were actually many revivals in Wales, and I have already examined the Welsh Revival of 1859 in another piece.

Read it all! image

Heaven-sent revival is an incredible thing. One can only pray, “Do it again Lord”.

Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved...

Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.  And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.  

-Colossians 3:12-17

Kindness has converted more sinners 

than zeal, eloquence, or learning.

-Frederick William Faber

If we would indeed know God in growing intimacy...

If we would indeed know God in growing intimacy, we must go this way of renunciation. And if we are set upon the pursuit of God He will sooner or later bring us to this test. Abraham’s testing was, at the time, not known to him as such, yet if he had taken some course other than the one he did, the whole history of the Old Testament would have been different. God would have found His man, no doubt, but the loss to Abraham would have been tragic beyond the telling. So we will be brought one by one to the testing place, and we may never know when we are there. At that testing place there will be no dozen possible choices for us; just one and an alternative, but our whole future will be conditioned by the choice we make.  

-A.W. Tozer image

Time for Another Great Awakening...

September 3, 2023

By Jeff Lukens

We live in an age of unbelief.  The foundations of American life are eroding.  America is entering an uncharted, revolutionary time.  We are no longer the America of our founders or even the America that existed twenty years ago.  We are in trouble, and a cataclysm of ominous events may soon overwhelm us.  We need a national spiritual revival.   

Two seminal revival movements were such game-changing events in American history that historians were compelled to call them Great Awakenings.  The First Great Awakening in the mid-1700s created the moral climate for the Declaration of Independence and the founding of a new country, conceived in liberty, that would truly become a light to the nations. 

The Second Great Awakening in the mid-1800s was even more potent and culminated with Abraham Lincoln and the abolition of slavery.  As a result of this movement, the United States has liberated more people economically, politically, and spiritually than any other nation in history.

The problems of America today cannot be solved by politicians or our broken culture.  We need another Great Awakening on a scale and resolve equal to the first two.  There are some hopeful signs this may be happening.  Read it all! image

O, my friends, we are leaky vessels...

A great many think because they have been filled once, they are going to be full for all time after; but O, my friends, we are leaky vessels, and have to be kept right under the fountain all the time in order to keep full. If we are going to be used by God we have to be very humble. A man that lives close to God will be the humblest of men. I heard a man say that God always chooses the vessel that is close at hand. Let us keep near Him.  -Dwight Lyman Moody

The New Testament begins with the life, death, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ...

The New Testament begins with the life, death, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. No part of the Bible is so important as this, and no part is so full and complete. Four distinct Gospels tell us the story of Christ’s doing and dying. Four times over we read the precious account of His works and words. How thankful we ought to be for this! To know Christ is life eternal. To believe in Christ is to have peace with God. To follow Christ is to be a true Christian. To be with Christ will be heaven itself. We can never hear too much about Jesus Christ.  -J.C. Ryle