Trying to do the Lord's work in your own strength...

Trying to do the Lord's work in your own strength is the most confusing, exhausting, and tedious of all work. But when you are filled with the Holy Spirit, then the ministry of Jesus just flows out of you. ...Corrie Ten Boom image

Awestruck...

 

 I am awestruck by the early autumn beauty…

Shimmering day,

Clouds edged in glory,

Bright blue sky,

Leaves trembling, knowing their time is short-

Soon they will be released to the wind.

Faint glimpses of the eternal strike chords in my heart.

 

I can only take it in and revel in the Author of it all,

Knowing creation’s impossible existence without

A nascent Hand,

A Word spoken

And Breath to quicken and animate.

 

Alive. Healed. Filled.
I bow.

-by Pat Dague image

Overshadowed...

Should pain and suffering, sorrow, and grief, rise up like clouds and overshadow for a time the Sun of Righteousness and hide Him from your view, do not be dismayed, for in the end this cloud of woe will descend in showers of blessing on your head, and the Sun of Righteousness rise upon you to set no more for ever. ...Sadhu Sundar Singh image

We often think of great faith...

We often think of great faith as something that happens spontaneously so that we can be used for a miracle or healing. However, the greatest faith of all, and the most effective, is to live day by day trusting Him. It is trusting Him so much that we look at every problem as an opportunity to see His work in our life. It is not worrying, but rather trusting and abiding in the peace of God that will crush anything that Satan tries to do to us. If the Lord created the world out of chaos, He can easily deal with any problem that we have. ...Rick Joyner image

Even in terrible circumstances and calamities...

Even in terrible circumstances and calamities, in matters of life and death, if I sense that I am in the shadow of God, I find light, so much light that my vision improves dramatically. I know that holiness is near. ...Kathleen Norris image

No difficulties in your case can baffle him...

He does not need to transplant us into a different field, but right where we are, with just the circumstances that surround us, he makes his sun to shine and his dew to fall upon us, and transforms the very things that were before our greatest hindrances into the chiefest and most blessed means of our growth. No difficulties in your case can baffle him, no dwarfing of your growth in years that are past, no apparent dryness of your inward springs of life, no crookedness or deformity in any of your past development, can in the least mar the perfect work that he will accomplish, if you will only put yourselves absolutely into his hands and let him have his own way with you. ...Hannah Whitall Smith image

Come, Lord Jesus, and abide in my heart...

Come, Lord Jesus, and abide in my heart. How grateful I am to realize that the answer to my prayer does not depend on me at all. As I quietly abide in You and let Your life flow into me, what freedom it is to know that the Father does not see my threadbare patience or insufficient trust, rather only Your patience, Lord, and Your confidence that the Father has everything in hand. In Your faith I thank You right now for a more glorious answer to my prayer than I can imagine. Amen. ...Catherine Marshall image

Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens...

Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens:

Who created all these?

He who brings out the starry host one by one

and calls forth each of them by name.

Because of his great power and mighty strength,

not one of them is missing.

-Isaiah 40:26
 

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,

the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,

what is man that you are mindful of him,

and the son of man that you care for him?

-Psalm 8:3-4

The Big Dipper over the Darling Hill Observatory 
on a clear Saturday night 9/14/13
Picture by Raymond Dague

We don't know where the wind comes from or where it goes...

We don't know where the wind comes from or where it goes. But we can and do feel it. And it can wreck old patterns of living. A storm of wind is the same thing as a meeting with the Holy Spirit of God. You don't sit down and negotiate with either: you get blown about or blown up, and in that way you make progress and change. So will the explosion come in Church affairs. The Lord will get fed up with his children's foolishness and will bring about change. It will amount to a spiritual explosion. Paul experienced one. ...Cyril Brooks image

September 11, 2013

 Though the mountains be shaken

and the hills be removed,

yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken

nor my covenant of peace be removed,”

says the Lord, who has compassion on you.

-Isaiah 54:10 image

I choose kindness...

I choose kindness... I will be kind to the poor, for they are alone. Kind to the rich, for they are afraid. And kind to the unkind, for such is how God has treated me. ...Max Lucado image

Do you often feel like parched ground?

Do you often feel like parched ground, unable to produce anything worthwhile? I do. When I am in need of refreshment, it isn't easy to think of the needs of others. But I have found that if, instead of praying for my own comfort and satisfaction, I ask the Lord to enable me to give to others, an amazing thing often happens - I find my own needs wonderfully met. Refreshment comes in ways I would never have thought of, both for others, and then, incidentally, for myself.
...Elisabeth Elliot image

If thou wilt bend thyself to obedience...

If thou wilt bend thyself to obedience, and to a virtuous and godly life, thou shalt ever have him a strong rock, whereupon thou mayst boldly build a castle and tower of defence. He will be unto thee a mighty pillar, bearing up heaven and earth, whereto thou mayst lean and not be deceived, wherein thou mayst trust and not be disappointed. ...Robert Cawdray image

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. ...AW Tozer image

Be absolutely certain that our Lord loves you...

Be absolutely certain that our Lord loves you, devotedly and individually, loves you just as you are. Accustom yourself to the wonderful thought that God loves you with a tenderness, a generosity, and an intimacy that surpasses all your dreams. ...Henri de Tourville image

There is absolutely no substitute for this secret communion with God...

There is absolutely no substitute for this secret communion with God. The public Church services, or even the family altar, cannot take the place of the 'closet' prayer. We must deliberately seek to meet with God absolutely alone, and to secure such aloneness with God we are bidden to enter into thy closet.' God absolutely insists on this 'closet'-communion with Himself. One reason, no doubt, that He demands it, is to test our sincerity. There is no test for the soul like solitude. Do you shrink from solitude? Perhaps the cause for your neglect of the 'closet' is a guilty conscience? You are afraid to enter into the solitude. You know that however cheerful you appear to be you are not really happy. You surround yourself with company lest, being alone, truth should invade your delusion.
...Gordon Cove image

If the Lord be with us...

If the Lord be with us, we have no cause of fear. His eye is upon us, His arm over us, His ear open to our prayer-His grace sufficient, His promises unchangeable. ...John Newton image

Man of sorrows, Lamb of God

Man of sorrows, Lamb of God

By His own betrayed

The sin of man and wrath of God

Has been on Jesus laid

 

Silent as He stood accused

Beaten mocked and scorned

Bowing to the Father's will

He wore a crown of thorns

CHORUS:

Oh that rugged cross my salvation

Where Your love poured out over me

Now my soul cries out Hallelujah

Praise and honour unto Thee

 

Sent of heaven God's own Son

To purchase and redeem

And reconcile the very ones

Who nailed Him to that tree

 

Now my debt is paid

It is paid in full

By the precious blood

That my Jesus spilled

Now the curse of sin

Has no hold on me

Whom the Son sets free

Oh is free indeed
 

See the stone is rolled away

Behold the empty tomb

Hallelujah God be praised

He's risen from the grave -Hillsong

Preferring the “melons and leeks” of this world to the Manna of God

August 5, 2013
By Msgr. Charles Pope

Would that we had meat for food! We remember the fish we used to eat without cost in Egypt, and the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic. But now we are famished; we see nothing before us but this manna. (Numbers 11:4-5)

While it is possible for us to marvel at their insolence and ingratitude, the picture here presented depicts the human condition, and very common human tendencies. It is not unique to a people once in the desert. Their complaints, are too easily our own complaints and struggles.

Let’s look at a number of the issues raised, and see how it is possible for many of us today to struggle in the same way...
the rest image image

Most eat regularly at the banquet table of popular entertainment, secular news media, secular talk radio, etc. And they eat this food quite uncritically! The manna is complained about, but the melons and leeks are praised without qualification. 

And while it is true the Christian cannot wholly avoid any contact with the world, or avoid all its food, when do the melons and leeks ever come in for criticism? When does a Christian finally look and say to themselves and others “Look, that is not the mind of God!”  When do they ever conclude that this food is inferior or even poisonous to what God says and offers? When does a parent finally walk into the living room, turn off the TV and teach their children that “What you have just seen and heard is not the mind of God” ? 

Tragically, this is rare and the food of this world is eaten in an abundance far surpassing the food of God. The melons and leeks of the world are praised, and the manna of God is put on trial, because it’s not like the food of the world.  

This of course, is backwards for a Christian. The world should be on trial based on the Word of God. But as it is, even for most Catholics, the Word of God and the teachings of the Church are on trial by the standards of the world. 

So the question is, who is it that feeds you? Is the world, or the Lord? What proportion of your food comes from the Lord, and what from the world? Honestly? What is more influential in your daily life and your thinking, the world, or the Lord? Honestly? Who is really feeding you, informing you, influencing you? Is it the melons and leeks of the Egypt of this world? Or is it the faithful, stable, even miraculous manna of the Lord and his Church?...

 

The Lord reveals his glory...

The Lord reveals his glory in the presence of chosen witnesses. His body is like that of the rest of mankind, but he makes it shine with such splendor that his face becomes like the sun in glory, and his garments as white as snow.
 

The great reason for this transfiguration was to remove the scandal of the cross from the hearts of his disciples, and to prevent the humiliation of his voluntary suffering from disturbing the faith of those who had witnessed the surpassing glory that lay concealed.
 

With no less forethought he was also providing a firm foundation for the hope of holy Church. The whole body of Christ was to understand the kind of transformation that it would receive as his gift. the members of that body were to look forward to a share in that glory which first blazed out in Christ their head.
 

The Lord had himself spoken of this when he foretold the splendor of his coming: Then the just will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Saint Paul the apostle bore witness to this same truth when he said: I consider that the sufferings of the present time are not to be compared to the future glory that is to be revealed in us. In another place he says: You are dead, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, your life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.
 

This marvel of the transfiguration contains another lesson for the apostles, to strengthen them and lead them into the fullness of knowledge. Moses and Elijah, the law and the prophets, appeared with the Lord in conversation with him. This was in order to fulfil exactly, through the presence of these five men, the text which says: Before two or three witnesses every word is ratified. What word could be more firmly established, more securely based, than the word which is proclaimed by the trumpets of both old and new testaments, sounding in harmony, and by the utterances of ancient prophecy and the teaching of the Gospel, in full agreement with each other?
 

The writings of the two testaments support each other. The radiance of the transfiguration reveals clearly and unmistakably the one who had been promised by signs foretelling him under the veils of mystery. As Saint John says: The law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. In him the promise made through the shadows of prophecy stands revealed, along with the full meaning of the precepts of the law. He is the one who teaches the truth of the prophecy through his presence, and makes obedience to the commandments possible through grace.
 

In the preaching of the holy Gospel all should receive a strengthening of their faith. No one should be ashamed of the cross of Christ, through which the world has been redeemed.
 

No one should fear to suffer for the sake of justice; no one should lose confidence in the reward that has been promised. The way to rest is through toil, the way to life is through death. Christ has taken on himself the whole weakness of our lowly human nature. If then we are steadfast in our faith in him and in our love for him, we win the victory that he has won, we receive what he has promised.
 

When it comes to obeying the commandments or enduring adversity, the words uttered by the Father should always echo in our ears: This is my Son, the beloved, in whom I am well pleased; listen to him.
-Leo the Great Art