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Did you ever stop to ask what a yoke is really for? Is it to be a burden to the animal which wears it? It is just the opposite. It is to make its burden light. Attached to the oxen in any other way than by a yoke the plough would be intolerable. Worked by means of a yoke it is light. A yoke is not an instrument of torture; it is an instrument of mercy. It is not a malicious contrivance for making work hard; it is a gentle device to make hard labor light. It is not meant to give pain, but to save pain. And yet men speak of the yoke of Christ as if it were a slavery and look upon those who wear it as objects of compassion. --Henry Drummond
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Trouble does its best work when it drives us to God. The discovery that
other people cannot or will not help us is not a disaster if, at the same
time, it shows us that God both can and will help. That we are abandoned by others is not the last straw so much as the first step to the realization that God is our help and salvation. In the empty places in my life, devastated by broken promises and vacated by faithless companions, come, Holy Spirit, as Companion and Comforter. I will use my times of trouble to receive the help that only you can give. Amen.
--Eugene Peterson
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Do not look forward to the changes and chances of this life in fear; rather look to them with full hope that, as they arise, God, whose you are, will deliver you out of them. He is your Keeper. He has kept you hitherto. Hold fast to his dear hand, and he will lead you safely through all things; and, when you cannot stand, he will bear you in his arms. Do not look forward to what may happen tomorrow. Our Father will either shield you from suffering, or he will give you strength to bear it.
--Saint Francis of Sales
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Even in the winter, even in the midst of the storm, the sun is still there.
Somewhere, up above the clouds, it still shines and warms and pulls at the life buried deep inside the brown branches and frozen earth. The sun is there! Spring will come! The clouds cannot stay forever.
--Gloria Gaither
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Are you in difficult circumstances, surrounded by people who do not
understand you, who never consult your taste, who put you in the background? This thing is from Me. I am the God of circumstances. Thou camest not to thy place by accident, it is the very place God intended for thee.
--Laura A. Snow
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What a comfort to know that our lot is cast by the Lord, our gifts are of
His appointing, and our life work planned way back there in eternity! Such assurance does not lead to inaction; it leads to freedom of action with the right kind of confidence.
--Arthur Custance
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Who has not marked even here the glory of God as seen in the great sunset? Rivers of glory wind through meadows of gold. Lakes of glory lie embedded in the evening sky. Seas of glory lap eternal shores with their shimmering waves. Mountains of glory rear themselves to the heavens with cloud-capped summits tipped with the splendor of the dying day. Earth too is flooded with the glory. It falls in the dim aisles of great forests and illumines them with its splendor. It dances among the wind-tossed leaves. It splotches the trunks of giant trees. It bathes in light the upturned faces of those who watch and worship as the climaxing splendor of earth, sea, and sky turns the heart to God our Father who is Himself the glory of all creation and who deigns to give us, in the lavish, golden glory of the sunset the faint forth-shadowing of the glory of the Father's House. But if the earthy glory is such, what must be the glory of the heavenly
city?
--James McConkey
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Defeat may serve as well as victory
To shake the soul and let the glory out.
When the great oak is straining in the wind
The boughs drink in new beauty, and the trunk
Sends down a deeper root on the windward side.
Only the soul that knows the mighty grief
Can know the mighty rapture. Sorrows come
To stretch out spaces in the heart for joy.
--Edwin Markham
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Spiritual surgery is more painful than physical surgery. God doesn't use an anesthetic; He doesn't do His work while we are asleep. God can take any brokenhearted believer and make him or her a radiant, loving person. But when He performs such "heart operations," His children are wide awake.
--Erwin W. Lutzer
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If there is an all-powerful, loving God who is accomplishing His purposes behind the scenes, then we must never look at our present circumstances and conclude that what we see is all there is to reality. No matter what life looks like presently, no matter how much it appears that evil is winning, humans don't have the last word. God has the last word, and it is a word of hope, peace, and victory to those who love Him and who are walking in His will. But God's purposes take time to work out. So what we need while we wait for God's answer is patience and courage that comes from robust faith, and an absolute, flat-out refusal to believe that what we see is what we get. . . .
We assume that because we don't always see what God is doing, He is doing nothing. And because we see everything that evil is doing, we feel our fate is left dangling. We cannot afford to be naïve. Our problem must be faced realistically and squarely. But when we are in a fearful situation, there is nothing that builds our confidence in God more than remembering His promises.
--Rebecca Manley Pippert
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Can you know God's will for your life? Thank God, the answer is yes!
--Ray Pritchard
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God's love is never, never exclusive. It is always totally inclusive and is
never measured nor regulated in any way by the nature of the loved one. God's love is always and only regulated by the nature of God Himself.
--Eugenia Price
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We shall come one day to a heaven where we shall gratefully know that God's great refusals were sometimes the true answers to our truest prayer.
--P. T. Forsyth
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Our hope is based on a promise. God promised he would be "with us," not as an unseen ethereal force, but in the form of a person with a name: Jesus.
--Michael Card
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With God, life is eternal-both in quality and length. There is no joy
comparable to the joy of discovering something new from God, about God.
--Eugenia Price
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God answered none of Job's questions; they were the wrong questions.
Instead, he involved Job in the experience of knowing him through his
creative activity. Job's questions about the ways of God could not be
answered apart from the knowing of God himself.
--William E. Hulme
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There is no pit so deep, either within you, or around you, that it can stop
the ear of God when he inclines to listen. Be thy pit ever so horrible, and ever so deep, only you cry like David, and you will sooner or later share David's deliverance. As long as you have the knowledge and the feeling of the horrible pit that is in your heart you are in no real danger.
--Robert Bruce
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The godly man is not left in the trackless forest without a guide, or doomed to struggle in the darkness without a kindly light; he is not orphaned in the world without a loving hand to aid. His Father, unseen but not unknown, has prepared the path and somehow guides the steps of those who commit their way to him.
--James Edward Hastings
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All of our visible blessings are but pale shadows of the real wealth that we can have if we live in continual communion with God. He does not put his best gifts in the store windows. He keeps those in the inner chambers. The best good is not the good that we can touch, taste, and handle and that man can see.
--Alexander Maclaren
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Remember it is the very time for faith to work when sight ceases. The
greater the difficulties, the easier for faith; as long as there remain
certain natural prospects, faith does not get on even as easily as where
natural prospects fail.
--George Mueller
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Trust God where you cannot see Him. Do not try to penetrate the cloud He brings over you; rather look to the bow that is on it. The mystery is God's; the promise is yours.
--John MacDuff
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From the tiny birds of the air and from the fragile lilies of the field, we
learn the same truth . . . God takes care of His own. . . . At just the
right moment, He steps in and proves Himself as our faithful heavenly
Father.
--Charles Swindoll
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The most glorious promises of God are generally fulfilled in such a wondrous manner that He steps forth to save us at a time when there is the least appearance of it.
--C. H. von Bogatzy
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Sometimes mid scenes of deepest gloom,
Sometimes where Eden's bowers bloom,
By waters still, o'er troubled sea,
Still 'tis His hand that leadeth me.
--Joseph H. Gilmore
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The wheels in a clock move contrary to each other, some one way, some another, yet all serve the intent of the watchmaker, to show the time. So in the world the providence of God may seem to run contrary to his promises; one man takes this way, another runs that way, yet all in conclusion center in the purpose of God the great creator.
--Richard Sibbes
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Sweet it is that our hope should rest in him who is never shaken, should
abide in him who never changes, should bind us to him who alone is the full contentment of the soul, should enter into him, since in him is our being.
--E. B. Pusey
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How oft in the conflict, when pressed by the foe,
I have fled to my Refuge and breathed out my woe;
How often when trials like sea billows roll,
Have I hidden in Thee, O Thou Rock of my soul.
Hiding in Thee, hiding in Thee,
Thou blest Rock of Ages, I'm hiding in Thee.
--William O. Cushing
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I have read in Plato and Cicero sayings that are very wise and very beautiful, but I have never read in either of them, "Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden."
--St. Augustine
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As the brook hides the footprints which are imprinted on its soft ooze, so are God's footprints hidden. We cannot detect his great and wonderful secrets. He marches through the ages with steps we cannot track.
--F. B. Meyer
