1
Believing God's promises the Christian is taken through difficulties of every shape and size -- and arrives safely.
--Richard C. Halverson
2
God is so good that he only awaits our desire to overwhelm us with the gift of himself.
--Francois Fenelon
3
God knows, not I, the reason why
His winds of storm drive through my door;
I am content to live or die
Just knowing this, nor knowing more.
My Father's hand appointing me
My days and ways, so I am free.
--Margaret Sangster
4
If God wants you to do something, he'll make it possible for you to do it,
but the grace he provides comes only with the task and cannot be stockpiled beforehand. We are dependent on him from hour to hour, and the greater our awareness of this fact, the less likely we are to faint or fail in a crisis.
--Louis Cassels
5
Our faults are like a grain of sand beside the great mountain of the mercies of God.
--Saint Jean Baptiste Marie Vianney
6
God likes His people to believe that there is nothing too hard for Him. . . We are all the time limiting God's power by our own ideas. Let us get our eyes off one another and fix them upon God. There is nothing too hard for him.
--Dwight L. Moody
7
If I forget,
Yet God remembers! If these hands of mine
Cease from their clinging, yet the hands divine
Hold me so firmly that I cannot fall;
And if sometimes I am too tired to call
For him to help me, then he reads the prayer
Unspoken in my heart, and lifts my care.
--Robert Browning
8
You want to wash away your sins; there is a river of grace to wash in. You want grace to refresh your souls; He has floods to pour upon the dry ground. Ho! You leviathan sinners, here is an ocean of mercy for you to swim in. Ho! You elephantine sinners, here is an ark large enough to hold you and float you above the waters of the deluge! You whose sins of pride reach up to heaven and whose feet of lust are plunged into the mire of hell, the sacred hiding place is large enough to hide even you. The Lord is great in mercy.
--Charles Spurgeon
9
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
10
Holy moments come to us daily if we will ask for eyes to see. We can't
always withdraw to quiet hillsides to pray, but Christ will meet with us in
the quiet places of our hearts.
--Sheila Walsh
11
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
12
When God doesn't show up when you think He should, don't get discouraged. Many times I have prayed believing that my prayer was part of God's perfect will, yet He didn't move as quickly as I wanted Him to. One time I had to wait sixteen years for Him to answer. But when He did, it was the right answer at the right time. While I was waiting on Him, I wondered what was happening. Sometimes I asked if He really heard me. Was I praying right? What else could I do? But deep within He assured me that He would see me through. He'll do the same for you.
--Thelma Wells
13
Lord Jesus, I know that the seasons come and go in majestic sequence. The earth rotates on its axis in a predetermined rhythm. No prayers of mine could change any of this. I know that Your ways are not my ways; Your timing is not my timing. But Lord, how do I, so earthbound, come to terms with the pace of eternity?
--Catherine Marshall
14
God does not stand afar off as I struggle to speak. He cares enough to
listen with more than casual attention. He "translates" my scrubby words and hears what is truly inside. He hears my sighs and uncertain gropings as fine prose.
--Timothy Jones
15
The secret of Christian quietness is not indifference, but the knowledge
that God is my Father, He loves me, I shall never think of anything He will forget, and worry becomes an impossibility.
--Oswald Chambers
16
Sometimes life looks like the backside of a loom. A day's circumstances seem as disconnected as the threads on the underside of an Oriental rug. We are hard pressed to see any pattern or purpose to it all. Prayer is the Divine Weaver's invitation to step around to what is really the front side of the loom, to the eternal side of life. And the movement is transformational, often breathtaking. The upward look of prayer reveals the real meaning of life. In giving us the Lord's Prayer, Jesus was inviting us to step around the loom and see life from the perspective of heaven. True prayer is God's invitation to see life through God's eyes and to set the circumstances of life in their larger context. We need this perspective if we are to see our lives as more than a disconnected sequence of events.
--Steve Harper
17
We need never shout across the spaces to an absent God. He is nearer than our own soul, closer than our most secret thoughts.
--A. W. Tozer
18
Jesus Christ opens wide the doors of the treasure house of God's promises, and bids us go in and take with boldness the riches that are ours.
--Corrie ten Boom
19
When God is about to do something great, he starts with a difficulty. When he is about to do something truly magnificent, he starts with an
impossibility.
--Armin Gesswein
20
The Bible nowhere indicates that God withdraws us from the troubles of life. In fact, we become more involved in life's troubles when we come to Christ. But he gives us power to go on with the battle.
--Billy Graham
21
When circumstances seem impossible, when all signs of grace in you seem at their lowest ebb, when temptation is fiercest, when love and joy and hope seem well-nigh extinguished in your heart, then rest, without feeling and without emotion, in the Father's faithfulness.
--D. Tryon
22
We honor God when we ask for great things. It is a humiliating thing to
think that we are satisfied with very small results.
--D. L. Moody
23
We walk without fear, full of hope and courage and strength to do His will, waiting for the endless good which He is always giving us as fast as He can get us able to take it in.
--George Macdonald
24
Being "plugged into" the power of God through the Holy Spirit is not some sort of mystical experience reserved for the very spiritual. It is simply an awareness of my emptiness without Him--that He is my strength, my shield.
--Nancie Carmichael
25
God alone knows all the facts, sets all the goals, and determines morality. Nowhere in Scripture are His principles to be replaced in favor of human calculation. He allows us to play the game; He does not allow us to make the rules.
--Erwin Lutzer
26
In the providence of God we are, no doubt, spared and protected from much that would hurt, harm, and destroy us. But we also know that we are not exempted or isolated from all of life's pain, else we would not have felt so much of it along the way. In the providence of God we are spared from some suffering. In the course of life, we are not spared from all suffering. When suffering comes, though, God is with us; and God is on the side of strength and healing and joy and life.
--Charles E. Poole, in "Is Life Fair? Good Words for Hard Times," 1996, Smyth & Helwys, Macon, Georgia
27
He never does anything small. When he makes an ocean He makes it so deep that no man can fathom it. When He makes a mountain He makes it so large that no one can measure or weigh it. When He makes flowers, He scatters multiplied millions of them where there is no one to admire them but Himself. When He makes grace, he makes it without sides or bottom and leaves the top off. Instead of giving salvation with a medicine dropper, he pours it forth like a river. When God sets out to do a thing for us, He does it with a prodigality of love-prompted abundance that fairly staggers one who reckons things by the coldly calculating standards of earth.
--Lettie B. Cowman
28
When the work presses, and the battle thickens, and the day seems long in coming, it is good for the heart to remember that the present conflict is with defeated foes, and that there is no room for question as to the final issue, for the Man of Nazareth is not only seated in the place of authority, he carries forward the work of active administration.
--G. Campbell Morgan
29
Accustom yourself to the wonderful thought that God loves you with a
tenderness, a generosity, and an intimacy which surpasses all your dreams. Give yourself up with joy to a loving confidence in God and have courage to believe firmly that God's action towards you is a masterpiece of partiality and love. Rest tranquilly in this abiding conviction.
--Abbe Henri de Tourville
30
When we were children, the monsters of the dark seemed real and fanged, lurking in the hallway just outside our door. We heard the thunderous footfalls in the gloom. But they turned out to be only our father who heard us crying and came to comfort us. We never saw him in the darkness. But we felt his touch and knew he was there. The universe is vast and sometimes dark, but we are not alone.
--Calvin Miller
31
The Bible is one of God's greatest love gifts to you. It is the world's
greatest literary treasure. It is the foundation of the church and your
faith. But there is always the danger that you may forget how personally God wants to give it specifically to you. He desires you to use it daily as your spiritual food, your personal prayer resource, and your weapon for spiritual conquest.
--Wesley L. Duewel
