How to Fully Trust ~ Words of Wisdom for the Weekend

"Paul . . . learned a lesson that he never forgot; to rejoice in his infirmities. He said that the weaker he was the better it was for him. For when he was weak, he was strong in his Lord Christ. 

"Ah, yes, God will have to bring us down very low. A sense of emptiness and despair and nothingness will have to come upon us. It is when we sink down in utter helplessness that the everlasting God will reveal Himself in power. Then our hearts will learn to trust God alone.

"What is it that keeps us from trusting Him perfectly?

"Many say: "I believe what you say, but there is one difficulty. If my trust were perfect and always abiding, all would come right, for I know God will honor trust. But how am I to get that trust?

"My answer is by the death of self. The great hindrance to trust is self-effort. So as long as you have got your own wisdom and thoughts and strength, you cannot fully trust God. But when God breaks you down, when everything begins to grow dim before your eyes and you see that you understand nothing, then God is coming near. If you will bow down in nothingness and wait on God, He will become all. 

"As long as we are something, God cannot be all. His omnipotence cannot do its full work. That is the beginning of faith; utter despair of self, a ceasing from man and everything on earth and finding our hope in God alone."

"Let us say: My God, let my life be a proof of what the omnipotent God can do. Let these be the two dispositions of our souls every day: deep helplessness, and simple, childlike rest."

~ Andrew Murray, "Absolute Surrender" (pp122-123) 

Christa Wells: "How Emptiness Sings". If you cannot see this video, click here.

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For other Words of Wisdom for the Weekend posts see here.}

Words of Wisdom for the Week-end: How We Re-Member

“Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice; and he fell on his face at Jesus’ feet, giving him thanks . . . Then Jesus answered, ‘Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?’ And he said to him, ‘Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well.’”

 {Luke 17: 15-19}

“This fallen world never stops dis-membering who we are. We’re all breaking a bit more everyday, even in small ways. And there, even as we ache, is the gentle whisper of God. With the quiet urging to give thanks anyways, to do this in re-membrance of Him. But why in the world give thanks? Why in the name of heaven? 

“Because when we remember how he blesses, loves us, when we recollect His goodness to us, we heal—we re-member. 

“In the remembering to give thanks, our broken places are re-memembered—made whole. 

“When we re-member all His blessings, we re-member all our fractures, and in giving thanks in the assembly it’s our very souls that re-assemble. 

“Is that it? . . . giving thanks to Him who let Himself be broken to make us whole, and doing this thanks in remembrance of His daily grace, it re-members and mends me and the pain eases. 

“The fracture lines in my heart all healing in this fusion to Him.”

“Lord, today, in the broken places, cause me to give thanks, to do what You ask, in re-membrance of You. So I may recollect all Your goodness, so I may heal and re-member.” 

~ Ann Voskamp, 'One Thousand Gifts Devotional: Reflections on Finding Everyday Graces

{Words for Wisdom for the Weekend: These are words that I have been challenged or encouraged by that I have read throughout my week that I kept pondering; words that I couldn't get off my mind and heart throughout my week. 

For other Words of Wisdom for the Weekend posts see here.}

Words of Wisdom for the Weekend ~ Trusting, Believing, Knowing

This weekend:

May you step out

with faith in God that does not waver

trusting

that He will be 

walk with 

you.

*

May you laugh

with the joy of the Lord

believing

that He will 

rejoice in

you.

*

May you rest

with peace that passes all understanding

knowing

that He will

never leave

you.

***

For other Words of Wisdom for the Weekend posts see here.}

Words of Wisdom for the Weekend ~ Do You Resemble Your Father?

"That you may be the children of your Father which is in heaven:

for he makes his sun to rise on the evil and on the good,

and sends rain on the just and on the unjust."

{Matthew 5:45}

"The Christian man has seen himself as utterly hopeless and condemned ; he has seen himself as a man who is utterly guilty before God and who has no claim whatsoever on His love. He has seen himself as an enemy of God and an outsider.  And then he has seen  and understood something about the free grace of God in Jesus Christ. He has seen God sending His only begotten Son into the world, and not only that, sending Him even to the death of the cross for Him, the rebel, the vile and guilty sinner. God did not turn His back on him, He went beyond that.  The Christian knows that all this happened for him, and it has changed his whole attitude towards God and his fellowmen. He has been forgiven when he did not deserve it . . ."  "The Christian is a man who believes he is going to look into the face of Christ. And when that great morning comes, when he looks into the face of One who endured the cruel cross for him inspite of his vileness, he does not want to remember, as he looks into those eyes, that he refused to forgive someone while he was here on earth, or that he did not love that other person, but despised and hated him and did everything he could against him . . . "  "I will tell you what a Christian is. He is one who has become a child of God and is in a unique relationship to God. That is what makes him 'special'. 'What do [you] do more than others?' He should be special, you should be special, because you are a special person.  You say breeding counts. If this is so, what is the breeding of a Christian? It is this, he has been born again, he has been born spiritually and he is a child of God. Did you notice the way our Lord puts it? 'I say to you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.' Why? 'That you may be like God'? No: 'That [you] may be the children'—and not even of God—'[you] may be  the children of your Father which is in heaven.' God has become Father to the Christian. He is not Father of the non-Christian; He is God to them and nothing else, the great Law-Giver. But to the Christian, God is Father. Then, again, our Lord does not say, 'Be ye perfect, even as God in heaven is perfect.' No, thank God, but 'Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Gather which is in heaven is perfect.'  If God is your Father you must be special, you cannot help it. If the divine nature is in you, and has entered into you through the Holy Spirit, you cannot be like anybody else, you must be different. And that is what we are told about the Christian everywhere in the Bible, that Christ dwells in your heart richly through the Holy Ghost. The Holy Spirit is in him, filling him, working His might power int he depths of his personality, teaching him His will. 'It is God which worketh in you both to will and to do.' And, above all, the love of God has been shed abroad in his heart through and by the Holy Spirit. He is bound to be special, he must be unique, he cannot help it.  Is there anything special about you?  I am not asking whether you are living a good, moral, upright life. I am not asking whether you say your prayers, or whether you go to church regularly. I am asking none of these things. There are people who do all that and still are not Christians. If that is all, what do [you] do more than others, what is there special about you? Is there anything of this special quality about you?  Is there something about your Father about you?  It is a fact that children sometimes do not resemble their parents very closely. People look at them and say: 'Yes, there is something of his father there after all.' or 'I see something of the mother; not very much, but there is something.' Is there just that much of God about you? That is the test. If God is your Father, somewhere of another, in some form or other, the family likeness will be there, the traces of your Parentage will inevitably appear.  What is there special about you?  God grant that as we examine ourselves we may discover something of the uniqueness and the separateness that not only divides us from others, but which proclaims that we are children of our Father which is in heaven." ~ David Martyn-Lloyd-Jones, Studies in the Sermon on the Mount [emphasis added]

{email subscribers: listen to 'Keep Making Me' by Sidewalk Prophets by clinking here.}  "Make me broken So I can be healed ‘Cause I’m so calloused And now I can’t feel I want to run to You With heart wide open Make me broken Make me empty So I can be filled ‘Cause I’m still holding Onto my will And I’m completed When you are with me Make me empty [Chorus:] ‘Til You are my one desire ‘Til You are my one true love ‘Til You are my breath, my everything Lord, please keep making me Make me lonely So I can be Yours ‘Til I want no one More than You, Lord ‘Cause in the darkness I know You will hold me Make me lonely"

{Words for Wisdom for the Weekend: These are words that I have been challenged or encouraged by that I have read throughout my week that I kept pondering; words that I couldn't get off my mind and heart throughout my week. 

For other Words of Wisdom for the Weekend posts see here.}

Words of Wisdoms for the Weekend ~ Encouragement, Compassion and Hope ~ We Can "Do Something" this Mother's Day

"And Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction. 

When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. 

Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; 

therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest." 

{Matthew 9:35-38} 

He saw the crowds and had compassion on them . . . because they were helpless. 

Mothers, women who mother, women who bear the bruises for the ones they bore or long to love, we have an incredible opportunity to reach out with gentle hands in compassion.

A compassion that makes us feel the pain of the distressed and do something about it.

We really don't need special recognition for the long days, sleepless nights and endless lists . . .  We really do need to especially continue to labour with long-suffering, selfless, and enduring love.

It's this self-sacrificing, giving, hope-filled love that will

clothe us with strength and dignity,

fill our days with joy and

our hearts with contentment and

cause us to laugh at the days to come.

This Mother's Day, 

what if we lowered our expectations for what we think we deserve

and delighted to serve the least of these?

"This is what it looks like, I thought. In so many places, we sit in church and talk about compassion, unimaginable love, revival. And then an hour later, we are still sitting there talking about it. But revival is happening. Now. Compassion is working: unimaginable, selfless love is real. It is right here. My five-year-old knows how to be Jesus' hand to others. I can stand and watch the children I have loved and cared for turn around and compassionately love and care for others." ~Katie Davis Kisses from Katie: A Story of Relentless Love and Redemption

I am looking forward to co-leading one of these groups this session beginning on May 26th (registration begins May 19th). If you are in need of encouragement, there is a welcome group for you.  Are You Looking For Encouragement? "(in)courage has benches for you to sit on with a cup of coffee and meet women who are much like you. Friends who understand the heaviness in your heart as well and who also laugh at the things you find funny. These benches are called (in)courage community groups." "The groups are lead by women who have a heart for serving. These women are not trained professionals; they are like you and me. They are women who live their everyday life with joys and broken hearts, who find their strength in the Lord and joy in walking beside other women."

Everything We Think We Know About Marriage and Divorce is Wrong by Shaunti Feldhahn "Another myth that is begging to be debunked is the notion that “Barna found that the rate of divorce is the same in the church.” Actually the Barna Group found no such thing and George Barna himself told me he would love to correct this misunderstanding. Because he wasn’t studying people 'in the church.'" "Those of us who work with marriages may secretly wonder whether there is reason for our ministry, if the news about the divorce rate is better than we think. And the answer is a resounding yes. Because I have seen in the research what every marriage counselor knows intimately: divorce isn’t the greatest threat to marriage. Discouragement is. "What marriages need today is hope. And of all people, we in the Body of Christ should be the most ready to offer hope – not just for our spiritual life but for our marriages. And now, we can."

Half the Sky: When You’re Ready to ACT to Bring All Girls Back: The Esther Initiative And what if pastors and husbands and fathers and brothers gathered around women gathering with women and said yes, yes to His truth and His value and His worth of women — because unless a man looks to Jesus, a man doesn’t know how to treat a woman. When the prevailing thinking is boys will be boys — girls will be treated like garbage. Girls will be mistreated and dismissed and misunderstood and misplaced — and no one will do anything about it. And that is never the heart of God. Unless a man looks to Jesus, a man doesn’t know how to treat a woman. How would it change the world if men and women around the world knew that God chose to make His entry point into the world through the holy space of a woman, to enfold Himself inside of a woman, to drink of a woman, be held and nourished and cared for by a woman — that’s the jolting truth of how God loves His daughters with His honour. In honour of all the mothers this weekend, in honor of all the stolen girls in Nigeria, the slave girls of Haiti, the brothel girls of India, the trafficked girls in our own countries, in honour of your daughters and your sisters and your mothers and your Jesus who calls all the daughters His — will you stand with as part of the Esther Generation who is making the Esther Initiative happen? Every $5 matters & makes a difference and God will MULTIPLY our little loaves and fishes.

{Email subscribers can listen to "Do Something" by Matthew West by clicking here } I woke up this morning Saw a world full of trouble now Thought, how’d we ever get so far down How’s it ever gonna turn around So I turned my eyes to Heaven I thought, “God, why don’t You do something?” Well, I just couldn’t bear the thought of People living in poverty Children sold into slavery The thought disgusted me So, I shook my fist at Heaven Said, “God, why don’t You do something?” He said, “I did, I created you”

{Words for Wisdom for the Weekend: These are words that I have been challenged or encouraged by that I have read throughout my week that I kept pondering; words that I couldn't get off my mind and heart throughout my week. 

For other Words of Wisdom for the Weekend posts see here.}

Words of Wisdom for the Weekend ~ Channels of Grace

"For of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace."

{John 1:16}

"Speak Thou in my words today, think in my thoughts, and work in all my deeds. And seeing that it is Thy gracious will to make use even of such weak human instruments in the fulfillment of Thy mighty purpose for the world, let my life today be the channel through which some little portion of Thy divine love and pity may reach the lives that are nearest my own."

"O blesses Jesus, who didst use Thine own most precious life for the redemption of Thy human brethren, giving no thought to ease of pleasure of worldly enrichment, but filling up all Thine hours and days and deeds of self-denying love, give me the grace to-day to follow the road Thou did first tread; and to Thy name be all the glory and the praise, even unto the end. Amen."

~John Baillie, A Diary of Private Prayer

***

May your weekend be filled with one gracious blessing after another.

May it overflow from you to those near you

and to those whom you will only cross paths but once.

May you be free to laugh and soar and run and spring up with pure joy

and find much beauty in the mess.

***

{Words for Wisdom for the Weekend: These are words that I have been challenged or encouraged by that I have read throughout my week that I kept pondering; words that I couldn't get off my mind and heart throughout my week. 

For other Words of Wisdom for the Weekend posts see here.}

Words of Wisdom for the Weekend ~ "Consider Him Who Endured From Sinners"

"What is the meaning of all this? 

Why is He going to the cross and to that death? 

There is only one answer to that question. Sin is the cause; and sin is something that can be death with in that way only, and in no other. Sin is something, let me say it with reverence, that has created a problem even in heaven. It is as profound a problem as that, and we must start by realizing this. Sin in you and in me is something that caused the Son of God to sweat drops of blood in the Garden of Gethsemane. It caused Him to endure all the agony and the suffering to which He was subjection. And finally it caused Him to die upon the cross . . .  

. . . what we have to realize is that, because we are what we are, the Son of God had to come from heaven and go through all of that, and even die that cruel death upon the cross. You and I are such that all that became necessary. Such is this pollution of sin that is in us. We can never look too often at the nature of sin and its consequences. One of the most direct roads to holiness, always, is to consider Him and His suffering and agony. Nowhere is the nature of sin displayed in such a terrible and awful colours as in the death of the blessed Son of God. 

. . . Man, according to the Scriptures, was meant to live entirely to the glory of God. He was meant to love the Lord God with all his heart, with all his soul, with all his mind, and with all his strength. The whole man of God was meant to glorify God. Therefore, any desire to glorify self or safeguard the interest of self is of necessity a sin, because I am looking at God and seeking His honour and glory, and it is that very thing in man which God has condemned. It is that which is under the curse of God and the wrath of God . . . holiness eventually means this, deliverance from this self-centred life. 

. . . if we say we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and believe that He has died for our sins, it means that our greatest desire should be to die to self. That is the final purpose of His dying, not merely that we might be forgiven, or that we might be saved from hell. Rather it was that a new people might be formed, a new humanity, a new creation, and that a new kingdom be set up, consisting of people like Himself. 

I have finished with self, I have died to myself, and my one concern now is the glory and honour of God."

~D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Studies in the Sermon on the Mount [emphasis added]

***

{Words for Wisdom for the Weekend: These are words that I have been challenged or encouraged by that I have read throughout my week that I kept pondering; words that I couldn't get off my mind and heart throughout my week. 

For other Words of Wisdom for the Weekend posts see here.}

Words of Wisdom for The Weekend ~ Oh, the Deep Love of Jesus

"that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you,

being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend 

with all the saints what is the 

breadth and length and height and depth,

and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge,

that you may be filled with all the fullness of God." ( Ephesians 3:17-19)

"Oh, my Lord, the dawn of your death day! 

The sky is grey, the roofs of Jerusalem dark in the grey, and the street at your feet is dim. 

You walk from the high priest's house to the Praetorium. Are you tired? Have you slept at all? 

You ate last night—but that was last night. You prayed last night an exhausted prayer. And last night you endured a long, malign investigation—you alone, and none beside you to support you. You suffered conventional gestures of contempt and official rejection: the death sentence, acoomponid by degrading games. Did they wash your face from their spittle? No. It sticks to you still. To them you are a pariah, unclean in blasphemy. Why should they watch you? Why should they feed you? Why should they give you something to drink? To them you are a problem to be solved. 

To me you are the Lord. 

The city scarcely stirs, but here come the rulers with you in the midst. Serious faces. Where are they going? To the governor's forum. The Romans begin their work-day frightfully early, so the council is hurrying, lest they miss their chance for and audience and a quick imperial trial. Go! Go! They prod you from behind. Go, don't drag your feet! What's the matter with you? Tired? They themselves are filled with hectic energy. Sleeplessness has nerved them, and their purpose verges on frenzy. Go! 

Jesus, how do you feel? What are you thinking? You don't talk. You mouth has been closed for such a long time now. Last night, before the legal machinery caught hold of you and began to grind you in its wheels, you said your soul was sorrowful, even unto death—and then your eyes revealed grief. I saw it. But now, in the dawn of your death day, your face is expressionless. I can read nothing in your eyes. Jesus! Jesus! How do you feel right now? What moods contend within you? What worlds collide inside your soul? O Jesus, are you hating? Are you praying? Are you screaming silently? Are you thinking about me right now? 

You walk, step by weary step, from Jerusalem to Rome, around the world, from life to death, away, away. Away from me. Away from my knowing, into mystery. O Jesus, it terrifies me that you go so far away from me! Please, give me a sign! I really can't stand this not knowing. Give me some sign from your solitude, Lord, please, please, that you are thinking of me. 

Lord Jesus, do you love me now?

***

Wordlessly, Jesus answers:

The walking itself is the sign, child.The loneliness which I have chosen, and the cross that closes it—these are the signs that I love you ever. I have to leave you to love you best. I go where I want you never to go, precisely because I love you. 

Can you say "Amen" to that?"

~Walter Wangerin Jr., Reliving the Passion

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by clinking here.}

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{Words for Wisdom for the Weekend: These are words that I have been challenged or encouraged by that I have read throughout my week that I kept pondering; words that I couldn't get off my mind and heart throughout my week. 

For other Words of Wisdom for the Weekend posts see here.}