christian

I am an archaeologist of mature vintage. Rapid descents are not my specialty. I am the plodding type."~ Grace Madison, PhD.

Our task shouldn't be punishing the villains in our lives, but enlarging the God who heals us from all wounds.

John 14:6Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth,and the life: no man cometh unto the Father,but by me.Psalm 45:1My heart is inditing a good matter: I speak of the things which I have made touching the king: my tongue is the pen of a ready writer.

It takes a lot of grace and maturity to simply forgive, but a lot of healing takes place when you do.

Hope is firm belief.

Hold fast to your faith.Keep your hope in the Lord.Embrace the love of God.

But the truth is that there is no more conscious inconsistency between the humility of a Christian and the rapacity of a Christian than there is between the humility of a lover and the rapacity of a lover. The truth is that there are no things for which men will make such herculean efforts as the things of which they know they are unworthy. There never was a man in love who did not declare that, if he strained every nerve to breaking, he was going to have his desire. And there never was a man in love who did not declare also that he ought not to have it.

Don't canonize me too soon. I'm perfectly capable of fathering a child.

God's greatest desire is for you to come to Him.

Delighting in the Lord, knowing His Word, and committing yourself to Him are ways to ensure that your plans and desires for yourself match God__ plans.

18. Godly character is what you are when you've been tried and proven. It is not what you say you are, or what people think you are but, instead, it is what shines through after you have suffered and have endured. It is the proof of your genuineness.

Faith is the key to spiritual growth and requires a deep and personal connection with God. He wants to be the head of our hearts, king of our souls, and guide to our spirit. By allowing Him free reign in these areas we create an opportunity for lasting intimacy with the Creator. From intimacy comes confidence _ in Him and in us.

On feeling guilty about lack of 'productivity':"In a time of infirmity, the illness IS one's work. Taking care of all the disciplines that our health problems require IS the other part of the small daily fidelity to which we are called, beside the faithfulness of being attentive to God. We can be well simply by our diligence in being who we are at the moment."--Marva Dawn, Being Well When We're Ill pg 137

One of my biggest problems in dealing with the breakdown of my body is that I keep looking in the wrong direction. I look to the past and the capabilities I once had, instead of looking to the future and what I will someday become in the presence and by the grace of God. Perhaps that is the strongest temptation for you too. Our culture reinforces that mistake by its refusal to talk about heaven, as if it were an old-fashioned and outdated notion. We also intensify the problem by craving present health (as limited as it can be) more than we desire God.A friend once said to me. "This is so hard getting old__here are so many things we can__ do any more. I guess the Lord wants to teach us something." Indeed, our bodies will never be what they previously were, and we find that difficult because we miss our former activities. But God wants to teach us to hunger for Him, our greatest treasure. Instead of rejecting the notion of heaven, we genuinely ache in our deepest self to fill that concept with a larger landscape of the Joy of basking in God__ presence.

Let us remember: when we talk of the rending of the veil we are speaking in a figure, and the thought of it is poetical, almost pleasant; but in actuality there is nothing pleasant about it. In human experience that veil is made of living spiritual tissue; it is composed of the sentient, quivering stuff of which our whole beings consist, and to touch it is to touch us where we feel pain. To tear it away is to injure us, to hurt us and make us bleed. To say otherwise is to make the cross no cross and death no death at all. It is never fun to die. To rip through the dear and tender stuff of which life is made can never be anything but deeply painful. Yet that is what the cross did to Jesus and it is what the cross would do to every man to set him free.

When you observe that the fire in your room is getting dull, you do not always put on more coal, but simply stir with the poker; so God often uses the black poker of adversity in order that the flames of devotion may burn more brightly.

There is pain and suffering in this world, but there is also joy, and not just suffering here and joy there, but suffering and joy in the very same place.

[S]how yourself a Christian, by suffering without murmuring; - in patience possess your soul: they lose nothing who gain Christ.