verse of the day, May 22, 2023

For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another.  -Galatians chapter 5

faith proved in troubled times.

Indeed it is extremely doubtful if a soul can really know the love of God in its richness and in its comforting, satisfying completeness until the skies are black and lowering. Light comes out of darkness, morning out of the womb of the night.

-Malcolm McLeod

God and the future.

 "....and you will be my witnesses..."

Isn't it a wonder, our Lord and His creation.

I was thinking earlier and writing about a blank future.  God happened to obscure that future from me.  This is our "free choice" writ large, a blank future, in which we do not know what will come.  In the natural world, men and women shape their future, don't you know?  You don't just sit letting it happen all the time, but there are times for an active hand in the coming of the future.

And we are tasked to be Godly in the building of a future.

Psalm 90. A meme I made 7 years back......

 

A crux on Good and Evil, traced to First Causes.

"...thou shalt see an enemy in my habitation, in all the wealth which God shall give..."  -1 Samuel 2:32

So the pastor was speaking about God chastening us, and I was thinking of all the promises that would seem broken, if he provided our wrongs, along with our items of providence.

Would it seem that God has a mean streak, that he tests and tempers us with troubles?  Its like the saying "he who made kittens, put snakes in the grass".

But the truth of this statement is that God does have a good plan for each of us, because He loves us.

The crux of Him providing both evil and good to the believer is in the fact that God created it all: he created the evil that forsook Him to establish his own kingdom opposite God.

He created the challenger, and had that challenger Faith, Hope and Love, would not the world be so much the better these days?  If, and only if, that prince of the power of the air not turned against God, this would be heaven on Earth.

So ultimately, if we trace reasons and causes all the way back to creation, we find the God is the author of all, as some say that everything is merely the thoughts of God: all of us, the world, the sun and stars, but the thoughts of God.

Spurgeon and the Verse of the Day, May 20, 2023

 Now the God of patience and consolation grant you to be likeminded one toward another according to Christ Jesus: That ye may with one mind and one mouth glorify God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.(From Romans chapter 15, Bible Gateway and Thomas Nelson Verse of the Day)

When we give our hearts with our alms, we give well, but we must often plead to a failure in this respect. Not so our Master and our Lord. His favours are always performed with the love of his heart. He does not send to us the cold meat and the broken pieces from the table of his luxury, but he dips our morsel in his own dish, and seasons our provisions with the spices of his fragrant affections. When he puts the golden tokens of his grace into our palms, he accompanies the gift with such a warm pressure of our hand, that the manner of his giving is as precious as the boon itself. He will come into our houses upon his errands of kindness, and he will not act as some austere visitors do in the poor man's cottage, but he sits by our side, not despising our poverty, nor blaming our weakness.

-Charles Spurgeon

Spurgeon on Prayer and Intercession.

No temptation in the life of intercession is more common than this of failure to persevere. We begin to pray for a certain thing; we put up our petitions for a day, a week, a month; and then, receiving as yet no definite answer, straightway we faint, and cease altogether from prayer concerning it.

This is a deadly fault. It is simply the snare of many beginnings with no completions. It is ruinous in all spheres of life. The man who forms the habit of beginning without finishing has simply formed the habit of failure. The man who begins to pray about a thing and does not pray it through to a successful issue of answer has formed the same habit in prayer. To faint is to fail; then defeat begets disheartenment, and unfaith in the reality of prayer, which is fatal to all success.

-Charles Spurgeon