That Your Joy May Be Full

I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.
John 15:11

We are talking about the joy that comes from union with God, from living in His presence, because living in His presence fills us with joy. When I speak of joy, I do not identify it with loud laughter of with noise. This is not true happiness. Sometimes it hides other things.
When I speak of happiness, I refer to an inner and deep peace, which shows itself in our eyes, on our faces, in our attitudes, in our gestures, in our promptness...

When suffering comes into our lives, we should accept it with a smile. This is the greatest gift from God: to have the courage to accept everything He gives us and asks of us with a smile.
Mother Teresa

An Instrument of Peace

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.
Lord, may I not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
Because it is in giving that we receive, in pardoning that we are pardoned.
-Saint Francis of Assisi

The Power to Descend

We have all had times on the mount when we have seen things from God's standpoint and have wanted to stay there; but God will never allow us to stay there. The test of our spiritual life is the power to descend; if we have power to rise only, something is wrong.
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We are not built for the mountains and the dawns and eastheitic affinities, those are for moments of inspiration, that is all. We are built for the valleym for the ordinary stuff we are in, and that is where we have to prove our mettle...
The mount is not meant to teach us anything, it is meant to make us something.
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If we are going to be made into wine, we will have to be crushed; you cannot drink grapes.

-Oswald Chambers

The Great Exchange

What happens when you and I do slip away to be with God in study and prayer? We receive. We take in. We are nutured and fed. We insure our spiritual health and growth. When we spend time with Christ, He supplies us with strength and encourages us in the pursuit of His ways.
I call this time with God "the great exchange." Away from the world and hidden from public view, I exchange my weariness for His strength, my weakness for His power, my darkness for His light, my problems for His solutions, my burdens for His freedom, my frustrations for His peace, my turmoil for His calm, my hopes for His promises, my afflictions for His balm of comfort, my questions for His answers, my confusion for His knowledge, my doubt for His assurance, my nothingness for His awesomeness, the temporal for the eternal, and the impossible for the possible!

-Elizabeth George in A Woman After God's Own Heart

On Character

I found these quotes on the subject of character... enjoy!

Character is what you look like in the dark.
D. L. Moody

The measure of a man's real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.
Lord Macauby

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experiences of trial and suffering can the soul be strenthened, vision cleared; ambrition inspired, and success achieved.
Helen Keller

Sow an act, and you reap a habit. Sow a habit and you reap a character. Sow a character and reap a destiny.
Charles Reade

I want to want Thee

O God, I have tasted Thy goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more. I am painfully conscious of my need of further grace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire. O god, the Triune God, I want to want Thee; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made more thirsty still. Show me Thy glory, I pray Thee, that so I may know Thee indeed. Begin in mercy a new work of love within me. Say to my soul, "Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away." Then give me grace to rise and follow Thee up from this misty lowland where I have wandered so long.
In Jesus' name. Amen.
-A.W. Tozer in The Pursuit of God

"Lift up thine heart unto God with a meek stirring of love; and mean Himself, and none of His goods. And thereto, look thee loath to think on aught but God Himself. So that nought work in thy wit, nor in thy will, but only God Himself. This is the work of the soul that most pleaseth God."
-from The Cloud of Unknowing

Precious children

"How can you have too many children? That's like saying there are to many flowers."
-Mother Teresa

I love this! :)

I needed to hear this today...

You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You,
Because he trusts in You.
Trust in the Lord forever, for in YAH, the Lord, is everlasting strength.
Isaiah 26:3-4

Delight yourself in the Lord...

When God asks for our heart, He asks for all of it. He wants to fill every part with Himself. He completes us. Only when we are satisfied in Him will we be able to selflessly give our lives for others.
-Sarah Mally, Before You Meet Prince Charming

Purposeful words

Finally, in Ephesians 4:29 Paul commands that our verbal communication always be purposeful, and the right purpose is "that we may give grace to those who hear." The biblical purpose for every conversation you have, in every personal interaction, is that the person who hears you will receive grace.

We're all in need of grace. There's no one you konw who doesn't need more of it. And God has so composed His church that when we're together in a larger corporate gathering or in a small group or even in casual conversation, we can receive grace and communicate grace through the exchange of edifying and appropriate words.
Every conversation has this potential. So let us pray, "Lord help me discern what kind of grace this person needs." For those who are legalistic or feel condemned, we want to bring justifying grace into their souls. To those struggling with a besetting sin, we want to bring sanctifying grace. To those experiencing suffering, we want to bring comforting grace. To those who are just weary, we want to refresh their souls with sustaining grace. The list goes on and on.

Through each and every interaction, however casual, however brief, I want to impart grace through my words, for that's God's purpose in granting us this gift of speech. And in effect we have God's promise in this passage that when our words are edifying and appropriate, they will
have grace.
So we have to ask ourselves: Is this the effect of my speech upon others? Is this their common experience in our conversations? Do they experience grace in and through my words?
-from Humility: True Greatness by C.J. Mahaney

I cannot express in words the way this book has encouraged my heart. I highly, highly recommend reading it!

Of trials and hardships

A man may look another in the face for a hundred years and not know him. Men have looked Jesus Christ in the face, and not known either him or his father. It was necessary that he should appear, to begin the knowing of him, but his visible presence was quickly taken away so that it would not become a veil to hide men from the Father of their spirits. Many long for some sensible sign of intellectual proof. But such would only delay and impair that better, that best, vision--a contact with the heart of God himself, a perception of his being imparted by his spirit.

For the sake of the vision God longs to give you, you are denied the vision you want. The Father of our spirits is not content that we should know him as we now know each other. There is a better, closer, and nearer way than any human way of knowing, and he is guiding us to that across all the swamps of our unteachableness, the seas of our faithlessness, the deserts of our ignorance.

Is it so very hard to wait for that which we cannot yet receive? Shall we compain of the shadows cast upon the mirrors of our souls by the hand and the polishing cloth, to receive more excellent glory? Have patience, children of the Father. Pray always and do not faint. The mists and the storms and the cold will pass; the sun and the sky are forever. The most loving of you cannot imagine how one day the love of the Father will make you love.
-from The Lady's Confession by George MacDonald