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