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