Welcome to The Week In Words, where we share quotes from the last week’s reading. If something you read this past week inspired you, caused you to laugh, cry, think, dream, or just resonated with you in some way, please share it with us, attributing it to its source, which can be a book, newspaper, blog, Facebook — anything that you read. More information is here.
This is one of those weeks when I have many I want to share, but I am afraid if I share all of them at once, some will lose their impact and get lost in the shuffle. But if I try to leave some for another week when I don’t have any….well, so far there has been only one week like that! So I think I will just get started and then decide what to do.
This is a quote from a former pastor on a friend’s Facebook:
“Obedience is not legalism. It is the beautiful response of spirit-enabled people to say yes to God.” — Mark Minnick
That’s a rich one that really needs some time to meditate on. I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced being accused of legalism when you were simply trying to obey something you felt Scripture taught (and another differed on), but I have. Or, on the other hand, some people so emphasize grace that they don’t seem to see a need for obedience because they have grace for their disobedience. God provides grace in abundance when we fail, but He provides grace to obey and avoid failing, too if we ask Him (speaking here of the everday walk of a Christian — we all need God’s grace for salvation because we all have failed in the first place.)
This was seen at Challies in a review of the book Written in Tears by Luke Veldt which he wrote after reading Psalm 103 every day for a year after his teen-age daughter suddenly died. I haven’t read the book yet, but I want to.
Sometimes people of faith have a hard time remembering that suffering was an excruciatingly painful process for Job. ‘The Lord gives and the Lord takes away; blessed be the name of the Lord,’ we quote Job brightly—forgetting that when he said it he had shaved his head and torn his clothes and that a few days later he was sitting on an ash heap, covering in painful boils and cursing the day he was born.
Don’t try to make the pain go away. The pain doesn’t go away. Hurt with me.
Rich advice for anyone wanting to help anyone suffering.
From a devotional titled The Invitation by Derick Bingham. commenting on John 7:37, 44:
You are not big enough to be the goal of your own existence. Make Him your goal.
The next few are from Jesus, Keep Me Near the Cross: Experiencing the Passion and Power of Easter, compiled by Nancy Guthrie.
From Adrian Rogers on Isaiah 53:7 concerning Jesus’s silence before His accusers (p. 53):
If Jesus had risen up in His own defense during His trials, I believe He would have been so powerful and irrefutable in making His defense that no governor, high priest, or other legal authority could have stood against Him! In other words, if Jesus had taken up His own defense with the intention of refuting His accusers and proving His innocence, He would have won! But we would have lost, and we would be lost for all eternity.
I had never thought about it that way before, but I am sure that that is at least one of the reasons for His silence.
And from Martyn Lloyd-Jones on Hebrews 2:14-15 (p. 77-78):
The world was very pleased with itself, was it not, as it looked upon him there dying upon the cross? That is why they laugh. That is why they are joking. At last they had got him, they had nailed him, they had killed him. He was finished….. The devil thought he was defeating Christ, but Christ was reconciling us to God, defeating the devil and delivering us out of His clutches.
If it was not so deadly serious, the irony would be amusing that when the devil did his worst against Christ, Christ was using that very act to redeem men and deliver them from the devil.
I think I will stop there today — I have another lengthy one but I think I will save it for its own post.
If you’ve read anything that particularly spoke to you that you’d like to share, please either list it in the comments below or write a post on your blog and then put the link to that post (not your general blog link) in Mr. Linky below. I do ask that only family-friendly quotes be included. I hope you’ll visit some of the other participants as well and glean some great thoughts to ponder.
And please do comment even if you don’t have quotes to share!
Stray Thoughts 
“Don’t try to make the pain go away. The pain doesn’t go away. Hurt with me.”
That spoke to me, Barbara. It’s good advice.
Here’s one for today:
“Who loves his neighbor lives heart to heart with God.”
George Peelen
Excellent point, Barbara. “But He provides grace to obey and avoid failing, too.”
I downloaded the excerpt from ‘Written in Tears.’ Challies made it look so good (he has a way of doing that). I thought the simple phrase “Hurt with me” was very powerful.
If Jesus had defended himself, “He would have won! But we would have lost”. Powerful.
The Adrian Rogers’ quote put things into perspective for me. Jesus died to self for our benefit, and we are to die to ourselves so we might serve others and glorify God.
I also like the reminder that obedience is saying “yes” to God…yes, I will do it Your way, Lord.
Oh wow–that is a lot of good quotes.
I like that first one on legalism. Sometimes it’s hard to distinguish legalism and obedience from the outside because often legalism and obedience involve the same actions. Yet obedience is a response to (effect of) God’s grace, while legalism is a misguided attempt to earn (attempt to “cause”) God’s favor. Couldn’t be more different, even if the action is the same.
I also identified with the advice to not try to make the pain go away. I know that in some of my times of greatest pain, the greatest comfort has come not from those who tried to make the pain go away but from those who were willing to simply be with me amidst my pain.
Your words remind me of a G.K. Chesterton quote I heard at a conference last weekend. It’s from his commentary on the book of Job: “The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man.”