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.

Here are a few that spoke to me this past week:

I saw this on Lisa‘s sidebar of her Twitter feed:

If you understand that God is using all the difficulties you face to perfect you, you’ll be at peace. It’s not all for nothing. ~ John MacArthur

That does help to know God has a purpose in everything He allows, and this is at least one of them.

The next few are from The Invitation by Derick Bingham, all concerning John 12.

From the May 30th reading about Martha serving as many as seventeen people:

[Formerly] Martha was distracted by her serving. Now, she isn’t. She is now serving as wholeheartedly as ever but not to the detriment of ignoring what God wants to say to her.

May it be true of all of God’s Marthas.

From the May 31 reading concerning Mary’s anointing Christ’s feet with a costly ointment:

If we have not what the Bible calls “first love” for Christ we will do more harm than good by the defence of the Christian faith. People have risen in the history of the church with a zeal for truth but because there is no first love for Christ behind it, their zeal narrow into hate. All service for Christ that is not the outgrowth of love for Him is worthless. Activity in the King’s service will not make up for neglect of the King.

There’s a lot in that one, but what particularly grabbed me was the thought of zeal for truth with no love doing more harm than good. I’ve seen people like that, and I believe that’s true. And then the last statement convicts as well: how easy it is to be busy in service and drift away from that first love.

From the June 1 reading commenting on Judas’s disparaging remarks concerning Mary’s act:

If you wait until everybody commends and praises you, then you will never do any good in this world.

True: there will always be naysayers.

Now, as for the giveaway I mentioned in the title. 🙂 I just realized last week that I missed the one year anniversary of hosting The Week In Words. It was begun by Melissa at Breath of Life, and when she had to set it aside I asked if I could take it over, and in May I had been hosting it for a year. And an anniversary is a nice time for a giveaway. One source I’ve shared many quotes from is Warren Wiersbe’s With the Word, a book of short commentary on every chapter in the Bible, so I would like to give away one copy of that book…and I may include a couple of other little surprises as well. If you’d like to be included in the giveaway, just leave a comment on this post, and I’ll announce the winner at the next Week In Words next Monday morning. (You don’t have to leave a quote to enter, but if you have one, please do share it as well! All comments will be entered in the drawing, so if you comment but you are not interested in the book, please let me know. If you already have a copy, this might make a nice gift for someone else.)

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.

Don’t forget to leave a comment, even if you don’t have any quotes to share! 🙂