Melissa at Breath of Life hosts a weekly carnival called The Week In Words,which involves sharing something from your reading that inspires you, causes you to laugh, cry, or dream, or just resonates with you in some way.

I forgot to note where I saw the first one, but I think it was on someone’s Facebook wall:

“I must secure more time for private devotions. I have been living far too public for me. The shortening of devotions starves the soul. It grows lean and faint. I have been keeping too late hours.” William Wilberforce

Wilberforce was a busy man behind good causes, yet felt the need of Scripture to strengthen and support him. We all have that need.

This is from the daily Elisabeth Elliot e-mail devotional:

He who refreshes others will himself be refreshed (Prv 11:25). “If you…satisfy the needs of the wretched…the Lord will satisfy your needs” (Is 58:10,11 NEB).

Do you often feel like parched ground, unable to produce anything worthwhile? I do. When I am in need of refreshment, it isn’t easy to think of the needs of others. But I have found that if, instead of praying for my own comfort and satisfaction, I ask the Lord to enable me to give to others, an amazing thing often happens–I find my own needs wonderfully met. Refreshment comes in ways I would never have thought of, both for others, and then, incidentally, for myself.

Lord, be as the dew to me today, as You were to Israel, that I may “flower like the lily” (Hos 14:5 NEB).

She’s not discounting the refreshment that comes from the Word, prayer, worship, fellowship, etc., but this avenue of refreshment is often over-looked: getting our attention off ourselves and concentrating on serving others.

Finally, this prayer was at the end of the March 14 reading from Our Daily Walk by F. B. Meyer:

Lord, be Thou within me, to strengthen me; without me, to keep me; above me, to protect me; beneath me, to uphold me; before me, to direct me; behind me, to keep me from straying; round about me, to defend me.

What struck me was not just the wonderful, bracing truth contained within the prayer itself, but the fact that each phrase recalls a truth of Scripture. I decided to look up at least one Bible verse for each phrase:

Within me, to strengthen me:

Christ in you, the hope of glory. Colossians 1:27:

Without me, to keep me:

For the bodies of those beasts, whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest for sin, are burned without the camp. Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate. Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach. Hebrews 13:11-13.

Above me, to protect me:

He sent from above, he took me, he drew me out of many waters. Psalm 16:18.

Beneath me, to uphold me:

The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms. Deuteronomy 33:27b.

Before me, to direct me:

I have set the LORD always before me: because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved. Psalm 16:8.

Behind me, to keep me from straying:

Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me. Psalm 139:5.

Round about me, to defend me:

Thou art my hiding place; thou shalt preserve me from trouble; thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance. Psalm 32:7

I wrote a post last year about the blessing of looking at prepositional phrases such as these in the Bible. Those who know God are wonderfully surrounded by His love, care, and strength.

Melissa at Breath of Life hosts a weekly carnival called The Week In Words,which involves sharing something from your reading that inspires you, causes you to laugh, cry, or dream, or just resonates with you in some way. Melissa explains,

“Playing along is simple, just write a post of the quote(s) that spoke to you during the week (attributed, of course) and link back here [at Melissa‘s]. They can be from any written source, i.e. magazine, newspaper, blog, book. The only requirement is that they be words you read.”

This blog post from my friend Rita, who is a missionary in Paraguay, had me sympathizing yet smiling.

Nothing will wake you up on a Sunday Morning like being introduced to a classroom full of Hispanic ladies as the guest speaker when no one ever mentioned it to you… then , when you frantically look down at your Bible for a verse of inspiration, you discover that you are carrying your English Bible to Spanish Sunday School.

This is from the March 5 reading from Our Daily Walk by F. B, Meyer:

But what we are in the smallest details of our life, that we are really and essentially.

Lastly, I finally began Jesus, Keep Me Near the Cross: Experiencing the Passion and Power of Easter, compiled by Nancy Guthrie. These lines stood out to me in the preface:

Oh, what we miss out on when we rush past the cross of Christ.Oh, the richness and reward when stop to linger before it, when we take the time to “consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself” (Hebrews 12:3). In a culture where crosses have become commonplace as architecture and jewelry, how we need to truly gaze upon the cross of Christ in all its ugliness and beauty, in its death and in its healing, in the painful price paid there, and in its free gift of grace. Jesus, keep us near the cross.

(Today’s Microfiction Monday post is below.)

Melissa at Breath of Life hosts a weekly carnival called The Week In Words,which involves sharing some words from your reading. Melissa explains,

“Playing along is simple, just write a post of the quote(s) that spoke to you during the week (attributed, of course) and link back here [at Melissa‘s]. They can be from any written source, i.e. magazine, newspaper, blog, book. The only requirement is that they be words you read.”

I like this idea because I often will see a quote that really speaks to me, but then I forget it. Just recording them here helps me remember them a little better.

The first one is from a friend’s Facebook profile:

“The gospel comes to the sinner at once with nothing short of complete forgiveness as the starting-point of all his efforts to be holy. It does not say, ‘Go and sin no more, and I will not condemn thee.’ It says at once, ‘Neither do I condemn thee: go and sin no more.’”  — Horatius Bonar

Amen.

This one I saw at Ribtickler and traced back to Stephen Hume’s column in the Vancouver Sun.

“What matters is not the medal count, it’s simply that these remarkable young people—from Canada or from anywhere else—qualified and then showed up and did their best against the world’s best. Everybody can’t finish with a gold medal; most who strive must always settle for satisfactions that don’t even include medals. But it’s their striving that creates the winner’s glory.”  — Stephen Hume

I love this. Often when Jesse played basketball, I just prayed for each team to their best. And even those who didn’t win gold in the Olympics contributed to the sport, the competition, and their own stretching, growth, and development.

Finally, in Parting the Waters:Finding Beauty in Brokenness by Jeanne Damoff, which I am currently reading, she writes in section about a situation that was not bad in itself but was causing problems for some and was being used “to stir up lies and jealousy”:

We’d escaped any permanent damage, but a sobering thought struck me. With all the prayer surrounding our family, how had these darts found a chink in the armor?

I remembered a verse. “Satan is like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.” Satan doesn’t fight fair. Often, he takes something good — something God has done — and perverts it into an instrument of destruction.

So perceptive, and so true. We need God’s grace not just to watch out for the “big things” but also the little things that could lead to big things.

Read anything lately that struck you in a particular way that you’d like to remember? You can visit Melissa’s for more or to link up with your own quotes.

Here are a few things that stood out to me this week:

From Elisabeth Elliot’s book On Asking God Why as quoted in the daily e-mail devotional:

There are those who insist that it is a very bad thing to question God. To them, “Why?” is a rude question. That depends, I believe, on whether it is an honest search, in faith, for his meaning, or whether it is a challenge of unbelief and rebellion. The psalmist often questioned God and so did Job. God did not answer the questions, but he answered the man–with the mystery of himself.

He has not left us entirely in the dark. We know a great deal more about his purposes than poor old Job did, yet Job trusted him. He is not only the Almighty–Job’s favorite name for him. He is also our Father, and what a father does is not by any means always understood by the child. If he loves the child, however, the child trusts him. It is the child’s ultimate good that the father has in mind. Terribly elementary. Yet I have to be reminded of this when, for example, my friend suffers, when a book I think I can’t possibly do without is lost, when a manuscript is worthless.

From the same source, a quote she included which I’ve found all too true in myself:

Sir Joshua Reynolds wrote, “There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking.”

From the chapter “A Wife’s Responsibility to Help Her Husband” by Barbara Hughes in Becoming God’s True Woman:

No one wants to play second fiddle. But the fact is, without a second violin there is no harmony.

From Mrs. Dunwoody’s Excellent Instructions for Homekeeping (I quoted extensively from this book in a review here):

She taught that women were not just doing chores, they were creating — creating a home, a place of security, warmth, contentment, and affection (p. xii).

From a friend’s Facebook wall:

I have cast my anchor in the port of peace, knowing that present and future are in nail-pierced hands –Valley of Vision

From the Facebook wall of a friend battling cancer:

As we remember the lovingkindness of the Lord, we see how good it was to find our own strength fail us, since it drove us to the strong for strength. ~ Spurgeon

What interesting finds have you come across in your reading this week?

All God’s giants have been weak men, who did great things for God because they reckoned on His being with them.

– Dr. & Mrs. Howard Taylor, Hudson Taylor and the China Inland Mission; The Growth of a Work of God, Chapter 19

After proving God’s faithfulness for many years, I can testify that times of want have ever been times of spiritual blessing, or have led to them.

– A.J. Broomhall. Hudson Taylor and China’s Open Century, Book Five: Refiner’s Fire. London: Hodder and Stoughton and Overseas Missionary Fellowship, 1985, 406.

Brighton, 25 June 1965: “All at once came the thought – If you are simply obeying the LORD, all the responsibility will rest on Him, not on you! What a relief!! Well, I cried to God – You shall be responsible for them, and for me too!”

– A.J. Broomhall. Hudson Taylor and China’s Open Century, Book Three: If I Had a Thousand Lives. London: Hodder and Stoughton and Overseas Missionary Fellowship, 1982, 454.)

If God places me in great perplexity, must He not give much guidance; in positions of great difficulty, much grace; in circumstances of great pressure and trial, much strength. As to work, mine was never so plentiful, so responsible, or so difficult, but the weight and strain are all gone. His resources are all mine, for He is mine.

— Hudson Taylor (inscribed in Dal Washer’s Bible)