The Week In Words Continues…

Posted on August 1, 2011 by Barbara Harper

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.

Thanks you for your encouraging comments and votes on last week’s poll about whether The Week In Words should continue. With the exception of one lone negative vote in the poll, it looks like there is enough interest to keep it going.

I hope I didn’t sound like I was feeling sorry for myself or looking for affirmation (though in all honesty I can’t confess to being always entirely free from that….ahem… 😳 ), but I was thinking that if there were only two or three of us interested in these posts and everyone else was skipping over them, then maybe the time and space might be better used. But I was glad to see that others read them, too. And as someone said, I would probably be posting quotes at some interval anyway, and I enjoy reading quotes you come up with, too — often they are quite convicting, thought-provoking, or entertaining.

I’ve mentioned this before, but if you don’t have a particular post for TWIW but you have a post from the previous week that contained a quote or quotes, please feel free to link that up. There have been times I’ve thought about commenting on someone’s post that “This would be a good entry for TWIW” — but I don’t want to see pushy or self-promotional. So if I ever do say that, please don’t take it that way but rather just see it as a “maybe you hadn’t thought about this, but…” kind of suggestion.

I know some of you like to save quotes from books you’re reading to share when you review or discuss the book. I do that too, except sometimes when I have way too many quotes marked to share in one review. Just occasionally I’ll repeat one here and again in the review if it is particularly striking.

Just as an FYI, my goal is to have TWIW post published Sunday night before I go to bed so it’s here first thing for those who are up early in the morning. But sometimes on Sundays I don’t have much time with the computer so I’m not able to get it up until some time Monday morning.

Okay, now that I’ve used so many of my own words….I am going to post just one quote for you this week. I saw this on Diane‘s Facebook status and loved it:

“When the devil throws our sins up to us and declares we deserve death and hell, we ought to speak thus: ‘I admit that I deserve death and hell. What of it? Does this mean that I shall be sentenced to eternal damnation? By no means. For I know One who suffered and made a satisfaction in my behalf. His name is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Where he is, there I shall be also.’”~Martin Luther

I know his “What of it?” is not meant to be flippant but rather an answer to the “Accuser of the brethren” that that accusation is already taken care of.

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

The Week in Words and a Poll

Posted on July 25, 2011 by Barbara Harper

I only have a couple this week. One I posted earlier in a review of Prince Caspian, but I couldn’t resist posting it again:

“You come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve, and that is both honor enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth.”

This one came from an e-mail devotional of Elisabeth Elliot from a chapter titled “A Devious Repentance” in A Lamp For My Feet:

Recently I committed a sin of what seemed to me unpardonable thoughtlessness. For days I wanted to kick myself around the block. What is the matter with me? I thought. How could I have acted so? “Fret not thyself because of evildoers” came to mind. In this case the evildoer was myself, and I was fretting. My fretting, I discovered, was a subtle kind of pride. “I’m really not that sort of person,” I was saying. I did not want to be thought of as that sort of person. I was very sorry for what I had done, not primarily because I had failed someone I loved, but because my reputation would be smudged. When my reputation becomes my chief concern, my repentance has a hollow ring. No wonder Satan is called the deceiver. He has a thousand tricks, and we fall for them.

Lord, I confess my sin of thoughtlessness and my sin of pride. I pray for a more loving and a purer heart, for Jesus’ sake.

I’ve been there. You?

I’ve marked a few more from Beyond Suffering by Layton Talbert, but I think I might save those for when I review the book. It’s hard to wait to post them, though!

Also — I’ve been kind of thinking about discontinuing The Week In Words. I’ve hosted it about a year now, and most weeks there are only two or three of us who participate, though some weeks we have 4 and I think once or twice we’ve had as many was six. (I know some of you have been away lately, but I am thinking of the overall trend: it hasn’t really “taken off.”) But then it’s not really about numbers. Also, I think many people who don’t participate in it skip the post entirely (which is fine — I don’t always read or comment on every post of every blog I read, though I usually at least skim them). I’ve been going back and forth about it in my own mind for a few weeks now, and I decided to ask you what you thought. You can either vote in the poll or leave a comment, or both.

I hope you’ll visit some of the other participants as well and glean some great thoughts to ponder. And don’t forget to leave a comment here, even if you don’t have any quotes to share!

The Week In Words

Posted on July 18, 2011 by Barbara Harper

Forgive me, I am running late today. But here are a few quotes that spoke to me this week:

From Robin Lee Hatcher‘s Facebook page:

“Without love for God & His Word, [our obedience is] just trying to be good. Nothing will wear you out faster.” Beth Moore

I’ve never read a Beth Moore book or Bible study, but I can attest to the truth of this statement.

From The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis:

But as for Aslan himself, the Beavers and the children didn’t know what to do or say when they saw him. People who have not been in Narnia sometimes think that a thing cannot be good and terrible at the same time. If the children had ever thought so, they were cured of it now. For when they tried to look at Aslan’s face they just caught a glimpse of the golden mane and the great, royal, solemn, overwhelming eyes; and then they found they couldn’t look at him and went all trembly.

For those who might not know, Aslan the lion is the Christ figure in the Narnia stories, and I thought this was a sweet and lovely depiction trying to explain his being both good and terrible (terrible not meaning “bad” here but inspiring awe, as in these verses.) Sometimes I have tried to reconcile in my own mind how we can think of Christ as an elder brother and friend and God as an “Abba” father, and yet, as John, the closest disciple to Christ, fall on his face as dead when we see Him in all His glory. The closest parallel that comes to mind is what it might be like when a child of royalty sees his parent “in state” at a royal function all decked out in royal garb with pomp and ceremony.

From Beyond Suffering by Layton Talbert:

Commenting on Job being a man who “eschewed evil“: The Hebrew verb means to recoil and to go out of one’s way to avoid. Job feared God and was frightened of evil because he understood the true nature of each. Being frightened of evil is not a sign of immaturity or paranoia. It is the same sane aversion to danger that my nephew has to peanuts: they may appear harmless but he knows they can kill him (p. 29).

And later commenting on some people’s disagreeing with James’s assessment of the patience of Job: This Biblical virtue is not a sappy, carefree cheeriness. It is a manly word that means to ‘remain under’ whatever pressure or pain one is presently enduring from the hand of God. Patience is fortitude under adversity. Job struggled to maintain his integrity and his faith under great duress. (p. 32).

Finally, from the July 1 reading of The Invitation by Derick Bingham:

The Lord Jesus got down below the level of their couches and washed their feet, gently. So if we would seek to correct, say, someone’s attitude problem, we must not do it in an arrogant and proud manner, else we will do them more harm than good. Humility of attitude and helpfulness goes a long way to guiding those who have bee soiled to a place of cleansing. If you would be a true foot-washer, imitate the Lord’s method. Christians are often hopeless at this ministry simply because they are not willing to stoop low enough.

Much food for thought today!

I hope you’ll visit some of the other participants as well and glean some great thoughts to ponder. And don’t forget to leave a comment here, even if you don’t have any quotes to share!

The Week In Words

Posted on July 11, 2011 by Barbara Harper

I hope you’ll forgive the length of some of these: I cut them down but didn’t want to cut too much.

The following is an excerpt from from the Day 12 reading titled “Sanctification by Satisfaction” of Gospel Meditations For Women:

Scripture describes the Christian life as the source of such great joy that temptations lose their appeal. Like the feeling we have after Thanksgiving dinner, we should be so full of Christ that we don’t have room for sin!…Does obeying Christ mean saying no to sinful pleasures? Sure. However, saying no to sin in favor of Christ is like saying no to a scooter in favor of a sports car, or no to peanuts in favor of filet mignon. Life with Christ is a feast, not a famine.” ~ Chris Anderson

I never thought of “fullness” in that way — what a great illustration.

This is an excerpt from an Elisabeth Elliot e-mail devotional taken from a chapter titled “How to Be Free” from All That Was Ever Ours.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a man who epitomized true freedom in his acceptance, for God’s sake, of the prison cell and death, wrote: “If you set out to seek freedom, then learn above all things to govern your soul and your senses. . . . Only through discipline may a man learn to be free.”

Freedom and discipline have come to be regarded as mutually exclusive, when in fact freedom is not at all the opposite, but the final reward, of discipline. It is to be bought with a high price, not merely claimed. The world thrills to watch the grace of Peggy Fleming on the ice, or the marvelously controlled speed and strength of a racehorse. But the skater and horse are free to perform as they do only because they have been subjected to countless hours of grueling work, rigidly prescribed, faithfully carried out. Men are free to soar into space because they have willingly confined themselves in a tiny capsule designed and produced by highly trained scientists and craftsmen, have meticulously followed instructions and submitted themselves to rules which others defined.

This was from a post at ivman:

“We give to God to show Him we think He’s valuable, not because He’s poor..” — Drew Conley

God doesn’t “need” what we have to give, but we need to give it.

I hope you’ll visit some of the other participants as well and glean some great thoughts to ponder. And don’t forget to leave a comment here, even if you don’t have any quotes to share!

The Week In Words: Fourth of July Edition

Posted on July 4, 2011 by Barbara Harper

I wasn’t sure if anyone would be here for the Week In Words or not today, but I figured I’d go ahead and have it for whoever might be here.

I’ve posted this before, but it is one of my favorite Independence Day quotes:

From John Adams’ famous letter of July 3, 1776, in which he wrote to his wife Abigail what his thoughts were about celebrating the Independence Day, with his original spellings:

The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.

You will think me transported with Enthusiasm but I am not. I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that Posterity will tryumph in that Days Transaction, even altho We should rue it, which I trust in God We shall not.

Enjoy your “Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations” today!

Also, a stanza from “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee” stood out to me yesterday as we sang it at church:

Our fathers’ God, to Thee,
Author of liberty,
To Thee we sing;
Long may our land be bright
With freedom’s holy light;
Protect us by Thy might,
Great God, our King.

I hope you’ll visit some of the other participants as well and glean some great thoughts to ponder. And don’t forget to leave a comment here, even if you don’t have any quotes to share!

The Week In Words

Posted on June 27, 2011 by Barbara Harper

I just have a few this week, but they packed a pretty big punch for me.

Seen on Adam Blumer‘s Facebook status:

“Take care that you do not waste your sorrows; that you do not let the precious gifts of disappointment, pain, loss, loneliness, or similar afflictions … mar you instead of mending you…. There is no failure of life so terrible as to have the pain without the lesson, the sorrow without the softening.” (Hugh Black, early 20th-century pastor)

There is so much there: that our troubles can mar instead of mend us if we let them, that we can endure them without getting what we’re supposed to out of them and thereby “waste” them.

And seen on David McGuire‘s Facebook:

“Winning is great, sure, but if you are really going to do something in life, the secret is learning how to lose. Nobody goes undefeated all the time. If you can pick up after a crushing defeat, and go on to win again, you are going to be a champion someday.” — Wilma Rudolph

One of the most heartening and enlightening sermons I ever heard was in college on the topic of how to deal with failure. I wasn’t failing classes, but I was doing worse than I ever had academically, and that was a serious blow that felt like failure.

Finally, this sobering thought from the June 22 reading of The Invitation by Derick Bingham:

The message that proclaims life to those who believe it is the same message which proclaims judgment to those who disobey it. At the end of the day it is what you do with the Saviour’s word that matters.

I hope you’ll visit some of the other participants as well and glean some great thoughts to ponder. And don’t forget to leave a comment here, even if you don’t have any quotes to share!

The Week In Words

Posted on June 20, 2011 by Barbara Harper

Here are some great thoughts gleaned during the past week:

Seen at Challies:

Did God not sometimes withhold in mercy what we ask, we should be ruined at our own request. —Hannah More

This echoes Psalm 106:15. I am thankful God sometimes says, “No,” though it is hard to hear at the time.

Seen in You Are Responsible For Your Own Actions at the True Woman site:

At the end of the day, we have to leave it to God to right the wrongs in the universe and to deal with others about their issues. They are not our responsibility. Our responsibility is to respond in faith and in obedience to His Word, through the power of His Spirit. That’s what He will hold us accountable for. ~ Nancy Leigh DeMoss

This one really spoke to me because I can tend to fume about “the wrongs in the universe” and other people’s issues. This doesn’t mean we don’t ever speak to someone about something they need to get right or we don’t ever take a stand against injustice, etc. But we don’t need to speak out or take a stand in every little personal disagreement with someone else’s opinion or way of doing something. Sometimes we just have to let it go and let God deal with it in His time.

Quoted in Mine Is the Night by Liz Curtis Higgs, p. 312:

A day of worry is more exhausting than a day or work. ~ John Lubbock, Lord Avebury

Isn’t that the truth?!

And finally, this was from this post at Wrestling With the Angel:

“Everyone matters to God, so everyone matters.”

That takes care of just about everything, doesn’t it? And kind of prejudice, any kind of difference, every kind of person matters to God and therefore should to us as well. We never have the right to treat anyone as a lesser human being.

I hope you’ll visit some of the other participants as well and glean some great thoughts to ponder. And don’t forget to leave a comment here, even if you don’t have any quotes to share! 🙂

The Week In Words and a Giveaway Winner

Posted on June 13, 2011 by Barbara Harper

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

Seen at Semicolon:

“When the storytelling goes bad in society, the result is decadence..” ~ Aristotle

That seems a very true development in our society.

From a friend’s Facebook:

“Your children need a relationship with Christ more than they need comforts, sports, education or popularity. You are their primary source for knowing Him.” ~ J Kenney

From the May 30 reading of The Invitation by Derick Bingham concerning John 12:28:

Christ was willing t0 suffer whatever was necessary if only the glory of God would be promoted. If people were to think better of His Father through what they saw in Him, that was what really mattered.

The second sentence struck me as the essence of what it means to glorify God.

From Mine Is the Night by Liz Curtis Higgs, p. 33:

However grim Reverend Brown’s countenance, however dour his sermons, this was where she would spend each Sabbath, finding a secret joy in the holy words themselves.

This was both an encouragement and rebuke to me. I’ve admitted to getting frustrated and discouraged with particular types of preaching that are the speaker’s “take” or thoughts about the text rather than a drawing out and a giving the sense of the text itself, or preaching that is a ranting and raving style. But if I have “ears to hear,” I can take great joy in the Word of God itself that is being presented.

And finally the winner of the giveaway of Warren Wiersbe’s With the Word and a couple of other little surprises from last week’s WIW is Katrina at Callapidder Days! Thanks so much to all who entered!

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

The Week In Words…and a Giveaway!

Posted on June 6, 2011 by Barbara Harper

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.)

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

The Week In Words

Posted on May 23, 2011 by Barbara Harper

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

I saw this on Lisa‘s Twitter sidebar:

“When you labor to show yourself righteous so that God will accept you, you are not submitting to God’s righteousness.” -John Piper

Paul says he wants to “be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith” (Philippians 3:9). There are whole systems built on laboring to be righteous to “gain” God’s acceptance, but even those of us who should know better tend to fall back into that mindset sometimes. I am so glad God’s righteousness is by faith.

Seen at Challies:

There can be no victory where there is no combat. —Richard Sibbes

I tend to want victory without having to expend the effort of combat, and it just doesn’t work that way.

And I hadn’t realized it t first, but these quotes might seem to be opposites. How can we expend victory by effort (or combat) if spiritual victory is by faith? Well, the first quote deals with the righteousness we need to stand before a holy God and not be condemned but rather approved, and Christ’s righteousness is the only kind that will suffice. That we receive by faith. We can’t earn it or work it up on our own. With that righteousness we can stand before a holy God without fear. But working that out into our everyday lives is what we call sanctification. Even that is accomplished by faith, and yet there are times God asks us to act on something in faith. In some of Israel’s battles in the Old Testament, God fought for them in unusual ways; in others, they had to actually take up sword and spear and shield and go to battle, yet they had no victory unless God enabled them. So even though my standing before God and his acceptance of me is by faith, in everyday battles, like, say, eating right and getting exercise, I still lean on Him for grace and strength, but I still have to expend effort: my body isn’t going to exercise itself, God isn’t going to exercise it for me, and I am not going to have any victory in weight loss without expending some effort at it. Someone once said “God will help you with your math homework, but He is not going to do it for you.”

I know many of you already know these principles, but I just felt I needed to explain further for anyone who might be confused by those two statements.

In another vein, this struck me from Warren Wiersbe’s With the Word, p. 293, commenting on Job 21, particularly Job’s “friends” trying to tell him that his suffering must be because of sin because God prospers the righteous:

If comfort and wealth are evidences of holiness, our Lord was not holy, for He had little earthly comfort and wealth, and He died a terrible death on the cross. Perhaps you need to examine your own “logic” and see if you are thinking like God or like the devil (Ps. 1:1; Matt. 16:21-28).

I don’t know how the “prosperity gospel” people miss things like that.