The Week In Words

Posted on February 14, 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.

Here are a few that instructed and inspired me this week:

I forgot to note where I saw this:

To pursue union at the expense of truth is treason to the Lord Jesus . . . . It is our solemn conviction that where there can be no real spiritual communion there should be no pretense of fellowship. Fellowship with known and vital error is participation in sin. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

This isn’t saying we should never interact with people who don’t believe just as we do, for, as Paul said, “then must ye needs go out of the world.” The Bible has much to say about unity but it also has much to say about separation and in what circumstances we should pursue one or the other.

And I failed to note where I saw this as well:

There may be genuine grievances; but what makes us bitter is that we ponder them and meditate upon them and stay with them; in other words, we nurse our grievances, we dwell on them, we pay great attention to them, and if we are tending to forget them we deliberately bring them back and allow them to work us up again into a state of bitterness. ~David Martyn Lloyd-Jones

That is so true. I read someone once who said that every time an incident comes to mind in which someone wronged us, we need to forgive them all over again, but I think rather, once we do forgive them, we need to remind ourselves that that transaction has already taken place and move on to verses about forbearance and loving the brethren.

There are two quotes from an Elisabeth Elliot devotional titled “Not One Thing Has Failed,” taken originally from her book Love Has a Price Tag:

Here she quotes from David Brainard’s diary:

“I visited Indians at Crossweeksung,” Brainard records, “Apprehending that it was my indispensable duty…. I cannot say I had any hopes of success. I do not know that my hopes respecting the conversion of the Indians were ever reduced to so low an ebb … yet this was the very season that God saw fittest to begin His glorious work in! And thus He ordained strength out of weakness … whence I learn that it is good to follow the path of duty, though in the midst of darkness and discouragement.”

And in the same article she writes:

Jessie Penn-Lewis’s book Thy Hidden Ones showed me God’s purpose in my isolation and helplessness. It was her words I sent in a letter to Jim: “In the Holy Spirit’s leading of the soul through the stripping of what may be called ‘consecrated self,’ and its activity, it is important that there should be a fulfillment of all outward duty, that the believer may learn to act on principle rather than on pleasant impulse.” It was a spiritual lesson that was to fortify me through countless later experiences when feelings or impulses contributed nothing to an inclination toward obedience. God allows the absence of feeling or, more often, the presence of strong negative feeling that we may simply follow, simply obey, simply trust.

God’s work and will are often so little related to how we feel — yet how often we tend to go by our feelings.

I shared a whole lot of quotes from the book 50 People Every Christian Should Know: Learning From Spiritual Giants of the Faith by author Warren Wiersbe here last week.

And you’d think I’d have something about love for Valentine’s Day! But I don’t have anything new. I posted some in past years here and here. And, just for fun, here are some Valentine’s jokes I posted a few years back.

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 — feel free to comment even if you don’t have quotes to share!

The Week In Words

Posted on February 7, 2011 by Barbara Harper

I am in a real quandary this week. I have collected about 13 quotes since last time — way too many for one post! It’s hard to choose which ones to share, but I’ll save the rest for a week when I haven’t found quite as many.

I saw this on Lisa‘s sidebar and it really hit me right between the eyes:

Only awe of God has the power to decimate your bondage to awe of you. ~ Paul Tripp’s Twitter.

Self so insidiously permeates thoughts, deeds, and motives. But as I turn my eyes to God, the power of self decreases.

This was also on Lisa‘s sidebar:

Of course you’re not up to the task, that’s why you’ve been given the presence, promises and provisions of Jesus. ~ Paul Tripp’s Twitter.

From a friend’s Facebook:

The most deadly appetites are not for the poison of evil, but for the simple pleasures of earth. For when these replace an appetite for God himself, the idolatry is scarcely recognizable, and almost incurable. ~ John Piper

This is from the post What If I Am Not a Gifted Evangelist? (HT to Challies) on the offense of the gospel:

Remember when Paul shared the gospel he didn’t merely receive public scorn, he regularly got put in jail. And it was from jail that Paul asked for prayer that he would be bold with the gospel. If people are offended by the message of the gospel it may be awkward, but awkward truth is better than silence.

From a church web site:

“Though faith sometimes has a trembling hand, it must not have a withered hand–it must stretch.” ~ Thomas Watson

Probably ought to leave it at that for now, as that’s plenty to try to digest for a while.

And please — feel free to comment even if you don’t have quotes to share!

The Week In Words

Posted on January 31, 2011 by Barbara Harper

It’s been a busy week since last time! But I did find a few gems along the way:

I forgot to note where I saw this one:

My complaint is not that I am in the world, but that the world is in me. I cannot get it out of my heart except as I let You in. —John Baird

I like the thought of crowding out the world by letting Christ in — instead of just combating worldliness, following Christ proactively and letting Him fill the space that worldliness would take.

On a friend’s Facebook page:

“A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.” ~Author unknown

From a post of Janet‘s:

Questions about God’s goodness or why He allows suffering are usually asked by comfortable people in comfortable houses with comfortable educations, but they’re answered by those who are walking through the most extreme trials.

Seen at Challies:

In public worship all should join. The little strings go to make up a concert, as well as the great. —Thomas Goodwin

And please — feel free to comment even if you don’t have quotes to share!

The Week In Words

Posted on January 24, 2011 by Barbara Harper

Here are a few that spoke to me this week:

This was quoted in an Elisabeth Elliot devotional, taken from a chapter in All That Was Ever Ours titled, “Fear, Suffering, Love”:

There are tenderhearted people who virtually object to the whole scheme of creation. They would neither have force used nor pain suffered; they talk as if kindness could do everything, even where it is not felt. Millions of human beings but for suffering would never develop an atom of affection. The man who would spare due suffering is not wise. Because a thing is unpleasant, it is folly to conclude it ought not to be. There are powers to be born, creations to be perfected, sinners to be redeemed, through the ministry of pain, to be born, perfected, redeemed, in no other way. ~ George MacDonald, What’s Mine’s Mine.

So true — I would rather there were no suffering, but God has His purposes in it and there are things accomplished through it.

I saw this on someone’s blogs after a series of one link leading to another:

While I regarded God as a tyrant I thought my sin a trifle; But when I knew Him to be my Father, then I mourned that I could ever have kicked against Him. When I thought God was hard, I found it easy to sin; but when I found God so kind, so good, so overflowing with compassion, I smote upon my breast to think that I could ever have rebelled against One who loved me so, and sought my good. ~ C. H. Spurgeon

It was the thought of God’s anger and punishment for my sin that made me aware of my need, but it was His love that drew me to Him for salvation.

From Robin Lee Hatcher’s Facebook about lessons from Exodus:

When God speaks to a responsive heart, it melts. When God speaks to an unresponsive heart, it hardens.

And back to Elisabeth Elliot again, this time from “As We Forgive Those….” from Love Has a Price Tag:

To forgive is to die. It is to give up one’s right to self, which is precisely what Jesus requires of anyone who wants to be his disciple.

“If anyone wants to follow in my footsteps, he must give up all right to himself, carry his cross every day and keep close behind me. For the man who wants to save his life will lose it, but the man who loses his life for my sake will save it.”

Following Christ means walking the road he walked, and in order to forgive us he had to die. His follower may not refuse to relinquish his own right, his own territory, his own comfort, or anything that he regards as his. Forgiveness is relinquishment. It is a laying down. No one can take it from us, any more than anyone could take the life of Jesus if he had not laid it down of his own will. But we can do as he did. We can offer it up, writing off whatever loss it may entail, in the sure knowledge that the man who loses his life or his reputation or his “face” or anything else for the sake of Christ will save it.

And that’s why it is so hard. 🙂 But the remembrance of His forgiveness of me helps me to forgive others — whatever they did to me is much less than my sin against Him.

And please — feel free to comment even if you don’t have quotes to share!

The Week In Words

Posted on January 17, 2011 by Barbara Harper

Here are a few that spoke to me this week:

From a friend’s Facebook:

Some pursue happiness, others create it.

From another friend’s Facebook:

God doesn’t merely want a change of habit. He wants a change of heart, which will lead to a change of habit.

Seen at Challies:

Trials and tribulations are very good for us in that they help us to know ourselves better than we knew ourselves before. —D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Among the many purposes God has for suffering, this is one. Usually, for me anyway, I discover a deficiency in myself or some new way in which I need to trust in or yield to the Lord more.

And, actually, I heard this first rather than read it, but then I wrote it down and then read it. 🙂

God does not love us because we’re valuable; we’re valuable because God loves us. ~ Adrian Rogers

Also since last time I shared quotes about winter and quotes from Anne of Avonlea in different posts.

And please — feel free to comment even if you don’t have quotes to share!

The Week In Words

Posted on January 10, 2011 by Barbara Harper

A couple stood out to me from a Notable Quotes section of a recent issue of Frontline Magazine.

O what I owe to the furnace, fire, and hammer of the Lord. ~ Samuel Rutherford

So true — much as we resist them, there are things we can only learn via trials and tribulations.

Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home. ~ C. S. Lewis

There are cozy spots in this life, but I need to remember “This world is not my home — I’m just passing through.”

This was from an Elisabeth Elliot e-mail devotional taken from a chapter titled “Spontaneity” from her book All That Was Ever Ours:

I wonder if spontaneity is not sometimes a euphemism for laziness… Isn’t it much easier not to prepare one’s mind and heart, not to premeditate, simply to have things (O, vacuous word!) “unstructured”?

If you leave a thing altogether alone in hopes that it will happen all by itself, the chances are it never will. Who learns to play the piano, wins an election, or loses weight spontaneously?

From the chapter “Some of My Best Friends Are Books” from the same book and author:

A reader understands what he reads in terms of what he is. As a Christian reader I bring to bear on the book I am reading the light of my faith.

Everything I read may not line up exactly with what I believe the Bible to be teaching, but I read it with Christian eyes and discernment and sometimes even see spiritual truth when the author hasn’t meant to share it. On the other hand, I don’t think that okays an “anything goes” mentality with reading. I’m still responsible for thinking on right things (which is hard to do if I am filling my mind with wrong things), and “All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but all things edify not” (I Corinthians 10:23.) In fact, I am a little concerned about a friend who swoons over romances while her marriage crumbles (and I have to wonder if there is a connection) and whose language is becoming increasingly less Christlike and more vulgar while she reads books with that I personally wouldn’t be comfortable with. We do bring our frame of reference to bear on our reading, but our reading does influence us as well.

I have a few marked from Anne of Avonlea, but I think I will wait to post them until I review the book.

And please — feel free to comment even if you don’t have quotes to share!

The Week In Words

Posted on January 3, 2011 by Barbara Harper

Here are a few that caught my eye:

I saw this at Bobbi‘s in a longer fictitious poem about what Joseph’s (Mary’s husband) point of view might have been at one point in his life. From what I could tell it is by John Piper from the Desiring God site.

There’s something worse than death,
And loss of faith, not loss of breath,
Is what he fights.

Seen at Challies:

I have taken my good deeds and bad deeds and thrown them together in a heap, and fled from them both to Christ, and in him I have peace. —David Dickson

I have trouble with the right perspective of both, and I am glad that my peace is in Christ and not my deeds.

This is the time of year when people make goals or resolutions. The following two might help with that. The first I saw at Simple Mom from a link at A Holy Experience:

“A goal without a plan is just a dream.” ~ Dave Ramsey

And I saw this at Semicolon’s from (From Donna at Quiet Life — I don’t know whether Donna is the one who originally said it or of she quoted someone else.

“A discipline won’t bring you closer to God. Only God can bring you closer to Himself. What the discipline is meant to do is to help you get yourself, your ego, out of the way so you are open to His grace.”

So true. Sometimes we can get so caught up in setting up our disciplines as if so doing will make us right with God, when the disciple is a tool, not an end in itself.

I saw this at nikkipolani’s Friday’s Fave Five:

The bend in the road is not the end of the road unless you fail to make the turn.”

That just really resonated with me with all the changes we’ve faced this year.

Lisa Notes recently shared a link to “Amazing Blogging Lessons From Albert Einstein.” This jumped out at me — Einstein’s words in quotes, the writer’s words following:

“Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.” Don’t waste your time trying to create a successful blog, dedicate your time creating a valuable blog. If your blog is valuable to others, it will succeed.

And finally, a good hope for the new year, from a friend’s Facebook:

“What heavens are laid up in Jesus! What rivers of infinite bliss have their source, ay, and every drop of their fullness in Him! Since, O sweet Lord Jesus, Thou art the present portion of Thy people, favor us this year with such a sense of Thy preciousness, that from its first to its last day we may be glad and rejoice in Thee.” -Spurgeon (Morning and Evening)

And please — feel free to comment even if you don’t have quotes to share!

The Week In Words

Posted on December 27, 2010 by Barbara Harper

I wasn’t sure whether to do this this week — whether folks might still be away or occupied for the holidays. There aren’t too many who participate as it is. But I decided to just go ahead, and whoever is around and able to do so can jump in.

It’s been a busy week, yet a few quotes caught my eye, and because there are so many, I won’t add commentary to them:

From a friend’s Facebook:

“The difference between the non-Christian and the Christian is the difference between a Christmas tree on which people hang presents, and a living tree that bears fruit. They have to put them on the Christmas tree; it does not and cannot produce anything. But in the case of the growing tree…it is something produced from the life, the sap and the power that are in the living tree.” ~ Martyn Lloyd-Jones

From Elisabeth Elliot’s Keep a Quiet Heart, the chapter on “The Mother of the Lord”:

It is not an extraordinary spirituality that makes one refuse to do ordinary work, but a wish to prove that one is not ordinary–which is a dead giveaway of spiritual conceit.

From Chris Anderson at My Two Cents on Ill-Used Illustrations:

There’s something terribly wrong when both a preacher and a congregation are bright-eyed and attentive during his hilarious or gripping illustrations, then drowsy and distracted when he explains the Scriptures.

From Let Every Heart Prepare Him Room: Daily Family Devotions for Advent by Nancy Guthrie, p. 29:

The truth is, we can never fully take in or understand God’s greatness. But we can magnify Him. We magnify God not by making Him bigger than He truly is, but by making Him greater in our thoughts, in our affections, in our memories, and in our expectations. We magnify Him by having higher, larger, and truer thoughts of Him. We magnify Him by praising Him and telling others about His greatness so they can have bigger thoughts about Him, too.

From Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus: Experiencing the Peace and Promise of Christmas, several essays on various aspects of Christmas, compiled by Nancy Guthrie, this is from the chapter “Good News of Great Joy” by Raymond C. Ortlund, Jr., p. 100:

Our good intentions are not strong enough to control our evil impulses. We need a Savior to rescue us from ourselves. And God, with great understanding and compassion, has given us what we most deeply need — a Savior in Jesus Christ.

And please — feel free to comment even if you don’t have quotes to share!

The Week In Words

Posted on December 20, 2010 by Barbara Harper

Here are a few that spoke to me this week:

From Challies:

People do not drift toward holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated. —D.A. Carson

Holiness is intentional; any time we’re drifting spiritually, it’s not usually in the right direction.

And speaking of being intentional, in Warren Wiersbe’s With the Word, commenting on David’s sin with Bathsheba and Uriah in II Samuel 11, he advises:

Before you yield to temptation…look back and recall God’s goodness to you; look ahead and remember “the wages of sin”: look around and think of all the people who may be affected by what you do; look up and ask God for strength to say no (I Cor. 10:13) (p. 187).

Our tendency is to push ahead and to try not to listen to conscience or the Holy Spirit. I think if we all did this, we’d reduce our giving in to temptation significantly.

The following two quotes come from Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus: Experiencing the Peace and Promise of Christmas. I don’t usually like to post long quotes on TWIW, but I can’t see a way to shorten these and still convey the impact. Since they are so long and speak for themselves, I won’t lengthen the post with my own commentary.

The first is from “The Gifts of Christmas” by Tim Keller from his sermon “Mary” from December 23, 2001:

When September 11th happened and New Yorkers started to suffer, you heard two voices. You heard the conventional moralistic voices saying, “When I see you suffer, it tells me about a judging God. You must not be living right, and so God is judging you.” When they see suffering, they see a judgmental God.

The secular voice says, “When I see people suffering, I see God is missing.” When they see suffering, they see an absent, indifferent God.

But when we see Jesus Christ dying on the cross through an act of violence and injustice, what kind of God do we see then? A condemning God? No, we see a God of love paying for sin. Do we see a missing God? Absolutely not! We see a God who is not remote but involved.

We sometimes wonder why God doesn’t just end suffering. But we know that whatever the reason, it isn’t one of indifference or remoteness. God so hates suffering and evil that he was willing to come into it and become enmeshed in it (pp 38-39).

The second is from “For Your Sakes He Become Poor” by J. I. Packer commenting on II Corinthians 8:9: “For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich,” excerpted from his book Knowing God:

For the Son of God to empty himself and become poor meant a laying aside of glory; a voluntary restraint of power; an acceptance of hardship, isolation, ill-treatment, malice, and misunderstanding; finally, a death that involved such agony — spiritual, even more than physical — that his mind nearly broke under the prospect of it. It meant love to the uttermost for unlovely men, who “through his poverty, might become rich.” This Christian message is that there is hope for a ruined humanity — hope of pardon, hope of peace with God, hope of glory — because at the Father’s will Jesus Christ became poor and was born in a stable so that thirty years later he might hang on a cross…

We talk glibly of the “Christmas spirit,” rarely meaning more than a sentimental jollity on a family basis. But what we have said makes it clear that the phrase should in fact carry a tremendous weight of meaning. It ought to mean the reproducing in human lives the temper of him who for our sakes became poor at the first Christmas. And the Christmas spirit itself ought to be the mark of every Christian all the year round.

…The Christmas spirit does not shine out in the Christian snob. For the Christmas spirit is the spirit of those who, like their Master, live their whole lives on the principle of making themselves poor — spending and being spent — to enrich their fellow men, giving time, trouble, care, and concern, to do good to others — and not just their own friends — in whatever way there seems need (pp. 70-72).

And please — feel free to comment even if you don’t have quotes to share!

The Week In Words

Posted on December 13, 2010 by Barbara Harper

Here are a few that spoke to me this week:

From In the Company of Others by Jan Karon in a section quoting an old journal (p. 338):

“God save us from Squabble and ill temper which spread in a household like Measles.”

They do, don’t they? Amen.

Seen at Challies:

Glory follows afflictions, not as the day follows the night but as the spring follows the winter; for the winter prepares the earth for the spring, so do afflictions sanctified prepare the soul for glory. —Richard Sibbes

Winter is not my favorite season, but it helps to remember it prepares the earth for spring — and our spiritual winters do as well.

From Warren Wiersbe’s With the Word, commenting on the section in II Samuel 8 about David wanting to build the temple, God saying no, and David then helping Solomon gather the materials to build it:

If God gives your dream to somebody else, help him or her to fulfill it.

It would be easy to feel disappointed or bitter, but how much better to trust in the Lord’s will and enable others to do their part, even if it is the part we dearly wanted. That would please the Lord more than sulking and be a better testimony to others.

From F. W. Meyer’s Our Daily Walk for December 9:

Make as pure in heart, not only in our walk, but in our inward temper, that we may never lose sight of God by reason of the obscurity of our own nature.

Amen. My own nature is what most often obscures my view of God. May I be pure inside and out.

I’ve been marking several quotes from 50 People Every Christian Should Know: Learning From Spiritual Giants of the Faith by Warren Wiersbe, but I think I will save most of them until I finish and review the book. But I did want to share this one:

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

So very true.

And please — feel free to comment even if you don’t have quotes to share!