The Week In Words

Posted on October 4, 2010 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.

I only have one today, from an Elisabeth Elliot e-mail devotional:

If my life is once surrendered, all is well. Let me not grab it back, as though it were in peril in His hand but would be safer in mine! ~ Elisabeth Elliot, Keep a Quiet Heart

It’s absurd that we do that, isn’t it? We fear the possibility of some major catastrophe, or something serious happens to a loved one, or God allows something we don’t understand, and then we somehow feel we can protect ourselves better than He can. This set my thoughts running back through a previous post about being afraid to surrender all to Him. I hope it doesn’t sound self-indulgent or self-promotional to quote myself, but I tend to have to go back over some of the same lessons learned, and something I said in that post along these same lines was a good reminder to me:

There have been whole books written about reasons for suffering, and we hear testimonies of God’s grace through those times. Yet that lurking fear or reluctance can still snake into our thoughts.

As I was pondering these things this morning, the thought came, “What’s the alternative, really?” Suffering will come to most of us in some form or another. We live in a fallen world and deal with its effects; we’re not in heaven yet, where there are no tears, sorrow, pain. We’re not going to stop these things from coming into our lives if we don’t surrender to God. We can’t somehow insulate ourselves or protect ourselves from any pain or trial.

But if we are the Lord’s, we can trust that He has a purpose in what He has allowed. We can trust Him for His presence, peace, grace, and help. If we’re surrendered to Him, we can face these things in a way that we can’t otherwise.

I’m thankful we can “come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need (Hebrews 4:16).

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.

The Week In Words

Posted on September 27, 2010 by Barbara Harper

Here are some that caught my eye this week:

This was from a comment bekah made on Janet‘s Week In Words post from last week:

Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. C. S. Lewis. Mere Christianity

I think of this as not just the physical resurrection when our bodies die, but the resurrection power and newness of life that can only come in conjunction with dying to self. We tend to like and want the resurrection part but dread the death that has to precede it, yet there is no resurrection without death.

From Diane:

It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. Frederick Douglass (1818-1895)

From Quill Cottage:

A stiff apology is a second insult…. The injured party does not want to be compensated because he has been wronged; he wants to be healed because he has been hurt. — G.K. Chesterton

From a friend’s Facebook:

“The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing at the right place but to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.” – Dorothy Nevill

From another friend’s Facebook:

My hope lives not because I am not a sinner, but because I am a sinner for whom Christ died; my trust is not that I am holy, but that being unholy, He is my righteousness. My faith rests not upon what I am or shall be or feel or know, but in what Christ is, in what He has done and in what He is now doing for me. Hallelujah! –Charles Spurgeon

Hallelujah, indeed, and amen!

And finally, from today’s reading of Our Daily Walk by F. B. Meyer, this is commenting on John 10:41 and 42, which says, “Many resorted unto Him, and said, John did no miracle: but all things John spake of this Man were true. And many believed on Him there” and the fact that many disparaged John because he did no miracles, yet his witness of Christ was the hallmark of his life and ministry:

Do not try to do a great thing, or you may waste all your life waiting for the opportunity which may never come. But since little things are always claiming your attention, do them as they come from a great motive, for the glory of God and to do good to men. No such action, however trivial, goes without the swift recognition and the ultimate recompense of Christ.

The Week In Words

Posted on September 20, 2010 by Barbara Harper

Here are some that caught my eye this week, with little commentary:

You’ll see why I like this one from a friend’s Facebook. 🙂

“The wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages are perpetuated by quotations.” — Benjamin Disraeli

From Mennonite Girls Can Cook:

“Every house where love abides
And friendship is a guest,
Is surely home, and home sweet home,
For the heart can rest.”
~Henry Van Dyke~

I want my home to be a place where the heart can rest.

From another friend’s Facebook

“Perseverance is the hard work you do after you get tired of doing the hard work you already did.”

And from yet another friend’s Facebook, advice from a friend of hers while recuperating from a serious condition:

“Give yourself time to completely heal without guilt for taking the time.”

If you ever have had to heal from something, you know about feeling either guilty or discouraged because you can’t do things that need to be done. But healing takes time.

From Keep a Quiet Heart by Elisabeth Elliot:

The secret is Christ in me, not me in a different set of circumstances.

And finally, from Angela Hunt’s The Note:

Some people…accept the “trappings” of belief without ever actually embracing the belief itself.

Sad but true. One of my prayers for each of us in my family, myself first of all, is that we would be genuine believers and not just going through the motions of Christian culture.

The Week In Words

Posted on September 13, 2010 by Barbara Harper

Also, if you’ve posted a quote on your blog this past week, feel free to link it here as well. You don’t have to save it for Mondays. And please do read and comment even if you’re not posting quotes.

I am so very sorry to be so late with this today! I sometimes work on this post on Sunday evenings, but after Skyping Jeremy (or Skyping with Jeremy? Not sure how to say that) last night, I fell asleep on the couch until about 2 a.m., and then went to bed. Then this morning I laid back down for a little while…and then it turned into a long while. And then I woke up to several phone calls that needed attention. I hope I am not coming down with Jesse’s cold.

Anyway, on with the quotes!

From Janet‘s sidebar:

Goethe once wrote in a letter that “there are three kinds of reader: one, who enjoys without judgment; a third, who judges without enjoyment; and one between them who judges as he enjoys and enjoys as he judges. This latter kind really reproduces the work of art anew” (quoted in Alan Jacobs’ A Theology of Reading).

I don’t know how long you’ve had that there. Janet, but it just jumped out at me last week. I am not sure how “judging” is meant there, but I took it to mean thinking. analyzing, discerning, and I like to think I am the third kind of reader.

From this post via a friend’s Facebook status:

The gardener’s sharp-edged knife promotes the fruitfulness of the tree, by thinning the clusters, and by cutting off superfluous shoots. So is it, Christian, with that pruning which the Lord gives to thee. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

That, of course, echoes John 15:1-2: “I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.”

From another friend’s Facebook status:

Do not ask the Lord to guide your footsteps if you are not willing to move your feet.

I have to admit I too often do that. Sometimes a delay to pray about something can be a delay to obey what I already know the Lord wants me to do, or sometimes I am praying for guidance when I am reluctant or even not yet willing to go in the direction that might be the answer.

This was from Laura writing at Kindred Heart Writers:

Ring the bells that still can ring,

Forget your perfect offering.

There is a crack in everything.

That’s how the light gets in.

– Leonard Cohen

That cracked me up but also illustrated a great truth, that none of us is perfect and that God’s grace shining through the cracks can glorify Himself.

And finally, from Elisabeth Elliot‘s book A Lamp For My Feet quoted in one of her e-mail devotionals:

But my limitations, placing me in a different category from Tom Howard’s or anyone else’s, become, in the sovereignty of God, gifts. For it is with the equipment that I have been given that I am to glorify God. It is this job, not that one, that He gave me.

I had quoted that once years ago in regard to physical limitations, but Elisabeth was mentioning it in regard to talents, abilities, and opportunities. It applies as well to time and any other type of limitation — whatever it is is allowed by God and is the framework in which He wants us to glorify Him, rather than chafing or wasting time wishing things were different.

The Week In Words

Posted on September 5, 2010 by Barbara Harper

Here are some quotes that spoke to me:

From Diane‘s Facebook status:

“There is only one person holy enough to fulfill the righteous requirement of the law and it’s not you. Rest.” Elyse Fitzpatrick

I can’t tell you what immediate rest that gave my soul. Even though I know we’re both saved and kept by God’s grace through faith and not our own efforts, somehow there is still a part of me that strives to be “good enough” — and only Christ ever was. What a rest we find in Him.

Seen at Challies:

“Endurance and perseverance are qualities we would all like to possess, but we are loath to go through the process that produces them.” —Jerry Bridges

So true.

Seen at girltalk:

“It is faith that enlivens our work with perpetual cheerfulness. It commits every part of it to God, in the hope, that even mistakes shall be overruled for his glory; and thus relieves us from an oppressive anxiety, often attendant upon a deep sense of our responsibility. The shortest way to peace will be found in casting ourselves upon God for daily pardon of deficiencies and supplies of grace, without looking too eagerly for present fruit.” Charles Bridges

From an e-mail:

Loneliness is inner emptiness.
Solitude is inner fulfillment.
– Richard J. Foster

I’ve pondered the difference between loneliness and solitude often but had never quite thought of it that way. I think another simple difference is whether you want to be alone or not: when you want to be, it is blissful solitude; if not, it’s loneliness. 🙂

From Rita Vernoy‘s Facebook status:

Don’t be afraid to fail. Don’t waste energy trying to cover up failure. Learn from your failures and go on to the next challenge. It’s OK. If you’re not failing, you’re not growing.-H. Stanley Judd

One of the most life-changing message I ever heard was one on college on failure.

By the way, just as a disclaimer, I am not familiar with most of the authors quoted, and therefore please don’t take these quotes as an endorsement. I just posted them for the value of the individual quotes themselves and the food for thought they offered.

The Week In Words

Posted on August 29, 2010 by Barbara Harper

Here are some that caught my eye this week:

A quote at the end of a Good Clean Funnies e-mail:

“Don’t ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up.” ~ Robert Frost.

Good advice! In many ways! Some fences, both physical and immaterial, are there for very good reasons.

From Diane‘s Facebook status:

‎“Believe God’s love and power more than you believe your own feelings and experiences. Your rock is Christ, and it is not the rock that ebbs and flows but the sea.” – Samuel Rutherford

I love the imagery and the truth in that.

I have a few others in my file, but I think I will just keep it short this week.

The Week In Words

Posted on August 23, 2010 by Barbara Harper

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

From a friend’s Facebook page:

“There are exactly as many special occasions in life as we choose to celebrate.”– Robert Brault

I love that. Celebrations aren’t so much about what’s on the calendar, but about what you do.

From another friend’s Facebook page:

Why is it we only acknowledge that God answers prayer when He does what we want Him to do?

He answers all the time, but sometimes the answer is “No” or “Not now.” And some day when we see the big picture we’ll be just as thankful for those answers as we were the positive ones — though we should be thankful for them by faith now.

And from yet another friend’s Facebook page:

“When things go well, it’s not that we’re so smart; it’s that God is so good” ~ Drew Conley

Amen.

Who knew Facebook could be so educational? 🙂

You know, when I started participating in this meme, I thought I would be sharing quotes mostly from books I was reading, but I tend to save most of those for when I review the book. But that’s all right — as the description up top says, the quotes that resonate with us in some way can come from any readable source.

The Week In Words

Posted on August 16, 2010 by Barbara Harper

Just a further note — if you’ve posted a quote on your blog this past week, feel free to link it here as well. You don’t have to save it for Mondays. And please do read and comment even if you’re not posting quotes.

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

On several friends’ Facebook statuses:

The happiest people don’t have the best of everything, they just make the best of everything they have.

That speaks much to being content with such things as we have, as we’re instructed to be (Hebrews 13:5-6). It seems no matter how much we have, there is always a craving for more.

I saw this at Semicolon’s:

“It is not enough to simply teach children to read; we have to give them something worth reading. Something that will stretch their imaginations–something that will help them make sense of their own lives and encourage them to reach out toward people whose lives are quite different from their own.”~Katharine Paterson, U.S. National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature

I so agree with this! I am astounded when I hear parents or teachers say, “I don’t care what my kids are reading as long as they’re reading.” We don’t say the same about physical food: “I don’t care what my kids are eating, as long as they’re eating.” Why would we care less about what kids are putting into their brains? I am not talking about the extremes of censorship but rather teaching discernment and providing good books to read (for them and ourselves). There are so many good choices, we don’t need to read shoddy stuff just to have something to read.

Then in an article titled 10 Writing Tips at ChristianWritingToday.com (I got there via Semicolon’s link to 8 Writing Tips From C. S. Lewis on the same site) these first two were the ones that most stood out to me:

1. Write only when you have something to say. (Playwright David Hare).

2. The reader is a friend, not an adversary, not a spectator. (Jonathan Franzen)

That second one especially spoke to me: if writing is to be a means of communication rather than just self-expression, writers need to engage the reader, and then not be offended if a reader doesn’t “get” or like something, but rather look for ways to better communicate with the reader (though of course we all understand that we can’t please everybody. But pleasing and effectively communicating aren’t always the same thing.)

Then from an Elisabeth Elliot e-mail devotinal from her book A Lamp For My Feet concerning Romans 12:1-2:

The primary condition for learning what God wants of us is putting ourselves wholly at his disposal. It is just here that we are often blocked. We hold certain reservations about how far we are willing to go, what we will or will not do, how much God can have of us or of what we treasure. Then we pray for guidance. It will not work. We must begin by laying it all down–ourselves, our treasures, our destiny. Then we are in a position to think with renewed minds and act with a transformed nature. The withholding of any part of ourselves is the same as saying, “Thy will be done up to a point, mine from there on.”

That is the sticking point, isn’t it? I want God’s perfect will in my life…unless it means that.

From the same source comes this quote:

If God is almighty, there can be no evil so great as to be beyond his power to transform. That transforming power brings light out of darkness, joy out of sorrow, gain out of loss, life out of death.

Sometimes we boggle at the evil in the world and especially in ourselves, feeling that this sin, this tragedy, this offense cannot possibly fit into a pattern for good. Let us remember Joseph’s imprisonment, David’s sin, Paul’s violent persecution of Christians, Peter’s denial of his Master. None of it was beyond the power of grace to redeem and turn into something productive. The God who establishes the shoreline for the sea also decides the limits of the great mystery which is evil. He is “the Blessed Controller of all things.” God will finally be God, Satan’s best efforts notwithstanding.

We tend to want bad things prevented rather than transformed. That day will come, but it is not now. A friend once said she realized that if God were to wipe out all the evil in the world, He would have to wipe out all of us, for we all sin. I am thankful He transforms us rather than just doing away with us, and and we can trust Him to limit what He allows of evil and trust Him to somehow work it together for good (Romans 8:28) until the day when it is taken out of the way completely.

If you have some family-friendly quotes you’d like to share, please leave the link to your “Week In Words” post (not just to your general blog) with Mr. Linky below. Of course, it is fine to just leave a quote in the comments section if you’d rather. I hope you’ll visit some of the other participants, too: this is a small enough meme so far that it is not hard to visit around with others who love to glean quotes from their reading as well.

The Week In Words Participants

1. bekahcubed

2. Susan

3. Jerrie

(Mr. Linky is closed for this post: Please see the current Week In Words post to put your new quotes in.)

The Week In Words

Posted on August 9, 2010 by Barbara Harper

Here are some quotes that spoke to me this week:

From the Elisabeth Elliot e-mail devotionals, this taken from her book A Lamp For My Feet:

How can this person who so annoys or offends me be God’s messenger? Is God so unkind as to send that sort across my path? Insofar as his treatment of me requires more kindness than I can find in my own heart, demands love of a quality I do not possess, asks of me patience which only the Spirit of God can produce in me, he is God’s messenger. God sends him in order that he may send me running to God for help.

Sometimes the very circumstance in our lives that we’re chafing against is the one God is using to work something necessary into our hearts and characters that we would not learn or develop any other way.

That goes along with something I read at Washing the Feet of the Saints:

In a recent conversation with a delightful young friend, we considered what it means to die to self, particularly in the ordinary tasks of every day life, and to live sacrificially in our home and community to the glory of Christ.

The “dying” this young lady referenced was a simple household chore that had nothing to do with family/elderly caregiving, but it’s application was obvious. My friend lamented that it should be easier to put her desires and contentment aside for the benefit of other. “But then it wouldn’t be dying,” I countered.

That last line really hit me between the eyes. Thanks, Patricia, for that perspective.

From the August 4 reading from Our Daily Walk by F. B. Meyer:

The best way of increasing our knowledge of God s infinite nature, is by the reverent study of His Word. It is a flimsy religion which discounts doctrine. What the bones are to the body, doctrine is to our moral and spiritual life. What law is to the material universe, doctrine is to the spiritual.

This reminded me of some of the truths I wrote a few years ago about the importance of learning doctrine when we read the Bible rather than just looking for warm fuzzies. The warm fuzzies fly away like dandelion seeds if they are not based on the bedrock of doctrine that we can rely on no matter what the circumstances are.

Then from today’s reading of Meyer’s devotionals:

From Act 7:2-5, we learn that the Call to Abram to go forth, which originally came in Ur of the Chaldees, was repeated in Haran, after his father’s death. Probably Terah delayed his son’s obedience. Let us help our children to realize God’s call, even though we be left lonely on the other side of the river.

This was particularly potent as we just moved away from our oldest two sons and daughter-in-law and are experiencing those pangs of realization in everyday life of their absence. I have read more than one missionary biography in which a well-meaning Christian mother who was active in missionary support balked and resisted when it came to her son or daughter going to the mission field. I do not know if any of mine are called to the mission field yet, but I do not want to stand in the way of any of them doing whatever God’s will is for their lives out of a desire to keep them close to me.

(Mr. Linky is now closed for this post. Please see the newest Week In Words post to add links.)

The Week In Words Participants

1. bekahcubed

2. e-Mom @ Chrysalis

The Week In Words

Posted on August 2, 2010 by Barbara Harper

Here are a few I’ve read in various places:

Seen on Diane‘s Facebook status:

“I think sometimes a lot of the wear and tear on our lives is from fighting the circumstances that God has allowed to come into our lives.” Nancy Leigh DeMoss

I think that is probably true. It’s not usually surrender that’s the problem as much as the struggle against surrender.

Also seen at Diane‘s:

“It takes grace to give grace, takes hope to give hope, takes love to give love. I can give these to you because Christ gave them to me.”-Paul David Tripp

I can only minister to others what I have received from Christ.

Seen at girltalk:

When I have learnt to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest better than I do now.

Insofar as I learn to love my earthly dearest at the expense of God and instead of God, I shall be moving towards the state in which I shall not love my earthly dearest at all.

When first things are put first, second things are not suppressed but increased.  ~ C. S. Lewis, Letters of C.S. Lewis (8 November, 1952)

So true!

And I am so thankful for this truth expressed in the Heidelberg Catechism (which I had not heard of before) shared by Chris Anderson at My Two Cents:

Question 60: How are thou righteous before God?

Answer: Only by a true faith in Jesus Christ; so that though my conscience accuse me, that I have grossly transgressed all the commandments of God, and kept none of them, and am still inclined to all evil; notwithstanding, God, without any merit of mine, but only of mere grace, grants and imputes to me, the perfect satisfaction, righteousness and holiness of Christ; even so, as if I never had had, nor committed any sin: yea, as if I had fully accomplished all that obedience which Christ has accomplished for me; inasmuch as I embrace such benefit with a believing heart.

Special note for next week: we’re moving this week, and I am not sure when we will have Internet access and when my desktop PC will be set up and ready to use. If I can set up The Week In Words next Monday, I will, but if you don’t see it here, that means I wasn’t able to, and you can hang on to those quotes for the following Monday.

If you have some family-friendly quotes you’d like to share, please leave the link to your “Week In Words” post with Mr. Linky below. I hope you’ll visit some of the other participants as well: this is a small enough meme so far that it is not hard to visit around with others who love to glean quotes from their reading as well.