katdeux

“Human nature cannot be relied upon; but God can! However unstable I may be, however fickle my friends may prove, God changes not. If He varied as we do; if He willed on thing today and another tomorrow; if He were controlled by caprice, who could confide in Him? But, all praise to His glorious name, He is ever the same.

His purpose is fixed;

His will is stable;

His word is sure.

Here then is a Rock on which we may fix our feet, while the mighty torrent is sweeping away everything around us. The permanence of God's character guarantees the fulfillment of His promises: "For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but My kindness shall not depart from you, neither shall the covenant of My peace be removed, says the Lord who has mercy on you" (Isaiah 54:10).

AW Pink

“Do not think you are getting no good from the Bible, merely because you do not see that good day by day. The greatest effects are by no means those which make the most noise, and are most easily observed. The greatest effects are often silent, quiet, and hard to detect at the time they are being produced. Think of the influence of the moon upon the earth, and of the air upon the human lungs. Remember how silently the dew falls, and how imperceptibly the grass grows. There may be far more doing than you think in your soul by your Bible-reading.” -J.C. Ryle

“A good marriage is the union of two good forgivers”

Ruth Bell Graham

You move us to delight in praising You; for You have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.

Augustine

We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we first started And know the place for the first time

T.S. Eliot

That's why I'm taking to you. You are one of the rare people who can separate your observation from your pre-conception. You see what it is, where most people see what they expect.

East of eden

http://www.desiringgod.org/articles/grace-paced-living-in-a-burnout-culture

God Is with You in Depression

Depression is often illusive. Some dark cloud gathers and hangs overhead. You feel constantly ill at ease. Whether triggered by negative events, or some undefined cause, you know despondency when you experience it, even if you find it hard to…

www.desiringgod.org

" A day without prayer is a day we foolishly believe we have under control. " -Lecrae

"Even though Satan may be involved, he is not in control here. This thorn is to keep Paul from being conceited. That is not Satan’s goal. That is God’s goal. We know God is in control here using this thorn. And the second thing to notice is that Christ cares. What he cares about in life is not mainly our achievements for Christ, but our dependence on Christ. My grace is sufficient for you. My power is made perfect in weakness. Christ’s aim here is not that we overcome all our weaknesses and never fail. His aim is that we trust him for his grace in our weaknesses which implies in our inability to do what we would love to do. We might wish we could make an A or we might wish we could earn more money or we might wish we could run faster or that we were more pretty or taller or something, but he just wants us to not be devastated by our weaknesses, but rather display the peace giving sufficiency of Christ." http://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/how-should-i-think-about-my-failures

Whoever cannot be alone should be aware of community. Such people will only do harm to themselves and to the community. Alone you stood before God when God called you. Alone you had to obey God’s voice. Alone you had to take up your cross, struggle, and pray, and alone you will die and give an account to God. You cannot avoid yourself, for it is precisely God who has called you out. If you do not want to be alone, you are rejecting Christ’s call to you, and you can have no part in the community of those who are called.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes in Life Together:

You can't love too much one part of it. -John Mayer

“Be content: what you have lost one way, you have gained another. Be your losses what they will in this kind, remember in every loss there is only a suffering, but in every discontent there is a sin, and one sin is worse than a thousand sufferings.” Thomas Watson

"The gospel is not a doctrine of the tongue but of life. It cannot be grasped by reason and memory only. But it is fully understood when it possesses the whole soul and penetrates to the inner recesses of the heart." John Calvin

“The enjoyment of God is the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied. To go to heaven fully to enjoy God is infinitely better than the most pleasant accommodations here. Fathers and mothers, husbands or wives or children, or the company of earthly friends are but shadows; God is the substance. These are but the scattered beams; God is the sun. These are but streams; God is the ocean.” –Jonathan Edwards “As Christians we don’t run away from the world. Idolatry looks at the world, worship, Christian worship looks through the world, to its source” -Matt Papa

"Optimism is a wish without warrant; Christian hope is a certainty, guaranteed by God himself. Optimism reflects ignorance as to whether good things will ever actually come. Christian hope expresses knowledge that every day of his life, and every moment beyond it, the believer can say with truth, on the basis of God's own commitment, that the best is yet to come." (JI Packer)

"The call to Calvary—to follow Jesus—is a call to die, and rise again. It’s a call to everlasting next-life gain through temporary this-life loss. Salvation isn’t about securing our unique and selfish desires and ambitions on this earth, but about securing and preparing our souls for another world, a new creation built and preserved for our glory in God’s and our satisfaction in him.” - Marshall Segal http://www.desiringgod.org/articles/the-king-we-needed-but-never-wanted

"...though our feelings come and go, [God's] love for us does not. It is not wearied by our sins, or our indifference; and, therefore, it is quite relentless in its determination that we shall be cured of those sins, at whatever cost to us, at whatever cost to Him."

C. S. Lewis (Mere Christianity)

There is no ongoing spiritual life without this process of letting go. At the precise point where we refuse, growth stops. If we hold tightly to anything given to us, unwilling to let it go when the time comes to let it go or unwilling to allow it to be used as the Giver means it to be used, we stunt the growth of the soul. It is easy to make a mistake here, “If God gave it to me,” we say, “its mine. I can do what I want with it.” No. The truth is that it is ours to thank Him for and ours to offer back to Him, ours to relinquish, ours to lose, ours to let go of – if we want to find our true selves, if we want real life, if our hearts are set on glory.

Elisabeth Elliot

“I thought for a minute, and then I got heavy, heavy boots.” - Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close