And now, let the weak say, "I am strong."

"But the people who know their God shall be strong, and carry out great exploits." - Daniel 11:32

[whomshallifear]

God doesn't glibly spiritualize the suffering of injustice, for he himself has endured it. He knows that the lash is real, that the fist hurts, that torture kills and that injustice can so brutalize our spirit as to make us feel forsaken by the heavenly Father. God knows that, ultimately, lost souls need a Savior and that "our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms" (Eph 6:12). But he also clearly knows that the powers of darkness and forces of evil can manifest themselves on this earth as real hunger, real nakedness, real imprisonment, real beatings and real injustice. And while never neglecting or subordinating spiritual needs, Jesus called his followers to respond to hunger with food, to nakedness with clothes, to imprisonment with visitation, to beatings with bandages and to injustice with justice (Matthew 15:32-38; 25:35-36; Luke 10:34; 11:42). As the apostle James wrote, "Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,' but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it?" (James 2:15-16).

Gary Haugen, Good News about Injustice

[whomshallifear]

Over time I have come to see questions about suffering in the world not so much as questions of God's character but as questions about the obedience and faith of God's people. Given the painful injustice that Rosa continues to endure, it is no wonder that she may be tempted to despair as the psalmist did: "Why, O Lord, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in time of trouble?" (Psalm 10:1) But gradually it has occured to me that the problem may not be that God is so far off; the problem may be that God's people are far off.

Gary Haugen, Good News about Injustice

[whomshallifear]

Love God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength. It is the first and the great commandment (Matthew 22:37–38). That is, use your mind, your college-educated mind, to feed the fires of the heart with the fuel of truth. Let everything you study function as a means of inflaming the heart. Put all of your intellectual and physical effort into guarding and fueling your heart. Never give in to the emotionalism which neglects thinking or the intellectualism which neglects the heart. Loving God with the heart is the great essence of why the universe was created. Treasuring God over all things. That is what loving God means. The mind and the body — when it says love God with all the heart and the mind and the body — the mind and the body are the servants of the heart. And then the passions of the heart become visible through the mind and the body. That is number one.

John Piper, “Seven Tips for College Students”   http://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/seven-tips-for-college-students

[whomshallifear]

[T]o be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a father in a son - it seems impossible, a weight or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain. But so it is.

C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

[whomshallifear]

i’m so hungry for real, deep, heart-connecting conversations.

I don’t want glib “Don’t worry, God has a plan for you” answers.

I don’t want half-hearted sympathy.

I don’t want high-and-mighties only half-listening and cutting through my half-finished stories to give me supercilious advice.

I want the real thing.

I don’t need earth-shattering. Just soul-lifting.

I just want to talk to someone who’s willing to listen beyond my words. 

Someone who sees my heart. 

Someone who has the courage to sweep into the dark cob-webbed corners of my heart and call out the words and dreams that I have buried because my attempts at being vulnerable have led to awkward silences, being ignored, being called “oversensitive”.

I want to talk to someone who believes in the power of feeling - who isn’t afraid of my insecurities or the depths of my emotions. Someone willing to sit with me as I learn to process what I’m feeling and find words to express them.

I want to talk to someone who’s really interested to connect and listen - who’s not just ticking my name off some to-do list.

I want to talk to someone who believes in the beauty of wrestling - who’s not just gonna shout at me to set my eyes only on the mountain top experiences but who can help me find beauty and vision even in the trenches of the valley.

I just want someone to make me feel a little less lonely, a little less weird, a little less unloved.

[awesome-picz]

Cat-Plants You Probably Shouldn’t Water

[datasoong47]

The cat crop is good this year.

[whomshallifear]

Now, just in case you’re thinking that Joe was somehow robbed, that after a lifetime of giving he wasn’t given a fair shake by God Almighty, let me tell you this. Some people store up treasures on earth . . . houses, cars, illicit relationships . . . and every day they wake, they move one day further from their treasure, one day closer to death. [...] Ah, but then there are people like Joe, people who wake every day one step closer to their treasure. One day closer to leaving this lobby and entering the main ballroom. Closer finally to being home in the place that was created for them. So don’t grieve for Joe, people. Believe that, as C. S. Lewis once said, for Joe life here on earth was only the title and cover page. And now he has begun  the greatest story of all, one that no one on earth has ever read in which every chapter is better than the last. Believe that, if given the chance, he would have agreed with D. L. Moody, who said in his dying days, ‘In a little while you will read in the newspaper that I am dead. Do not believe a word of it, for I will be more alive than ever before.’

Karen Kingsbury, A Time to Dance

[recycledsoul]

Good words from Lauren Winner about shame and God’s love:

“Perhaps, if I sit inside Genesis 3 long enough, I might come to know that God is not hidden from my body, my body that holds delight and shame. Perhaps I will come to know that God is in fact intimately pressed up against my body, as near as a camisole or a neon running shirt. That God is as close to my shame as this shawl is to my shoulders. That God is pressed up against all the corrosive shame in my life—not just the shame I feel about my body, but all my whatever-else shame, all the many pockets of curdling shame and regret I carry. While I feel cloaked with shame, God is tenderly stitching me a suit of clothes. The clothing is God’s own self. 

I suspect that if I could receive this, something small but important would change. I suspect that the way I inhabit myself would be different if my spinning, whirling brain could receive this, if my heart could receive it, if my body could receive it. If I could know that God wants to nestle up close to the places of my shame, as close as clothing—then the shame would dissolve. Anything God wants to nestle against is not shameful, so if I actually believed that God wanted to be close to my curdling, the shame would dissolve, and I would be slightly less hidden from God, or from myself. 

‘You are always in God’s sight comely, always in God’s sight lovely, always in God’s sight as though you were perfect. For ye are complete in Christ Jesus, and perfect in Christ Jesus… . Always do you stand completely washed and fully clothed in Christ.’ Those are the words of Charles Spurgeon, the great nineteenth-century English preacher, taking up Paul’s sartorial idiom to describe how beautiful redeemed men and women appear to God.

Always in God’s sight lovely. Always.”

—Lauren Winner, Wearing God, pp. 59-61

[set-apartgirl]

Choices will continually be necessary and – let us not forget – possible. Obedience to God is always possible. It is a deadly error to fall into the notion that when feelings are extremely strong we can do nothing but act on them.

Elisabeth Elliot, Discipline: The Glad Surrender (via set-apartgirl)

[onlinecounsellingcollege]

I have spent my whole life terrified. Scared of things that could go wrong. Things that might happen; things that might not happen. But in time I’ve seen that it’s fear that’s the real enemy. So get up. Get out there, and live the life you want to live.

OCC (via onlinecounsellingcollege)

[lovechangeseverythang]

[spiritualinspiration2]

http://facebook.com/naeemcallaway

[whomshallifear]

We share similar characteristics, even our loudness. You might laugh and ask, “Am I really loud?” Loudness is not a measure of decibel, but loudness is a measurement of the depth of one’s thought, and of one’s soul. The other loudness can be heard by the human ear, but your loudness can be heard by the depth of the heart. You are loud in your writing. You are loud in your perception. You are loud in your gentle spirit. You are loud in your quietness. You are loud in your thoughtfulness. I am loud with my vocal cord, but I always have preferred that people would hear the deep cries of my heart, the longing for God’s presence, the intimacy of worship… i believe that if people hear those deep cries within me, the loudness of God’s love would so change them. That is why I am so intense when I preach, because I want people to try to hear the small still voice of God, the voice that is louder than any earthquake, that is louder than the whirlwind, louder than the voice of fear, louder than the voice of self-pity. The voice of God that spoke over me that day when I was alone in my sister’s bedroom, saying,“ I love you. You are my beloved son, in whom I’m pleased with.” That small still voice is still the loudest voice that I hear everyday. It’s a voice that shakes and vibrates my whole being. Ironically, this voice is soooo very loud that only those who are quiet enough can hear it.

I just rediscovered this from one of the emails my brother-in-law wrote to me many years ago. Today God reminded me that He has placed so much inside of me that He desires for me to share with others, and so I put this up to remind myself and to encourage all of you to believe that the words that God speaks over your life, and the words that He gives you to speak into the lives of others have the power to overcome the voice and words of the enemy. (via whomshallifear)

Reblogging this because God has been teaching me so much about this area lately!

[whomshallifear]

How can we pray to thee, thou holy and hidden God, whose ways are not our ways, who reignest in awful mystery beyond the realm of space and time? Yet how can we not pray to thee, Heavenly Father, who knowest what it is to be a man because thou hast walked among us as a man, breaking with us the bread of affliction and drinking deep of the cup of our despair? How can we not pray to thee when it is thy very Spirit alive within us that moves our lips in prayer? Hear, O God, the prayers of all thy children everywhere: for forgiveness and healing, for courage, for faith; prayers for the needs of others; prayers for peace among the desperate nations. Whether thou givest or withholdest what we ask, whether thou answerest us in words that burn like fire or in silence that burns like fire, increase in us the knowledge that thou art always more near to us than breathing, that thy will for us is love. And deep beneath all our asking, so deep beneath that we are all but deaf to it ourselves, hear, O God, the secret song of every human heart praising thee for being what thou art, rejoicing with the morning stars that thou art our God and we thy children. Make strong and wild this secret song within until it bursts forth at last to thy glory and our saving. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, amen.

- Frederick Buechner, "A Sprig of Hope"

[whomshallifear]

Fruitfulness is birthed from love. Bearing fruit is a delight, but it is not the final goal. Intimacy with God must be our purpose. If we pursue Him above all else, fruit simply happens. I have never seen a fruit tree push hard and say, "Give me fruit!" Trees have no other task than to stand rooted in the soil. They soak up the waters that flow from the heart of God, and new life grows.

Heidi Baker, "Birthing the Miraculous"

[whomshallifear]

Swami Shivananda, a famous swami in India, used to tell his disciples: 'Kill the mind and then, and then only, can you meditate.' The Christian position is 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy mind' - the intellectual nature; 'with all thy heart' - the emotional nature; 'with all thy soul' - the willing nature; and 'with all thy strength' - the physical nature. The total person is to love Him - mind, emotion, will, strength. Some love Him with the strength of the mind and the weakness of the emotion - the intellectualist in religion; some love Him with the strength of emotion and the weakness of mind - the sentimentalist in religion; some love Him with the strength of the will and the weakness of emotion - the man of iron who is not very approachable. But loving God with the strength of the mind, the strength of the emotion, and the strength of the will - that makes the truly Christian and the truly balanced and the truly strong character.

- Song of Ascents, E. Stanley Jones

[whomshallifear]

Like others, I am convinced that Christians ought to be the strongest, broadest, most creative thinkers in the world. Again, it was Paul who said that as Christians we are given the mind of Christ. This provides a potential intellectual breadth that the unregenerate mind does not possess. It offers an eternal, timeless perspective in which to think. In Christ there is a foundation of truth that ought to make our ideas, our analysis of things, and our innovation among the most powerful of the age. But because there is an essential laziness and internal disorganisation in many Christian lives, this is not always the case. We are forfeiting one of the great gifts God provided through Christ.

Ordering Your Private World, Gordon MacDonald

[whomshallifear]

I have watched men and women who have pressed enormous amounts of information about the Bible into their heads. They have learned to speak a rich vocabulary of correct Christian jargon. Their prayers can be so smooth-sounding that all those about them sit in awe. We think them to be spiritual people. But at other times, we begin to see that they are rigid and inflexible, impervious to change and innovation. Their response to any serious challenge to their thought is a burst of anger or accusation.

Ordering Your Private World, Gordon MacDonald