Prayer, Thanksgiving, Praise

Php 4:6  Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.
 
Php 4:7  And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

No care but all prayer. No anxiety but much joyful communion with God. 

Carry your desires to the LORD of your life, the guardian of your soul. 

Go to Him with two portions of prayer and one of fragrant praise.

Do not pray doubtfully but thankfully. 

Consider that you have your petitions, and therefore thank God for His grace. 

He is giving you grace; give Him thanks, Hide nothing. 

Allow no want to lie rankling in your bosom; "make known your requests." 

Run not to man. 

Go only to your God, the Father of Jesus, who loves you in Him.

This shall bring you God's own peace. 

You shall not be able to understand the peace which you shall enjoy.

It will enfold you in its infinite embrace. 

Heart and mind through Christ Jesus shall be steeped in a sea of rest. 

Come life or death, poverty, pain, slander, you shall dwell in Jesus above every rolling wind or darkening cloud. 

Will you not obey this dear command?

Yes, LORD, I do believe thee; but, I beseech thee, help mine unbelief.

~Charles Spurgeon~

Do You Ask Why He Is Angry?

Psalm 7:11  God judgeth the righteous, and God is angry with the wicked every day. 

Do You Ask Why He Is Angry?

I answer:

He is angry to see rational, immortal and accountable beings spending twenty, forty, or sixty years in trifling and sin; serving numerous idols, lusts, and vanities, and living as if death were an eternal sleep!

He is angry to see you forgetting your Maker in childhood, in youth, in manhood and making no returns for all His benefits.

He is angry to see you casting off His fear and rebelling against Him-who has nourished and sustained you.

He is angry to see you laying up treasures on earth and not in Heaven.

He is angry to see you seeking everything in preference to the one thing needful.

He is angry to see you loving the praise of men more than the praise of God; and fearing those who can only kill the body, more than Him who has power to cast both soul and body into Hell.

He is angry to see that you disregard alike His threatenings and His promises, His judgments and His mercies. 

He is angry that you bury in the earth the talents He has given you, and bring forth no fruit to His glory.

He is angry that you neglect His Word and His Son, and perish in impenitency and unbelief.

These are sins of which every person, in an unconverted state, is guilty.

And for these things God is angry - daily angry, greatly and justly angry!

And unless His anger is speedily appeased, it will most certainly prove your everlasting destruction!

~Edward Payson~

“Strong in faith.”

Romans 4:20  He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God;
 
Christian, take good care of thy faith; for recollect faith is the only way whereby thou canst obtain blessings. 

If we want blessings from God, nothing can fetch them down but faith.

Prayer cannot draw down answers from God’s throne except it be the earnest prayer of the man who believes. 

Faith is the angelic messenger between the soul and the Lord Jesus in glory.

Let that angel be withdrawn, we can neither send up prayer, nor receive the answers.
 
Faith is the telegraphic wire which links earth and heaven on which God’s messages of love fly so fast, that before we call he answers, and while we are yet speaking he hears us.
 
But if that telegraphic wire of faith be snapped, how can we receive the promise?

Am I in trouble? I can obtain help for trouble by faith. 

Am I beaten about by the enemy?

My soul on her dear Refuge leans by faith. 

But take faith away...in vain I call to God. 

There is no road betwixt my soul and heaven. 

In the deepest wintertime faith is a road on which the horses of prayer may travel...

Aye, and all the better for the biting frost; 

But blockade the road, and how can we communicate with the Great King? 

Faith links me with divinity.

Faith clothes me with the power of God. 

Faith engages on my side the omnipotence of Jehovah.
 
Faith ensures every attribute of God in my defense.

It helps me to defy the hosts of hell.

It makes me march triumphant over the necks of my enemies. 

But without faith how can I receive anything of the Lord? 

Let not him that wavereth who is like a wave of the Sea expect that he will receive anything of God! 

O, then, Christian, watch well thy faith; for with it thou canst win all things, however poor thou art, but without it thou canst obtain nothing. 

If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.

~Charles Spurgeon~

Leaning Sides

Son 8:5  Who is this that cometh up from the wilderness, leaning upon her beloved? I raised thee up under the apple tree: there thy mother brought thee forth: there she brought thee forth that bare thee.

Some one gained a good lesson from a Southern prayer meeting. 

A brother asked the Lord for various blessings as you and I do, and thanked the Lord for many already received as you and I do; 

But he closed with this unusual petition: "And, O Lord, support us!"

Yes support us Lord on every leanin' side!

Have you any leaning sides? 

This humble man's prayer pictures them in a new way and shows the Great Supporter in a new light also. 

He is always walking by the Christian, ready to extend His mighty arm and steady the weak one on every leanin' side.

Child of My love, lean hard, And let Me feel the pressure of thy care;

I know thy burden, child. I shaped it; Poised it in Mine Own hand; made no proportion In its weight to thine unaided strength...

For even as I laid it on, I said, I shall be near, and while she leans on Me, This burden shall be Mine, not hers;

So shall I keep My child within the circling arms Of My Own love.

Here lay it down, nor fear To impose it on a shoulder which upholds the government of worlds. 

Yet closer come: Thou art not near enough.

I would embrace thy care; So I might feel My child reposing on My breast. 

Thou lovest Me?

I knew it. Doubt not then; But Loving Me, lean hard.

Remember The Way The LORD Has Led You

Deu 8:2  And thou shalt remember all the way which the LORD thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments, or no.

When you look back upon the way the Lord has led you these many years in the wilderness, can you not see how circumstance after circumstance, and event after event arose, to prove what was in you; whether godly fear, whether simplicity and sincerity, whether a desire to fear God, whether a dread to offend him, whether the life and power of vital godliness, or whether little else than an empty profession without the life-giving power of God in the soul?

What a mercy for you to be able to look back and see how the Lord appeared for you, when without him you must have sunk; when you can feel, to your soul's comfort, that the Lord did uphold you in the trying hour, did appear for you in distressing circumstances, did make bare his right arm when you had no strength of your own, did guide you when you had lost all clue, did bring you safe through all when, without his help, you must have been utterly lost.

What a mercy it is to be able, by the actings of living faith (and sure I am, there must be faith in exercise), to look back upon the way, and believe that indeed the grace of God was in your heart, that the Lord proved it, and shewed it to be genuine by every circumstance that has taken place.

~J. C. Philpot~

Have Faith In GOD!

Mark 11:22  And Jesus answering saith unto them, Have faith in God.
 
Faith is the foot of the soul by which it can march along the road of the commandments.
 
Love can make the feet move more swiftly; but faith is the foot which carries the soul.

Faith is the oil enabling the wheels of holy devotion and of earnest piety to move well; and without faith the wheels are taken from the chariot, and we drag heavily.

With faith I can do all things; without faith I shall neither have the inclination nor the power to do anything in the service of God.

If you would find the men who serve God the best, you must look for the men of the most faith. 

Little faith will save a man, but little faith cannot do great things for God. 

Poor Little-faith could not have fought “Apollyon;” it needed “Christian” to do that.
 
Poor Little-faith could not have slain “Giant Despair;” it required “Great-heart's” arm to knock that monster down.

Little-faith says, “It is a rough road, beset with sharp thorns, and full of dangers; I am afraid to go;” 

But Great-faith remembers the promise, “Thy shoes shall be iron and brass; as thy days, so shall thy strength be: and so she boldly ventures. 

Little-faith stands desponding, mingling her tears with the flood; 

But Great-faith sings, “When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee:” and she fords the stream at once. 

Would you be comfortable and happy? 

Would you have the religion of cheerfulness and not that of gloom?

Then “have faith in God.”

If you love darkness, and are satisfied to dwell in gloom and misery, then be content with little faith; 

But if you love the sunshine, and would sing songs of rejoicing, covet earnestly this best gift, “great faith.”

~Charles Spurgeon~

Christlikeness Does Not Exempt Us From Being Misunderstood

Again, we should always bear these words in mind in seasons when we are misunderstood.

To be misunderstood is always bitter.

Nothing so adds to the joy of spiritual service as to be certain that it is appreciated.

Appreciation, from the right kind of people, is always a spur to more devoted toil.

But to toil on, as so many have to do, misunderstood even by those they love, is one of the heaviest crosses in the world.

It is so apt to blight all that is most delicate, so swift to sour the milk of human kindness. 

Why should God permit this chilling atmosphere to surround many of His finest toilers? 

Then one remembers that He who came to earth to embody the ideal of life and character breathed that pestilent atmosphere all the time.

He was misunderstood when He wrought His deeds of mercy-He casteth out devils by Beelzebub.

He was misunderstood when He hung upon the cross-they thought He was calling on Elias.

And with that spirit of His, so exquisitely sensitive, that increasing and deep misunderstanding was sorer than the piercing of the nails.

One of our novelists speaks of "Kingdom of Heaven kindness." 

Have not many practiced it, and been misunderstood?

A little gratitude would have made all the difference, but gratitude was noticeable  by its absence.

It is in such hours, and they come to everybody who has practiced the secret of the "cup of water," that there is a gospel in the word enough.

Enough is as good as a feast.

Enough is satisfaction. 

More than enough would be a spiritual excess, and excess leads to disease.

He who knows us and what is best for us, just as He knows what is in store for us, says it is enough that the servant be as his Lord.

~George H. Morrison~