We talk about heaven being so far away. It is within speaking distance to those who belong there. Heaven is a prepared place for a prepared people. ~ D.L. Moody
She was lying on the ground. In her arms she held a tiny baby girl. As I put a cooked sweet potato into her outstretched hand, I wondered if she would live until morning. Her strength was almost gone, but her tired eyes acknowledged my gift. The sweet potato could help so little--but it was all I had.
Taking a bite she chewed it carefully. Then, placing her mouth over her baby’s mouth, she forced the soft warm food into the tiny throat. Although the mother was starving, she used the entire potato to keep her baby alive.
Exhausted from her effort, she dropped her head on the ground and closed her eyes. In a few minutes the baby was asleep. I later learned that during the night the mother’s heart stopped, but her little girl lived.
Love is a costly thing.
God in His love for us (and for a lost world) "spared not His own Son" to tell the world of His love. Love is costly, but we must tell the world at any cost. Such love is costly.
It costs parents and sons and daughters. It costs the missionary life itself. In his love for Christ the missionary often must give up all to make the Savior known. If you will let your love for Christ cost you something, the great advance will be made together.
~ D. Hillis
Were the whole realm of nature mine, That were an offering far too small; Love so amazing, so divine, Demands my soul, my life, my all..
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases His mercies never come to an end They are new every morning, new every morning Great is Thy faithfulness, O Lord, Great is Thy faithfulness..=)
Today my heart sings of Your great goodness and faithfulness, dearest Lord. Thank You for Your sacrificial love which never ceases. There is nothing we can do to make You love us more, there is nothing we can do to make You love us less. Thank you Lord..:)
For though he was crucified through weakness, yet he liveth by the power of God. For we also are weak in him, but we shall live with him by the power of God..
Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.
~ John 4: 13-14
18.4.07
In thee, O LORD, do I put my trust.. Be thou my strong habitation, whereunto I may continually resort: thou hast given commandment to save me; for thou art my rock and my fortress.
~ Psalm 71: 1a, 3
17.4.07
All nations whom thou hast made shall come and worship before thee, O Lord; and shall glorify thy name. For thou art great, and doest wondrous things: thou art God alone. Teach me thy way, O LORD; I will walk in thy truth: unite my heart to fear thy name. I will praise thee, O Lord my God, with all my heart: and I will glorify thy name for evermore. For great is thy mercy toward me: and thou hast delivered my soul from the lowest hell. ..O Lord, art a God full of compassion, and gracious, longsuffering, and plenteous in mercy and truth.
~ Psalm 86: 9-13, 15
Precious Lord, thank you for always helping me to claim Your promises as unchanging and powerful truths. They never fail to proclaim Your unfailing grace, love and mercy each time i reflect upon them. Continue to unite my heart to fear Your name alone..that was the Psalmist's heart's desire. Please move within my soul and make that my heart's desire too.
Thank you so much for everything..especially for pouring forth fresh purpose and planting a new vision within my heart.
Obeying Your still small voice -- that is all that really matters..
Thank you for teaching me what that really means, dear Lord.
I truly owe it all to You.
16.4.07
The world's great heart is aching, Aching fiercely in the night. And God alone can hear it-- And God alone can give light.
The men to hear the message And speak the living Word. And you and I, my brother, And the missions who have heard.
We grovel among trifles And our spirits fret and toss. While above us burns the vision Of Christ upon the Cross.
And the blood of Christ streaming From his pierced hands and side. And the lips of Christ are saying Tell the lost that I have died.
No power of man shall thwart us No strongholds shall dismay. When God commands obedience And love has led the way.
~ Anon.
For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.
Cardinal Borgia: “I have provided in the course of my life for everything except death, and now, alas, I am to die unprepared.”
Elizabeth the First: “All my possessions for one moment of time.”
Kurt Cobain (suicide note): “Frances and Courtney, I’ll be at your altar. Please keep going Courtney, for Frances. For her life will be so much happier without me. I love you. I love you.”
Ludwig van Beethoven: “Too bad, too bad! It’s too late!”
Thomas Hobbs: “I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark.”
Anne Boleyn: “O God, have pity on my soul. O God, have pity on my soul.”
Prince Henry of Wales: “Tie a rope round my body, pull me out of bed, and lay me in ashes, that I may die with repentant prayers to an offended God. O! I in vain wish for that time I lost with you and others in vain recreations.”
Socrates: “All of the wisdom of this world is but a tiny raft upon which we must set sail when we leave this earth. If only there was a firmer foundation upon which to sail, perhaps some divine word.”
Sigmund Freud: “The meager satisfaction that man can extract from reality leaves him starving.”
Tony Hancock (British comedian): “Nobody will ever know I existed. Nothing to leave behind me. Nothing to pass on. Nobody to mourn me. That’s the bitterest blow of all.”
Phillip III, King of France: “What an account I shall have to give to God! How I should like to live otherwise than I have lived.”
Luther Burbank: “I don’t feel good.”
Voltaire (skeptic): “I am abandoned by God and man! I will give you half of what I am worth if you will give me six months’ life. Then I shall go to hell; and you will go with me. O Christ! O Jesus Christ!” (The talented French writer once said of Jesus, “Curse the wretch!” He stated, “Every sensible man, every honorable man, must hold the Christian sect in horror ...Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd and bloody religion that has ever infected the world.”) He also boasted, “In twenty years Christianity will be no more. My single hand shall destroy the edifice it took twelve apostles to rear.” Some years later, Voltaire’s house was used by the Geneva Bible Society to print Bibles.
Philosophical Last Words:
Aldus Huxley (humanist): “It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one’s life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than ‘Try and be a little kinder.’”
Karl Marx: “Go on, get out! Last words are for fools who haven’t said enough!”
Napoleon: “I marvel that where the ambitious dreams of myself and of Alexander and of Caesar should have vanished into thin air, a Judean peasant—Jesus—should be able to stretch his hands across the centuries, and control the destinies of men and nations.”
Leonardo da Vinci: “I have offended God and mankind because my work did not reach the quality it should have.”
Tolstoy: “Even in the valley of the shadow of death, two and two do not make six.”
Benjamin Franklin: “A dying man can do nothing easy.”
Grotius: “I have lived my life in a laborious doing of nothing.”
Unexpected Demise:
H. G. Wells: “Go away: I’m alright.”
General John Sedgwick (during the heat of battle in 1864): “They couldn’t hit an elephant at this dist——!”
Bing Crosby: “That was a great game of golf.”
Mahatma Ghandi: “I am late by ten minutes. I hate being late. I like to be at the prayer punctually at the stroke of five.”
Diana (Spencer), Princess of Wales: “My God. What’s happened?” (per police files)
Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.: “Never felt better.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt: “I have a terrific headache.”
Sal Mineo: (stabbed through the heart): “Oh God! No! Help! Someone help!”
Jesse James: “It’s awfully hot today.”
Lee Harvey Oswald: “I will be glad to discuss this proposition with my attorney, and that after I talk with one, we could either discuss it with him or discuss it with my attorney, if the attorney thinks it is a wise thing to do, but at the present time I have nothing more to say to you.”
Unusual Last Words:
Vincent Van Gogh: “I shall never get rid of this depression.”
James Dean: “My fun days are over.”
Oscar Wilde: “My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go . . .”
W. C. Fields: “I’m looking for a loophole.”
Louis XVII: “I have something to tell you . . .”
Assurance of Salvation:
Jonathan Edwards: “Trust in God and you shall have nothing to fear.”
Patrick Henry: “Doctor, I wish you to observe how real and beneficial the religion of Christ is to a man about to die . . .” In his will he wrote: “This is all the inheritance I give to my dear family. The religion of Christ which will give them one which will make them rich indeed.”
John Owen: “I am going to Him whom my soul loveth, or rather who has loved me with an everlasting love, which is the sole ground of all my consolation.”
D. L. Moody: “I see earth receding; heaven is opening. God is calling me.”
Lew Wallace (author of Ben Hur): “Thy will be done.”
Alexander Hamilton: “I have a tender reliance on the mercy of the Almighty, through the merits of the Lord Jesus Christ. I am a sinner. I look to Him for mercy.”
William Shakespeare: “I commend my soul into the hands of God my Creator, hoping and assuredly believing, through the only merits of Jesus Christ my Savior, to be made partaker of life everlasting; and my body to the earth, whereof it was made.”
Martin Luther: “Into Thy hands I commend my spirit! Thou hast redeemed me, O God of truth.”
John Milton (British poet): “Death is the great key that opens the palace of Eternity.”
Sir Walter Raleigh (at his execution): “So the heart be right, it is no matter which way the head lieth.”
General William Booth (to his son): “And the homeless children, Bramwell, look after the homeless. Promise me . . .”
David Livingstone: “Build me a hut to die in. I am going home.”
Charles Dickens: “I commit my soul to the mercy of God, through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and I exhort my dear children humbly to try and guide themselves by the teaching of the New Testament.”
Isaac Watts (hymn-writer): “It is a great mercy that I have no manner of fear or dread of death. I could, if God please, lay my head back and die without terror this afternoon.”
Andrew Jackson: “My dear children, do not grieve for me . . . I am my God’s. I belong to Him. I go but a short time before you, and ...I hope and trust to meet you all in heaven.”
Daniel Webster (just before his death): “The great mystery is Jesus Christ—the gospel. What would the condition of any of us be if we had not the hope of immortality? . . . Thank God, the gospel of Jesus Christ brought life and immortality to light.” His last words were: “I still live.”
"Come, see the place where the Lord lay," with joy and gladness. He does not lie there now. Weep, when ye see the tomb of Christ, but rejoice because it is empty. Thy sin slew him, but his divinity raised him up. Thy guilt hath murdered him, but his righteousness hath restored him. Oh! he hath burst the bonds of death, he hath ungirt the cerements of the tomb, and hath come out more than conqueror, crushing death beneath his feet. Rejoice, O Christian, for he is not there -- he is risen.
~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, To an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, Who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
~ 1 Peter 1:3-5
3.4.07
I firmly believe that the moment our hearts are emptied of pride and selfishness and ambition and self-seeking and every thing that is contrary to God's law, the Holy Ghost will come and fill every corner of our hearts; but if we are full of pride and conceit and ambition and self-seeking and pleasure and the world, there is no room for the Spirit of God; and I believe many a man is praying to God to fill him when he is full already with something else.
The work of the Spirit is to impart life, to implant hope, to give liberty, to testify of Christ, to guide us into all truth, to teach us all things, to comfort the believer, and to convict the world of sin.
If we had the Spirit sealing our ministry with power, it would signify very little about talent. Men might be poor and uneducated, their words might be broken and ungrammatical; but if the might of the Spirit attended them, the humblest evangelist would be more successful than the most learned of divines, or the most eloquent of preachers.
It is extraordinary power from God, not talent, that wins the day. It is extraordinary spiritual unction not extraordinary mental power, that we need. Mental power may fill a chapel but spiritual power fills the church with soul anguish. Mental power may gather a large congregation. but only spiritual power will save souls. What we need is spiritual power.
~ Charles H. Spurgeon
..Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the LORD of hosts.
This earth is not my home. I am only here for a short time. Therefore I am but a sojourner and a wayfaring stranger while travelling through this world.
Though I journey through a sea of trouble and sorrow, I have joy in my heart, knowing that I have with me those who love me and an awesome God who loves me with an everlasting love for all eternity.
I don't know about tomorrow,
