Pondering Knoll: May 2013

Thursday, May 9, 2013

Did You Think to Pray?

Ere you left your room this morning, did you think to pray?

In the name of Christ our Savior, did you sue for loving favor, as a shield today?

O how praying rests the weary!

Prayer will change the night to day;

So when life seems dark and dreary,

Don’t forget to pray

When you met with great temptation, did you think to pray?

By His dying love and merit, did you claim the Holy Spirit, as your guide and stay?

When your heart was filled with anger, did you think to pray?

Did you plead for grace, my brother, that you might forgive another, who had crossed your way?

When sore trials came upon you, did you think to pray?

When your soul was bowed in sorrow, Balm of Gilead did you borrow, at the gates of day?

O how praying rests the weary! Prayer will change the night to day;

So when life seems dark and dreary, don’t forget to pray!

by Mary Kidder

“In order to be a disciple we must deny ourselves - this is to exercise authority over our own spirit. We must take up the cross - this is to submit to Christ’s authority. And we must follow - this is continued obedience. This is the road not to confinement, to bondage, to a stunted or arrested development, but to total personal freedom. It means not death but life, not a narrowly circumscribed life but “abundant” life. The gate is narrow but not the life. The gate opens out into largeness of life.”

-Elisabeth Elliot

“No sigh ever reached the Most High, except through Christ—I mean so as to move His heart to pour out His grace. Prayers, groans, tears, all these are like arrows without a bow, till Christ comes and fits them to the string, and shoots them home for you and me. All our prayers are like a victim, with the wood and altar; Christ must bring the fire, and then the sacrifice smokes to heaven. He is the messenger. Oh Christian, do you not rejoice in Him then as the Messenger of the Covenant? He is doing thy errands before the throne tonight, pleading for me, pleading for you."

~C. H. Spurgeon

“Have you not known? Have you not heard? The everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, neither faints nor is weary. His understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the weak, and to those who have no might, He increases strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall, but those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”

Isaiah 40:28-31

"...The central place of faith in Christianity, and its significance...is precisely that which, on man's side, adjusts him to the living and merciful presence and action of a trusted God. In its nature, not by any mere arbitrary arrangement, it is his one possible receptive attitude, that in which he brings nothing, so that he may receive all. Thus "faith" is our side of union with Christ. And thus it is our means of possessing all His benefits, pardon, justification, purification, life, peace, glory."

-Handley Dunelm