PRAY WITHOUT CEASING

"Pray without ceasing" (1 Thessalonians 5:17). There is a great difference between prayer and the life of prayer. Almost everyone prays, but very few pray without ceasing. This is the habit of devotion. This is the altar of incense ever burning in the Holy Place. This is the fragrance of a heart that lives in the presence of the Holy One, and breathes the very life of God. This is the deep undertone of a sanctified life. It is from this that the sweetness, the gladness, the holiness, and the helpfulness come. Lord, teach us the habit of prayer, the prayer that springs spontaneously from the heart, and which neither secular duty, satanic temptation, nor the waves of sorrow, can interrupt, but which is only stimulated by the things that try us, until every experience becomes transformed into an occasion for communion and fellowship with God.

--A. B. Simpson

The Power of the Cross by Stuart Townend & Keith Getty

Verse 1
Oh to see the dawn of the darkest day
Christ on the road to calvary
Tried by sinful men, torn and beaten then
Nailed to a cross of wood

Chorus 1
This the pow’r of the cross
Christ became sin for us
Took the blame, bore the wrath
We stand forgiven at the cross

Verse 2
Oh to see the pain written on Your face
Bearing the awesome weight of sin
Ev’ry bitter thought, ev’ry evil deed
Crowning Your bloodstained brow

Verse 3
Now the daylight flees, now the ground beneath
Quakes as its maker bows his head
Curtain torn in two, dead are raised to life
‘Finished!’ the vict’ry cry.

Verse 4
Oh to see my name written in the wound
For through Your suf‘fring I am free
Death is crushed to death, life is mine to live
Won through Your selfless love

Chorus 2
This the pow’r of the cross
Son of God slain for us
What a life, what a cost
We stand forgiven at the cross

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubGCISQQ7Zo

Psalm 46:5"God is in the midst of her, she will not be moved." When God is the center of a soul, although disasters may crowd in on all sides and roar like the waves of the sea, there is a constant calm within. The world can neither give nor take away this kind of peace. What is it that causes people to shake like leaves today at the first hint of danger? It is simply the lack of God living in their soul, and having the world in their hearts.- Streams in the Desert January 29th

Rest

Several months ago when Nick was working in Aiken, he was having a very difficult time. He hated either staying there all night or being at the least an hour and half away from us. I have a little plastic box shaped like a loaf of bread, called the Bread of Life. In this Bread of life are Bible verses. One day, I withdrew the verse, "My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest." Exodus 33:14.

I put the little verse on Nick's bedside table. A reminder that Jesus is always with Him and when He trusts in Him, he will find rest.

That little verse stays on Nick's table.

A few weeks ago, I ordered Mrs. L.B. Cowmans devotional book, Springs in the Valley. I've read some of it but the devotional book I read everyday is Streams in the Desert that she also wrote.

This morning, I was reading some of Springs when I decided to read February 17th, Nick's birthday. Isn't this SO like God?

Springs in the Valley by Mrs. L.B. Cowman
February 17th

"My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest." Exodus 33:14.

What is rest?

To step out of self-life into Christ-life; to lie and let Him lift you out of it; to fold your hands close and hide your face on the hem of His garment; to let Him lay His cooling, soothing, healing hands upon your soul and draw all the hurry and fever from it's veins; to realize that you are not a mighty messenger, an important worker of His, full of care and responsibility, but only a little child with a Father's gently bidding to heed and fulfill; to lay your busy hands and ambitions confidently in His hands, as a child brings it's broken toys at his mother's call; to serve Him by waiting; to praise Him by saying, "Holy, Holy, Holy;" to cease to hurry, so you may not lose sight of His face; to learn to follow Him and not to run ahead of orders! To cease to live in self and for self, and to live in Him and for Him; to love His honor more than your own; to be a clear medium for His life-tide to shine and glow through. This is consecration, this is rest.

Thou sweet, beloved will of God
My anchor ground, my fortress hill
My spirit's silent, fair abode,
In Thee I hide me and am still.

Thou beautiful, sweet will, my God,
Holds fast in its sublime embrace
My captive will, a gladsome bird,
Prison'd in such a realm of grace.

Upon God's will I lay me down,
As child upon it's mother's breast
No silken couch, nor softest bed,
Could ever give me such deep rest.
-Tersteegen

Death, where is thy sting?

In an email to a friend about death.


"I don't think one ever gets over a physical death. I don't think we are meant to. God created us NOT knowing death so death is actually unnatural to us. I know that sounds kind of odd but think about it. When God created Adam and Eve, He didn't create them to die but to live. It was their sin that caused them to come to know death. They actually experienced TWO deaths. A spiritual death and a physical death. Just like God is a triune God (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) so we are triune, we are body (flesh, blood and bones), soul (mind, will and emotions) and spirit (conscienceness of God, intuition of God and communion with God). He breathed in them His breath of Life, His Spirit, which created a spirit in them. When they sinned, His Spirit left them and their spirit...died. So their children, (all of us), are born with dead spirits. If you read John 3, Jesus tells Nicodemas that the spirit is born of the Spirit, born again. What was dead (our spirit) is now made alive. When we trust and believe in Jesus, He places His Spirit in us and makes our spirit alive. Romans 6 is great about all of this. So we are back (reconciled, reunited) to where we should have been originally (before the fall). We are now natural. But sin has it's consequences and our physical body will still die. But we will never experience real death because of Jesus..who He is, what He has done for us (reconciled us to God, reunited with God, redeemed our soul)..He brought us back to the right relationship with God. It is our soul, our soul is our mind (thinker), will (chooser) and emotions (feeler), with which we choose to believe in Jesus...John 3:16.

But the gospel is so much more than God rescuing us from the dominion of darkness and transferring us in the kingdom of His Son. (Colossians 1:13).

Check out Galatians 2:20 and Colossians 1:26-27. It was revealed to Paul that not only did Jesus die for us and rise for us (overcome sin and death)....He places His very Life inside of us. That how we are His body. His physical body. The church, His people, are His physical body! He dwells within us. John 15.

Amen and amen! That is how we live this Christian life! Apart from Him, we can do nothing. He lives it through us. In and through us. Wow!"

From Streams in the Desert, January 18th

If there is a great trial in your life today, do not acknowledge it as defeat. Instead continue by faith to claim the victory through Him who is able to make you "more than conquerors" (Romans 8:37), and a glorious victory will soon be apparent. May we learn that in all the difficult places God takes us (or allows us to go), He is giving us opportunities to exercise our faith in Him that will bring about blessed results and greatly glorify His name.

Only the soul that knows the mighty grief
Can know the mighty rapture. Sorrows come
To stretch out spaces in the heart for joy.

From Streams in the Desert, January 16th

A furious squall came up. (Mark 4:37)

Some of life's storms- a great sorrow, a bitter disappointment, a crushing defeat- suddenly come upon us. Others may come slowly, appearing on the uneven edge of the horizon no larger than a person's hand. But trouble that seems so insignificant spreads until it covers the sky and overwhelms us.

Yet it is in the storms that God equips us for service. When God wants an oak tree, He plants it where the storms will shake it and the rains will beat down upon it. It is in the midnight battle with the elements that the oak develops its rugged fiber and becomes the king of the forest.

When God wants to make a person He puts Him into some storm. The history of humankind has always been rough and rugged. No one is complete until he has been out into the surge of the storm and has found the glorious fulfillment of the prayer "O God, take me, break me, make me."

The beauties of nature come after the storm. The rugged beauty of the mountain is born in a storm, and the heroes of life are the storm-swept and battle-scarred.

You have been in the storms and swept by the raging winds. Have they left you broken, weary, and beaten in the valley or have they lifted you to the sunlit summits of a richer, deeper, more abiding manhood or womanhood? Have they left you with more sympathy for the storm-swept and the battle-scarred?