Author: Elisabeth Elliot
Source: A Lamp For My Feet
The Calm Spirit of Christ
Today is moving day. There will be plenty of reason for fretting and stewing, impatience, and turbulence. I am one who seems to feel that unless I do things or unless they are done my way, they will not be done right, and the day will disintegrate. But I have been watching the sea--very turbulent this morning because of a tropical storm hundreds of miles away--and I remember Him whose word was enough to calm it.
Speak that word to me today, dear Lord: peace. Let your calm spirit, through the many potentially rough minutes of this day, in every task, say to my soul, Be still. Even this day's chaos, with all its clutter and exertion, will be ordered by your quiet power if my heart is subject to your word of peace. Thank You, Lord.
QUOTEMEAL from HEARTLIGHT
http://www.heartlight.org/
On days when life is difficult and I feel overwhelmed, as I do fairly often, it helps to remember in my prayers that all God requires of me is to trust Him and be His friend. I find I can do that.
-- Bruce Larson
Author: Elisabeth Elliot
Source: A Lamp For My Feet
Scripture: Isaiah 12:2 Psalm 27:1
Responsibility
An important sign of maturity is the acceptance of responsibility. One quits depending on everybody else and acknowledges that certain duties are his alone. If he doesn't do them, nobody will. Every day there is, for example, a "cross" to take up.
Who else is going to carry it? It is mine. It lies in my pathway, and unless I accept it--and accept it gladly for Christ--I simply am not following Him. He has made it perfectly clear that there are two prerequisites to following, that is, to being his disciple: denying oneself, and taking up one's cross.
To know yourself is to know your cross. Francois Mauriac says, "to flee one's sorrow and evade and ignore one's cross is the whole occupation of the world; but that occupation is at the same time a fleeing from one's own self"--or, we may say, from our proper and assigned responsibility.
We may not always see a particular task laid before us, but one thing is sure: to trust Him is a task, proper to every Christian, assigned to us every minute of every hour of every day, and to flee this task is worldly, irresponsible, and immature.
"The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear?" (Ps 27:1 AV).
Author: Elisabeth Elliot
Source: A Lamp For My Feet
Scripture: Mark 10:22
It Is Hard to Enter
The kingdom of god stands over against all other kingdoms--that is, against all other authorities, sources of power, objects of trust. It is hard to enter the kingdom of God--not because an angel is set to keep us out, not because God would surround Himself with a highly selected elite, but because the condition for admittance is renunciation of all other kingdoms.
The wealthy stranger who ran up to Jesus, knelt, and inquired how he might receive eternal life "went away with a heavy heart" (Mk 10:22 NEB). He did not want to pay the price of entrance--a shift in the source of his trust, from money (which seemed concrete and dependable) to this "Good Master" who asked everything visible and dependable in exchange for what was invisible and seemingly very undependable.
Every day we are asked which kingdom we choose. Is it, in the last analysis, "thine" or "mine" which I most desire? What is it that my most earnest prayers are directed toward?