The Love & Faithfulness of God

Prayers

Adapted From Treasury of Devotion

O Lord, grant to us so to love You with all our hearts, with all our minds, and all our souls, and our neighbor for Your sake. Grant that the grace of charity and brotherly love may dwell in us, and all envy, harshness, and ill-will may die in us. Fill our hearts with feelings of love, kindness, and compassion. By constantly rejoicing in the happiness and success of others, by sympathizing with them in their sorrows, and putting away all harsh judgments and envious thoughts, we may follow You. You are the true and perfect Love - Amen.

Devotional Readings

Charles Spurgeon Devotionals from “Cheque Book of the Bank of Faith”
Psalm 27:14

‘Wait on the LORD: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord’Psalm 27:14. Wait! Wait! Let your waiting be on the Lord! He is worth waiting for. He never disappoints the waiting soul. While waiting keep up your spirits. Expect a great deliverance, and be ready to praise God for it. The promise which should cheer you is in the middle of the verse - ‘He shall strengthen thine heart.’ This goes at once to the place where you need help. If the heart be sound, all the rest of the system will work well. The heart wants calming and cheering; and both of these will come if it be strengthened. A forceful heart rests and rejoices, and throbs force into the whole man. No one else can get at that secret urn of life, the heart, so as to pour strength into it. He alone who made it can make it strong. God is full of strength, and, therefore, he can impart it to those who need it. O, be brave; for the Lord will impart his strength to you, and you shall be calm in tempest, and glad in sorrow. He who penned these lines can write as David did - ‘Wait, I say, on the Lord.’ I do, indeed, say it. I know by long and deep experience that it is good for me to wait upon the Lord.

Elisabeth Elliot’s writings from Keep a Quiet Heart
Moonless Trust

Adapted from “Keep A Quiet Heart” by Elisabeth Elliot (pg. 57) Some of you are perhaps feeling that you are voyaging just now on a moonless sea. Uncertainty surrounds you. There seem to be no signs to follow. Perhaps you feel about to be engulfed by loneliness. There is no one to whom you can speak of your need. Amy Carmichael wrote of such a feeling when, as a missionary of twenty-six, she had to leave Japan because of poor health, then travel to China for recuperation, but then realized God was telling her to go to Ceylon. (All this preceded her going to India, where she stayed for fifty-three years.) I have on my desk her original handwritten letter of August 25, 1894, as she was en route to Colombo. “All along, let us remember, we are not asked to understand, but simply to obey…. On July 28, Saturday, I sailed. We had to come on board on Friday night, and just as the tender (a small boat) where were the dear friends who had come to say goodbye was moving off, and the chill of loneliness shivered through me, like a warm love-clasp came the long-loved lines—‘And only Heaven is better than to walk with Christ at midnight, over moonless seas.’ I couldn’t feel frightened then. Praise Him for the moonless seas—all the better opportunity for proving Him to be indeed the El Shaddai, ‘the God who is Enough.’” Let me add my own word of witness to hers and to that of the tens of thousands who have learned that He is indeed Enough. He is not all we would ask for (if we were honest), but it is precisely when we do not have what we would ask for, and only then, that we can clearly perceive His all-sufficiency. It is when the sea is moonless that the Lord has become my Light.

Other Devotionals

HE GOES WITH YOU

I know that to arrive at this state of consolation about our illness, the beginning is very difficult; for we must act purely in faith.  But though it is difficult, we know also that we can do all things with the grace of God, which He never refuses to them who ask it earnestly. -Brother Lawrence, page 61 After the accident in which I became paralyzed, I was terrified of the future.  If only God would give me some assurance that everything would turn out okay, then I could trust Him. My concerns were not unlike those of Moses.  After God’s people rebelled, the Lord told Moses to get up and lead the people beyond the desert to Canaan.  Moses, being a little unsure of what lay ahead, said to the Lord, “You have been telling me, ‘Take these people up to the Promised Land.’…  if it is true that you look favorably on me, let me know your ways so I may understand you more fully” (Exodus 33:12-13, NLT).  That’s it?  Moses was hoping for details, a plan, the blueprint.  He wanted assurance about the future. When God gives us a directive, before venturing out, we want to know what he intends to do.  “Let me know the way you’re taking me, God.”  But God does not unfold the blueprint; he is the blueprint.  If we are insistent in wanting to know the way, let’s recall that Jesus is the Way.   Once I started powering my wheelchair into the future, I could almost hear the words from Exodus:  I will personally go with you, Joni.”  And for more than half a century, he has. Meditate:  Worried about the future? His presence is all you need.  Thank him for that. (Joni Eareckson Tada, “The Practice of the Presence of Jesus”)

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When you feel alone in your struggle