When your children make you want to cry....

I found this post about wedding dresses on my daughter's blog today.

Little things can grow....

Yesterday I had the incredible privilege of seeing Lake Itasca and the headwaters of the mighty Mississippi River.  We waded across!  It was narrower than my kitchen. I picked a penny off the bottom.

For our honeymoon nearly 25 years ago, we went to New Orleans, and there I saw the Mississippi River broadly, majestically sweeping into the Gulf of Mexico.  It is wide and strong there -- not to be messed with.
And so as I slipped out of my shoes yesterday, and rolled up my capris to go wading, I could not forget the admonishment to not despise the day of small things.

John Paton, William Carey, William Wilberforce, John Calvin and John Piper were all once bawling babies with running noses.   Their fathers and mothers were not famous but they were faithful, and God blessed.

Let us not grow weary in well-doing.

The Holy Spirit and allergies.

Be comforted. 
John Bunyan knew from personal experience that by nature we have an allergic reaction to the presence of God.  I love that honesty.  Rightly does Michael Haykin praise the Puritans for their "transparent honesty and in-depth knowledge of the human heart."  Listen to this quote from Bunyan, and don't miss the remedy that God provides for our allergies. 


"May I but speak my own experience, and from that tell you the difficulty of praying to God as I ought; it is enough to make you poor, blind, carnal men, to entertain strange thoughts of me. For, as for my heart, when I go to pray, I find it so loath to go to God, and when it is with him, so loath to stay with him, that many times I am forced in my prayers; first to beg of God that he would take mine heart, and set it on himself in Christ, and when it is there, that he would keep it there (Psalm 86:11). Nay, many times I know not what to pray for, I am so blind, nor how to pray, I am so ignorant; only (blessed be grace) the Spirit helps our infirmities [Rom. 8:26] (cited in p. 116). "   

"I Thank God for Bitter Things"

I thank God for bitter things;
They've been a 'friend to grace';
They've  driven me from paths of ease
To storm the secret place.

I thank Him for the friends who failed
To fill my heart's deep need;
They've driven me to the Savior's feet,
Upon His love to feed.

I'm grateful too, through all life's way
No one could satisfy,
And so I've found in God alone
My rich, my full supply!

by Florence White Willett

A FABULOUS tool for evangelism. You can do it!!

Watch this video and learn how to illustrate and give a solid gospel presentation.
It is exciting!
http://www.wtsbooks.com/content/2_ways_2_live_content_3.php

Dangerous Prayer

"Lord, cut;
Lord, carve;
Lord, wound;
Lord, do anything that
may perfect Thy Father's
image in us and make us
meet for glory."

-Samuel Rutherford

It can't be both ways.

The sage G. K. Chesterton exposes a strange contradiction in our culture.

"People of the progressive sort are perpetually telling us that the hope of the world is in education. Education is everything. Nothing is more important as training the rising generation.
        They tell us this over and over again, with slight variations of the same formula, and never seem to see what it involves. For if there be any word of truth in all this talk about the education of the child, then there is certainly nothing but nonsense in nine-tenths of the talk about the emancipation of the woman. 
If education is the highest function in the State, why should anybody want to be emancipated from the highest function in the State? It is as if we talked of commuting the sentence that condemned a man to be President of the United States; or a reprieve coming in time to save him from being Pope. If education is the largest thing in the world, what is the sense of talking about a woman being liberated from the largest thing in the world? It is as if we were to rescue her from the cruel doom of being a poet like Shakespeare; or to pity the limitations of an all-round artist like Leonardo da Vinci. 
      In short, if education is really the larger matter, then certainly domestic life is the larger matter; and official or commercial life the lesser matter. It is a mere matter of arithmetic that anything taken from the larger matter will leave it less. It is a mere matter of simple subtraction that the mother must have less time for the family if she has more time for the factory.

             Make up your mind whether you want unlimited education or unlimited emancipation, but do not be such a fool as to suppose you can have both at once."