'Yes'

"Discipline is the wholehearted yes to the call of God. When I know myself called, summoned, addressed, taken possession of, known, acted upon, I have heard the Master. I put myself gladly, fully, and forever at His disposal, and to whatever He says my answer is yes."
Discipline: The Glad Surrender Elisabeth Elliot

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving!!! Thanks to our God for His unspeakable gift - Jesus Christ! I'm thankful that I'm saved; that God chose me to be a recipient of His salvation.

Compassion has a price!

“Compassion has a price. It does not come without a cost, the least of which is the pain that pierces our own hearts as we accompany one who is suffering.”
Joyce Rupp, The Cup of Our Lives: A Guide for Spiritual Growth.

Psalm 22

“When Jesus echoed these words on the cross (my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?), total aloneness and full acceptance touched each other. In that moment of complete emptiness, all was fulfilled. In that hour of darkness, new light was seen. While death was witnessed, life was affirmed. Where God’s absence was most loudly expressed, God’s presence was mot profoundly revealed.”
'Spiritual Direction: Wisdom for the Long Walk of Faith' by Henri Nouwen

Amusing Ourselves to Death

"We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn't, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. the roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell's dark vision, there was another--slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think. What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." In 1984,Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave NewWorld, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us. This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right."
'Amusing Ourselves to Death' by Neil Postman

Sins unchallenged

“The sins we avoid addressing from the pulpit are the sins that will thrive unchallenged in our culture. We must develop some backbone and speak the truth in love.”Read more: http://www.charismamag.com/index.php/fire-in-my-bones/29512-is-it-ok-to-be-gay-and-christian#ixzz14tTemCbi

Falling short of Grace

"How many Christians are there yet who, after the profession of faith in Christ, come to a stand-still? So many rest contented with the thought that their sins are pardoned and that they are in the path of life. However, they know nothing of a personal attachment to Christ as their leader or of a faith that lives in the invisible and walks with God."
"With many, this is the consequence of hopelessness that came from failure of their utmost efforts to live as they desired. They struggled in their own strength, they did not know Christ as the secret of strength, and then they lost heart and went back. The profession of faith is not cast away and religious habits are kept up, but there is nothing to show that these men and women have entered or are seeking to enter the Holiest to dwell there. The power of the world, the spirit of its literature, the temptations of business and pleasure - all of these unite to make up a religion in which it is sought to combine a comfortable hope for the future with the least possible amount of sacrifice in the present."
Andrew Murray, 'The Holiest of All,' pg. 39