Thou art all fair, my love.

I won’t let my oil burn out...

God, peel back the layers of my heart

I want communion

I want fellowship

I want to be with You

Where you are

I want to be with You

I want to be with You

“Have mercy upon us, O Lord, have mercy upon us; for we are exceedingly filled with contempt.” –Psalm 123:3

The thing of which we have to beware is not so much damage to our belief in God as damage to our Christian temper. The temper of mind is tremendous in its effects, it is the enemy that penetrates right into the soul and distracts the mind from God. There are certain tempers of mind in which we never dare indulge; if we do, we find they have distracted us from faith in God, and until we get back to the quiet mood before God, our faith in Him is nil, and our confidence in the flesh and human ingenuity is the thing that rules.

Beware of “the cares of this world,” because they are the things that produce a wrong temper of soul. It is extraordinary what an enormous power there is in simple things to distract our attention from God. Refuse to be swamped with the cares of this life.

Another thing that distracts us is the lust for vindication. St. Augustine prayed– “O Lord, deliver me from this lust of always vindicating myself,” That temper of mind destroys the soul’s faith in God. “I must explain myself; I must get people to understand.” Our God never explained anything; He left mistakes to correct themselves.

When we discern that people are not going on spiritually and allow the discernment to turn into criticism, we block our way to God. God never gives us discernment in order that we may criticize, but that we may intercede.

–Oswald Chambers, “My Utmost for His Highest”

But I hope we will then read it a second time with a desire to hear and search for what is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, praiseworthy... and think about such things. Even if we don’t agree with their views and opinions, I hope we still choose to think about such things.

People truly living for God make others uncomfortable because their lives disquiet the comfortable conscience of others.

We often expect growth to look like we’re moving from strength to strength.

However, growth often doesn’t work that way. It often doesn’t look like growth at all.

It can look like breaking and pruning and running into walls. It can look like a dark night. It can look like we’ve taken ten steps back.

Growth can feel like the ugly can’t be hidden. It may feel like it’s spilling over and won’t fit back into its box.

But that’s because it’s being brought into the light. Glorious, refining light.

Bring it all into the light.

“Thou hast enlarged me when I was in distress.” (Ps. 4:1)

This is one of the grandest testimonies ever given by man to the moral government of God. It is not a man’s thanksgiving that he has been set free from suffering. It is a thanksgiving that he has been set free through suffering: “Thou hast enlarged me when I was in distress.” He declares the sorrows of life to have been themselves the source of life’s enlargement.

And have not you and I a thousand times felt this to be true? It is written of Joseph in the dungeon that “the iron entered his soul.” We all feel that what Joseph needed for his soul was just the iron. He had seen only the glitter of gold. He had been rejoicing in youthful dreams; and dreaming hardens the heart. He who sheds tears over a romance will not be most apt to help reality; real sorrow will be too unpoetic for him. We need the iron to enlarge our nature. The gold is but a vision; the iron is an experience. The chain which unites me to humanity must be an iron chain. That touch of nature which makes the world akin is not joy, but sorrow; gold is partial, but iron is universal.

My soul, if thou wouldst be enlarged into human sympathy, thou must be narrowed into limits of human suffering. Joseph’s dungeon is the road to Joseph’s throne. Thou canst not lift the iron load of thy brother if the iron hath not entered thee. It is thy limit that is thine enlargement. It is the shadows of thy life that are the real fulfillment of thy dreams of glory. Murmur not at the shadows; they are better revelations than thy dreams. Say not that the shades of the prison-house have fettered thee; thy fetters are wings–wings of flight into the bosom of humanity. The door of thy prison-house is a door into the heart of the universe. God has enlarged thee by the binding of sorrow’s chain.