In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in
Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evil men and
impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and
being deceived.
But as for you, continue
in what you have learned and have become convinced of,
because you know those from whom you learned it, and
how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures,
which are able to make you wise for salvation through
faith in Christ Jesus.
2 Timothy 3:12-15
When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable,
and the mortal with immortality,
then the saying that is written will come true:
“Death has been swallowed up in victory.”
“Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is
your sting?”
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is
the law.
But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through
our Lord Jesus Christ.
Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm.
Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves
fully to the work of the Lord,
because you know that your labor in the Lord
is not in vain.
1 Corinthians 15:54-58
As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?
Psalm 42:1,2
Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.
Psalm 116:15
“A harp stood in the moveless air,
Where showers of sunshine washed a thousand fragrant blooms;
A traveler bowed with loads of care
Essayed from the morning till the dusk of evening glooms
To thrum sweet sounds from the songless strings;
The pilgrim strives in vain with each unanswering chord,
Until the tempest’s thunder sings,
And, moving on the storm, the fingers of the Lord
A wondrous melody awakes;
And though the battling winds their soldier deeds perform,
Their trumpet-sound brave music makes
While God’s assuring voice sings love across the storm.”
anonymous
Merely to mark time in missionary work during the war is a fatal blunder.
We must go forward. Let the call of Christ be heard and heeded through
the din of the world’s conflict, and let the Church rise to a worthy
endeavor to accomplish speedily the work entrusted to her.
Rowland Bingham (1872-1942)
We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers,
about the hardships we suffered in the province
of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond
our ability to endure,so that we despaired even
of life. Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence
of death. But this happened that we might not rely on
ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.
2 Corinthians 1:8,9
The pressure of hard places makes us value life. Every time our life
is given back to us from such a trial, it is like a new beginning,
and we learn better how much it is worth, and make more of it for God
and man. The pressure helps us to understand the trials of others, and
fits us to help and sympathize with them…
Trials and hard places are needed to press us forward, even as the furnace
fires in the hold of that mighty ship give force that moves the piston,drives
the engine, and propels that great vessel across the sea in the face of
the winds and waves.
-A.B. Simpson (1843-1919)
“Out of the presses of pain,
Cometh the soul’s best wine;
And the eyes that
have shed no rain,
Can shed but little shine.”
Streams in the Desert Volume One – May 18
by Mrs. Charles E. Cowman
It is nor for us who are passengers, to meddle with the chart
and with the compass.
Let that all- skilled Pilot alone with
His own work. – Hall
“Some things cannot be done in a day. God does not make a
sunset glory in a moment, but for days may be massing the
mist out of which He builds His palaces beautiful in the west.”
Selected
Some glorious morn–but when? Ah, who shall say?
The steepest mountain will become a plain, And the parched
land be satisfied with rain. The gates of brass all broken;
iron bars, Transfigured, form a ladder to the stars.
Rough places plain, and crooked ways all straight, For him
who with a patient heart can wait. These things shall be on
God’s appointed day: It may not be tomorrow–yet it may.
Streams in the Desert Volume 1 May 24th
by
Mrs. Charles E. Cowman
and it is not the rock which ebbs and flows but your sea.
