We, as women, are such emotional beings. It is so easy to get our focus off of Christ when we don't "feel" close to Him or when we don't "feel" like He loves us.
This devotional from Nancy Leigh DeMoss really encouraged my heart and gave me hope for something that I have recently struggled with.
So be encouraged, child of God!
~
"I'm reading the Bible and praying just like I used to, but for some
reason, I just don't sense God's presence. It seems like I'm talking
to myself. What's going on?"
There are times when God withholds the conscious
sense of His presence--times when God seems far away and less real. I
think that's because He wants us to walk by faith and seek Him with
all our hearts.
Isaiah described it this way: "Who among you fears the Lord and obeys
the word of his servant? Let him who walks in the dark, who has no
light, trust in the name of the Lord and rely on his God."
If you're feel like you're walking in the dark today, let me
encourage you. Trust in the Lord, rely on God and keep going. God is
pleased with faith that's exercised in the darkness."
With Seeking Him, Nancy Leigh DeMoss
Monday, March 7, 2011
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
"It’s not your family that can satisfy you. God is the only one who can satisfy the deepest needs and longings of your heart. But if you want to be a truly fulfilled, happy woman—if God has called you to be a wife and mother—your greatest fulfillment will come through filling the role that God created for you." -Nancy Leigh DeMoss
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Female Piety - John Angell James
"Every woman whether rich or poor, married or single, has a circle of influence within which, according to her character, she is exerting a certain amount of power for good or harm. Every woman, by her virtue or her vice, by her folly or her wisdom, by her levity or her dignity, is adding something to our national elevation or degradation. A community is not likely to be overthrown where woman fulfills her mission, for by the power of her noble heart over the hearts of others, she will raise that community from its ruins and restore it again to prosperity and joy."
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Truly Yours
Remember, ladies: We are His, with hearts and minds completely His. Women who love Him with a passion for His Name. We are His, truly His!
"Lord help us to stand firmly against the tide, not to be moved by the worlds raging waves.
Lord we want to shine throughout this darkened land, bearing the Light, the goodnews that our God saves!"
"Lord help us to stand firmly against the tide, not to be moved by the worlds raging waves.
Lord we want to shine throughout this darkened land, bearing the Light, the goodnews that our God saves!"
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Me, Lord, Single? Part 3
This excellent article by Carolyn McCulley speaks for itself! Please read and be encouraged!
The God Who Knows the End of Your Singleness
by Carolyn McCulley
The 12-year-old boy strode across the conference stage with complete assurance, oozing the precocious seriousness of youth that can strike adults as charmingly amusing. But any patronizing thoughts present were soon squashed as 3,000 adults heard the evangelistic heartbeat of God in the words of the young speaker. After giving his testimony of being adopted from a Romanian orphanage by his American parents and his subsequent adoption into the family of God when he trusted Jesus for his salvation, Gabriel Spiro outlined his hopes for his future.
“Since becoming a Christian, I’ve had the dream to attend the PDI Pastors College,” he said to spontaneous, thunderous applause. “I feel like God has called me to be trained and equipped so that I can go and help the poor people and the orphans that are still living in Romania. My desire is to start a PDI church there in Romania. I thank God that He has brought me to my family and to Covenant Life Church—my extended family. I pray that by His grace I’ll be able to be trained in character in order to fulfill the calling of God.”
Watching from the back row that steamy May evening, I gave silent thanks to God for the plans He has for singles and families alike. Eight years earlier, a single woman from my church had wrestled with God as He called her to overlook her own desires for marriage and children in order to serve a good friend during an international adoption process by traveling with her to Romania. “What would I gain?!” Charlotte Ennis recalls. “I’d have to spend my own money, put myself at personal risk, and watch someone else return with children. I would return with ... nothing.”
Then 36, Charlotte was not certain that God did have marriage and a family in her future. It certainly had been a long wait and her hope was waning. She had no idea that she was facilitating the adoption of a child whose presence would be a blessing to many more than his own family. She had no idea that this little boy would develop a strong passion for the local church before he even hit his teens, and that he would be a regular and fruitful part of his church’s evangelism ministry. She had no idea that one day this little boy would speak to a gathering of churches about their collective mission and be the highlight of the evening. Nor did Charlotte know that on the same evening Gabriel spoke, she would be married—a gift from God to her at age 39—and the mother of several children.
But the One who “makes known the end from the beginning” (Isaiah 46:10) knew all of this, and it was His perfect plan that had been operating all along.
Moments like these are glimpses of the Lord’s sovereignty in action and treasures to be stored up in the hearts of single women especially. Only occasionally do we have the privilege of seeing so clearly how “in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28). We should cherish and retell those evidences of God's grace to encourage and strengthen each other. Our Lord is not a random God: His plan includes blessing us but also making us a blessing to others.
I didn’t know Charlotte when she was single, but I do remember reading her testimony in our ministry magazine, one that was written just weeks prior to her wedding. At the time, I was 32, a fairly new Christian, and to be unflatteringly honest, horrified at the prospect of having to wait until 39 to be married. Now I am 37, a little less arrogant (hopefully), and grateful for Charlotte’s example. Last year in my church, a woman got married for the first time at 43. That pushed Charlotte’s benchmark out of the way and gave me six more years to hope, so to speak.
In my extended season of singleness, I’ve had the time to ponder the risks and rewards of singleness from the perspective of both a rank unbeliever in my twenties and as a chaste Christian in my thirties. As I write this, I have been praying over the demise of two Christian marriages I thought were trophies of God’s grace—both of which were shipwrecked over sexual sin committed by the husbands.
Many years ago, one of the men had asked me out. I had declined the relationship, and he went on to marry someone else while I remained single, but now I grieve for his wife and daughters as they wrestle with the nuclear fallout of a perverse and unlawful form of sexual sin. Though I do not mean to imply that God wasn’t good for allowing this woman to marry my friend, I can certainly see where He spared me the “many troubles in this life” (1 Corinthians 7:28b) in marriage by keeping me single and unencumbered.
Three times so far I’ve been privileged to see why He said no to my prayers asking Him for specific men to be my husband. In each case, it wasn’t too many years later that I discovered I had been spared inheriting some serious sexual sin. That is one of the benefits of being an older single— I’ve lived long enough to see what unconfessed and unrepentant sin does to wreck the dream of living “happily ever after.” Those sad moments make me appreciate the pleasant places where my boundary lines have fallen (Psalm 16:6).
Why is knowing God and embracing His sovereignty so important when we’re single? We have to keep in mind that we’ve received this gift of singleness from the pierced hand of the One who bore all of our sins—from unbelief as singles to selfishness as marrieds. We can be like Peter who initially rebuked Jesus for His humiliating, yet glorious, plan of redemption, or we can be like Mary, who came to accept His plan and purposes and demonstrated it in the costly outpouring of perfume in anticipation of His burial. Confident of the Lord’s good plan for our lives, we can emulate Mary and spend our treasures (youth, dreams, desires) to further His purposes on this earth.
More importantly, when we are almost faint under the strain and worry of wondering if singleness is to be forever, we need to be reminded that there is an end to singleness: One day we will be at the wedding feast of the Lamb and we will be His bride. Even if we receive the gift of marriage on this side of heaven, that’s not our ultimate goal. It is a shadow and a type of what is planned for eternity and, like all things on this earth, it will have its conclusion in death.
Our Father knows the time when earthly gifts will be distributed and when they will be no more; He knows, as well, when the heavenly wedding feast will commence. We can blissfully rest in the knowledge that the future is better than anything we think we’ve missed now: Jesus is preparing us for the eternal rewards and eternal joys of a future He’s told us is too inexpressible for us to understand.
For His purposes, and within His covenant to always do us good (Jeremiah 33:40), He has declared for us that being single now and into the foreseeable future is His very best. He desires that we overflow with hope as we trust in Him (Romans 15:13) and His sovereignty in this season—redefining hope from hoping in a particular gift from God to trusting the God of hope unreservedly.
© Revive Our Hearts. Used with permission from the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood.
The God Who Knows the End of Your Singleness
by Carolyn McCulley
The 12-year-old boy strode across the conference stage with complete assurance, oozing the precocious seriousness of youth that can strike adults as charmingly amusing. But any patronizing thoughts present were soon squashed as 3,000 adults heard the evangelistic heartbeat of God in the words of the young speaker. After giving his testimony of being adopted from a Romanian orphanage by his American parents and his subsequent adoption into the family of God when he trusted Jesus for his salvation, Gabriel Spiro outlined his hopes for his future.
“Since becoming a Christian, I’ve had the dream to attend the PDI Pastors College,” he said to spontaneous, thunderous applause. “I feel like God has called me to be trained and equipped so that I can go and help the poor people and the orphans that are still living in Romania. My desire is to start a PDI church there in Romania. I thank God that He has brought me to my family and to Covenant Life Church—my extended family. I pray that by His grace I’ll be able to be trained in character in order to fulfill the calling of God.”
Watching from the back row that steamy May evening, I gave silent thanks to God for the plans He has for singles and families alike. Eight years earlier, a single woman from my church had wrestled with God as He called her to overlook her own desires for marriage and children in order to serve a good friend during an international adoption process by traveling with her to Romania. “What would I gain?!” Charlotte Ennis recalls. “I’d have to spend my own money, put myself at personal risk, and watch someone else return with children. I would return with ... nothing.”
Then 36, Charlotte was not certain that God did have marriage and a family in her future. It certainly had been a long wait and her hope was waning. She had no idea that she was facilitating the adoption of a child whose presence would be a blessing to many more than his own family. She had no idea that this little boy would develop a strong passion for the local church before he even hit his teens, and that he would be a regular and fruitful part of his church’s evangelism ministry. She had no idea that one day this little boy would speak to a gathering of churches about their collective mission and be the highlight of the evening. Nor did Charlotte know that on the same evening Gabriel spoke, she would be married—a gift from God to her at age 39—and the mother of several children.
But the One who “makes known the end from the beginning” (Isaiah 46:10) knew all of this, and it was His perfect plan that had been operating all along.
Moments like these are glimpses of the Lord’s sovereignty in action and treasures to be stored up in the hearts of single women especially. Only occasionally do we have the privilege of seeing so clearly how “in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28). We should cherish and retell those evidences of God's grace to encourage and strengthen each other. Our Lord is not a random God: His plan includes blessing us but also making us a blessing to others.
I didn’t know Charlotte when she was single, but I do remember reading her testimony in our ministry magazine, one that was written just weeks prior to her wedding. At the time, I was 32, a fairly new Christian, and to be unflatteringly honest, horrified at the prospect of having to wait until 39 to be married. Now I am 37, a little less arrogant (hopefully), and grateful for Charlotte’s example. Last year in my church, a woman got married for the first time at 43. That pushed Charlotte’s benchmark out of the way and gave me six more years to hope, so to speak.
In my extended season of singleness, I’ve had the time to ponder the risks and rewards of singleness from the perspective of both a rank unbeliever in my twenties and as a chaste Christian in my thirties. As I write this, I have been praying over the demise of two Christian marriages I thought were trophies of God’s grace—both of which were shipwrecked over sexual sin committed by the husbands.
Many years ago, one of the men had asked me out. I had declined the relationship, and he went on to marry someone else while I remained single, but now I grieve for his wife and daughters as they wrestle with the nuclear fallout of a perverse and unlawful form of sexual sin. Though I do not mean to imply that God wasn’t good for allowing this woman to marry my friend, I can certainly see where He spared me the “many troubles in this life” (1 Corinthians 7:28b) in marriage by keeping me single and unencumbered.
Three times so far I’ve been privileged to see why He said no to my prayers asking Him for specific men to be my husband. In each case, it wasn’t too many years later that I discovered I had been spared inheriting some serious sexual sin. That is one of the benefits of being an older single— I’ve lived long enough to see what unconfessed and unrepentant sin does to wreck the dream of living “happily ever after.” Those sad moments make me appreciate the pleasant places where my boundary lines have fallen (Psalm 16:6).
Why is knowing God and embracing His sovereignty so important when we’re single? We have to keep in mind that we’ve received this gift of singleness from the pierced hand of the One who bore all of our sins—from unbelief as singles to selfishness as marrieds. We can be like Peter who initially rebuked Jesus for His humiliating, yet glorious, plan of redemption, or we can be like Mary, who came to accept His plan and purposes and demonstrated it in the costly outpouring of perfume in anticipation of His burial. Confident of the Lord’s good plan for our lives, we can emulate Mary and spend our treasures (youth, dreams, desires) to further His purposes on this earth.
More importantly, when we are almost faint under the strain and worry of wondering if singleness is to be forever, we need to be reminded that there is an end to singleness: One day we will be at the wedding feast of the Lamb and we will be His bride. Even if we receive the gift of marriage on this side of heaven, that’s not our ultimate goal. It is a shadow and a type of what is planned for eternity and, like all things on this earth, it will have its conclusion in death.
Our Father knows the time when earthly gifts will be distributed and when they will be no more; He knows, as well, when the heavenly wedding feast will commence. We can blissfully rest in the knowledge that the future is better than anything we think we’ve missed now: Jesus is preparing us for the eternal rewards and eternal joys of a future He’s told us is too inexpressible for us to understand.
For His purposes, and within His covenant to always do us good (Jeremiah 33:40), He has declared for us that being single now and into the foreseeable future is His very best. He desires that we overflow with hope as we trust in Him (Romans 15:13) and His sovereignty in this season—redefining hope from hoping in a particular gift from God to trusting the God of hope unreservedly.
© Revive Our Hearts. Used with permission from the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Me, Lord, Single? Part Two
Rose From Brier ~ By Amy Carmichael
Thou hast not that, My child, but thou hast Me,
And am not I alone enough for thee?
I know it all, know how thy heart was set
Upon this joy which is not given yet.
And well I know how through the wistful days
Thou walkest all the dear familiar ways,
As unregarded as a breath of air,
But there in love and longing, always there!
I know it all; but from thy brier shall blow
A rose for others. If it were not so
I would have told thee. Come then, say to Me:
My Lord, my Love, I am content with Thee.
Thou hast not that, My child, but thou hast Me,
And am not I alone enough for thee?
I know it all, know how thy heart was set
Upon this joy which is not given yet.
And well I know how through the wistful days
Thou walkest all the dear familiar ways,
As unregarded as a breath of air,
But there in love and longing, always there!
I know it all; but from thy brier shall blow
A rose for others. If it were not so
I would have told thee. Come then, say to Me:
My Lord, my Love, I am content with Thee.
My Lord, my Love, I am content with Thee.
Am I? Am I content with the Lord? Is He alone enough to satisfy me and the desires of my heart? Psalm 73:25-26 is such a beautiful picture of this: "Whom have I in heaven but You? And besides You, I desire nothing on earth. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever." Nothing on this earth can satisfy me like Christ does. I must say with Habakkuk, verses 17-19,
"Though the fig tree should not blossom
And there be no fruit on the vines,
Though the yield of the olive should fail
And the fields produce no food,
Though the flock should be cut off from the fold
And there be no cattle in the stalls,
Yet I will exult in the Lord,
I will rejoice in the God of my salvation.
The Lord God is my strength,
And He has made my feet like hinds' feet,
And makes me walk on my high places."
I have a decision to make. I will either choose to be discontent and ungrateful for the season of life God has me in, OR I will choose to "rejoice in the God of my salvation" and "exult in the Lord." What will you choose?
6 O'Clock Club!
Here is a verse to encourage you if you are waking up early to meet with the Lord:
"In the early morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house, and went away to a secluded place, and was praying there." - Mark 1:35
"In the early morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house, and went away to a secluded place, and was praying there." - Mark 1:35
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