There are certain books on our shelves... books that are worn, the pages have creases, the binding is coming off... These are books that you are able to read again and again, books that bring encouragement and laughter or maybe they teach and challenge us. They bring life.
One such book for me is Streams in the Desert. I've read it for several years now. I don't read it daily and sometimes it will sit on the shelf for months but then there are those times when it seems to be calling me and I find myself going to pick it up, finding that days reading and it is usually at that point that the words written within begin to speak to me...
Unfortunately, a great number of people play at praying. They do not expect God to give them an answer, so they simply squander their prayer time. Our heavenly Father desires us to transact real business with Him in our praying.
Charles H. Spurgeon
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Their strength is to sit still.
Isaiah 30:7
There is a perfect passivity that is not laziness. It is a living stillness born of trust. Quiet tension is not trust but simply compressed anxiety.
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We must have periods of lonely meditation and fellowship with God. Our souls must have times of fellowship with Him on the mountain and experience valleys of quiet rest in the shadow of a great rock. We must spend some nights beneath the stars, when darkness has covered the things of earth, silenced the noise of human life, and expanded our view, revealing the infinite and the eternal. All these are absolutely essential as food is for our bodies.
In this way alone can the sense of God's presence become the unwavering possession of our souls, enabling us to continually say, as the psalmist once wrote, "You are near, O Lord" (Psalm 119:151) F.B. Myer
The Lord has been using this simple daily devotional to speak to me the last several weeks. prayer... being still... having God near... all things that I need to learn.
What are your favorite books? The books that have changed you... the books that have drawn you closer to Him? I'd love to hear!