Joy And Strength

[nChrist]

Title: Conformed for a Purpose
Book: Joy and Strength
Author: Mary Wilder Tileston

A vessel unto honor, sanctified, and meet for the Master's use, and prepared unto every good work.
2 TIMOTHY 2:21

I AM an instrument for His use; perhaps to bear burdens, as of pain, sorrow, or shame; perhaps to convey messages, writing, speaking, conversing; perhaps simply to reflect light, showing His mind in the commonest of all daily rounds. In only one way can I truly do anything of these; in the way of inner harmony with Him, and peace and joy in Him.
HANDLEY C. G. MOULE

MOULD us, great God, into forms of beauty and usefulness by the wheel of Providence and by the touch of Thy hand. Fulfil Thine ideal, and conform us to the image of Thy Son. In Thy great house may we stand as vessels meet for Thy use. We are little better than common earthenware, but may we be cleansed, and purified, and filled with Thy heavenly treasure. Dip us deep into the River of Life, and give refreshment by us to many parched and weary hearts.
F. B. MEYER

The soul which gives itself wholly and without reserve to God, is filled with His own peace; and the closer we draw to our God so much the stronger and more steadfast and tranquil shall we become.
JEAN NICOLAS GROU

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[nChrist]

Title: Common Faithfulness
Book: Joy and Strength
Author: Mary Wilder Tileston

He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much; and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much.
LUKE 16:10

Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.
MATTHEW 5:48

PERFECTION in outward conduct consists not in extraordinary things; but in doing common things extraordinarily well. Neglect nothing; the most trivial action may be performed to ourselves, or performed to God. If love be in your heart, your whole life may be one continual exercise of it. Oh, if we did but love others! How easily the least thing, the shutting of a door gently, the walking softly, speaking low, not making a noise, or the choice of a seat, so as to leave the most convenient to others, might become occasions of its exercise.
MÈRE ANGÉLIQUE ARNAULD

HE is wont to carry on His hidden dealings with the soul by means of what we should call very little things. He requires an absolute purity of heart in those with whom He vouchsafes to dwell, and a spirit of self-sacrifice which is ever ready to offer all things, however seemingly small, to Him.
ABBÉ GUILLORÉ

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[nChrist]

Title: A Debt to All
Book: Joy and Strength
Author: Mary Wilder Tileston

Thou owest to me even thine own self.

PHILEMON, 19

ACCORDING to Christ's teaching, the priest and Levite did not pay their debt to their Samaritan neighbor, because they thought him a stranger with no claim on them. Dives ignored his rich man's debt to Lazarus. We can all think of manifold debts-to the lonely whom we might visit, the misunderstood whom we might sympathize with, the ignorant whom we might teach. Is it not bewildering even to attempt to realize our debts? And yet, let a man make a beginning, and all will be well. Let him steadily set himself to behave towards those whom he employs, or those who employ him, towards railway porters and shop assistants and others who minister to his convenience, as being men and women with the same right to courteous treatment, and to a real opportunity to make the best of themselves, as he has himself; let him thus realize his debts to his nearest "neighbors," and the whole idea of humanity, of brotherhood, will be deepened and made real to him. He will get a habit of considerateness and thoughtfulness for others, as belonging to Christ, which will express itself habitually towards all, and especially the weak.
CHARLES GORE

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[nChrist]

Title: The Life that Jesus Led
Book: Joy and Strength
Author: Mary Wilder Tileston

Let all those that put their trust in Thee rejoice; let them also that love Thy name be joyful in Thee.
PSALMS 6:11

That they might have My joy fulfilled in themselves.
JOHN 17:13

GOD desires us to live as close as we can to the life that Jesus Christ lived. That is the broad avenue to perfect happiness. Most of us know by experience that in proportion as we have followed Him, we have found happiness. And we know by still larger experience that as we turn away from Him the world gets dark, and life ceases to be worth living.
GEORGE HODGES

EACH soul has its own faculty; it can help in some way to make the world more cheerful and more beautiful. This it is which makes life worth living. If we are living only for ourselves, our own amusement, luxury, advancement, life is not worth living. But if we are living as co-workers with Christ, as fellow-helpers with God, as part of the noble army of martyrs who bear witness to the truth in all time, then our lives are full of interest. This gives sweetness and strength to all our days.
JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE

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[nChrist]

Author: Mary Wilder Tileston
Source: Joy and Strength
Scripture Reference Psalm 73:28

Short Time for God

It is good for me to draw near to God.
PSALMS 73:28

AND the sea of care grows still
In the shining of Thy smile;
And Thy love's all-quickening ray
Chases night and pain away,
That my heart grows light the while.
WOLFGANG CHRISTOPH DESSLER

IF we believe that God is always at hand, always ready to hear, surely we should take delight in telling Him all our little cares, and woes, and hopes, as they flit by.
H. L. SEDNEY LEAR

If you have not much time at your disposal, do not fail to profit by the smallest portions of time which remain to you. We do not need much time in order to love God, to renew ourselves in His Presence, to lift up our hearts towards Him, to worship Him in the depths of our hearts, to offer Him what we do and what we suffer.
FRANCOIS DE LA MOTHE FÉNELON

There is always time to look up to Him for His smile.
F. B. MEYER

These frequent looks of the heart exceedingly sweeten and sanctify our other employments, and diffuse somewhat of heaven through all our actions.
ROBERT LEIGHTON

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[nChrist]

Author: Mary Wilder Tileston
Source: Joy and Strength
Scripture Reference Romans 8:26 Daniel 9:19

He Will Hear

We know not what we should pray for as we ought.

ROMANS 8:26 O Lord, hear; O Lord, forgive; O Lord, hearken and do.

DANIEL 9:19

GRANT us not the ill
We blindly ask; in very love refuse
Whate'er Thou know'st our weakness would abuse.
JOHN KEBLE

WE know not precisely what is best for us. We know not what will make us truly happy. We know not what will help us best in our struggle against temptations. And if we were to try to make a distinction between our mere passing wishes and that which our souls really needed, we should utterly fail. But we need not try. Let us take all our wishes, all our longings, all the promptings of our consciences, to the feet of our Father. He will hear and He will do. He will hear all we say. He will know what parts of our prayer are best for us to have, and what are not. And He will give us what His fatherly love will choose. And therefore to all our prayers we will add, "Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven."
FREDERICK TEMPLE

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[nChrist]

Author: Mary Wilder Tileston
Source: Joy and Strength
Scripture Reference Psalm 142:3

All At Once

When my spirit was overwhelmed within me, then Thou knewest my path.

PSALMS 142:3

THE work which we count so hard to do,
He makes it easy, for He works too;
The days that are long to live are His,--
A bit of His bright eternities;
And close to our need His helping is.

SUSAN COOLIDGE

DO not yield to the temptation of looking at everything at once, as if everything would happen at once, and all the events of the day be crowded into an hour. Do not thus forecast, but take each thing as it comes to you, and look upon it as the present expression of the will of God concerning you; then regard the next in the same way, and thus receive your day piece by piece from Him who will remember always when He gives you work to do, that you need strength to do it.

Often, when you have almost fainted in spirit, the thought comes, "If thou hast run with the footmen, and they have wearied thee, what shalt thou do with the horsemen?" Put it from you, it is a faithless thought; if you need more strength, you will have it, be sure of that; or the call to greater exertion may never come to you. Your business is with the present; leave the future in His hands who will be sure to do the best, the very best for you.
PRISCILLA MAURICE

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[nChrist]

Author: Mary Wilder Tileston
Source: Joy and Strength
Scripture Reference Psalm 23:1-4 Psalm 100:3 Deuteronomy 32:4

Our Role and God's Role

He is the Rock, His work is perfect; for all His ways are judgment; a God of truth, and without iniquity, just and right is He.
DEUTERONOMY 32:4

We are His people, and the sheep of His pasture.
PSALMS 100:3

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me.
PSALMS 23:1, 4

DUTIES are ours, events are the Lord's; when our faith goeth to meddle with events, and to hold a court (if I may so speak) upon God's Providence, and beginneth to say, "How wilt Thou do this or that?" we lose ground; we have nothing to do there; it is our part to let the Almighty exercise His own office, and steer His own helm; there is nothing left us, but to see how we may be approved of Him, and how we may roll the weight of our weak souls, in well-doing, upon Him who is God omnipotent, and when what we thus essay miscarrieth, it shall neither be our sin nor cross.
SAMUEL RUTHERFORD

SHALL there be a mutiny among the flocks and herds, because their lord or their shepherd chooses their pastures, and suffers them not to wander into deserts and unknown ways?
JEREMY TAYLOR

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[nChrist]

Author: Mary Wilder Tileston
Source: Joy and Strength
Scripture Reference 1 John 3:5

Choosing Sin

And ye know that He was manifested to take away our sins; and in Him is no sin.
1 JOHN 3:5

TO choose sin is to reject Christ; to be ashamed, for fear of man, to do what Christ commands, is to deny Christ; to do, for fear of man, what Christ forbids, what is it but, with Pilate, to condemn Christ? for a Christian to be guilty of wilful deadly sin, what is it, but to crucify Christ afresh, and put Him to an open shame? Do what ye know to be pleasing to God, and avoid, by the grace of God, what ye know will displease Him, and God will enliven your penitence, and enlarge your faith, and brighten your hopes, and kindle your love. Only be very diligent, not knowingly to do anything which displeases God; be very diligent not to tamper with your conscience and do what you suspect may displease God.
EDWARD B. PUSEY

WE can never cling to a besetting sin with one hand, and grasp Jesus Christ with the other. Until thou art content to reckon thyself dead indeed to every known form of sin, whether thou thinkest it small or great, thou never canst follow Jesus.
WM. HAY M. H. AITKEN

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[nChrist]

Author: Mary Wilder Tileston
Source: Joy and Strength
Scripture Reference Joshua 24:15

Barabbas or Jesus?

Choose you this day whom ye will serve.
JOSHUA 24:15

BARABBAS and Jesus cannot both live within us. One must die. Yes, every emotion of selfishness or worldliness in every soul plays the part of Barabbas. Good influences may have prevailed for a time, and they, or perhaps motives of worldly regard, may have put Barabbas in prison, and under some restraint; but the decisive, the fatal question, remains, Shall he die? Yes, he or Jesus. Nor is it only on great occasions and in fearful crises that this question comes to us. Every hour, every moment, when we resist what we must know to be the influence of our Lord, and, casting that aside, give the victory, under whatever pretence or name, to that which is indeed our own Barabbas, we then do all that we are able to do to crucify our Lord afresh. Every emotion which tempts us to refuse obedience to Him, "to make insurrection," to suppress and overcome whatever sense of right conscience gives-is not that the robber, rebel, murderer, Barabbas? We may have, indeed, imprisoned him, we may have resolved that he should die--shall we now release him from restraint, and let him go free? If we do, we know now what must happen--we know between what alternatives we choose.
THEOPHILUS PARSONS

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[nChrist]

Author: Mary Wilder Tileston
Source: Joy and Strength
Scripture Reference Psalm 89:16

Choosing Happiness

In Thy name shall they rejoice all the day.
PSALMS 89:16

Now first to souls who thus awake
Seems earth a fatherland:
A new and endless life they take
With rapture from His hand.
The fears of death and of the grave
Are whelmed beneath the sea,
And every heart, now light and brave,
May face the things to be.
FRIEDRICH VON HARDENBERG

HAPPINESS, let us understand this well, is as truly our portion here as above; it cannot fail to fall within the lot of those who have chosen for their portion Him whose nature is one with infinite, unalienable Joy. God, in communicating Himself to the soul, of necessity communicates happiness; and all souls in union with Him have returned to their central rest, and are happy, in exact proportion to the closeness and fulness of their union,--happy, in other words, by so much as they have within them of God.
DORA GREENWELL

HAPPINESS, Heaven itself, is nothing else but a perfect conformity, a cheerful and eternal compliance of all the powers of the soul with the Will of God.
SAMUEL SHAW, 1669

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[nChrist]

Author: Mary Wilder Tileston
Source: Joy and Strength
Scripture Reference Revelation 1:18

Fear Not!

Fear not; I am the first and the last, and the Living One; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive for evermore, and I have the keys of death and of Hades.

REVELATION 1:18 (R. V.)

LET all things seen and unseen,
Their notes of gladness blend,
For Christ the Lord is risen,
Our Joy that hath no end.

ST. JOHN OF DAMASCUS A.D. 760

"THE time of the singing of birds is come,"--the time when nature calls aloud to us and bids us awaken out of the deadness of personal grief, and rejoice in the new manifestation of His beauty that God is making to the world. "Behold, I am alive for evermore, and the dead live to Me." Was not this the secret saying which the new verdure was writing all over the hills, and which the young pattering leaves and singing-birds were repeating in music? It must be well to have ears to hear and a heart that could respond with a little flutter of returning joy and thankfulness.
ANNIE KEARY

THE return of Easter should be to the Christian life the call of a trumpet. It is the news of a great victory. It is the solution of a great perplexity. It is the assurance of a great triumph.
FREDERICK TEMPLE

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[nChrist]

Author: Mary Wilder Tileston
Source: Joy and Strength
Scripture Reference Romans 8:9

The Spirit of Christ

Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His.

ROMANS 8:9

WHAT profits it that He is risen,
If dead in sins thou yet dost lie?
If yet thou cleavest to thy prison,
What profit that He dwells on high?
His triumph will avail thee nought,
If thou hast ne'er the battle fought.

LYRA GERMANICA

MANY, who often hear the gospel of Christ, are yet but little affected, because they are void of the Spirit of Christ.

But whosoever would fully and feelingly understand the words of Christ, must endeavor to make all his life like in its beauty unto His.

What will it avail thee to dispute profoundly of the Trinity, if thou be void of humility, and art thereby displeasing to the Trinity?

Surely, high words do not make a man holy and just; but a virtuous life maketh him dear to God.

I had rather feel compunction, than understand the definition thereof.

If thou didst know the whole Bible by heart, and the sayings of all the philosophers, what would all that profit thee without the love of God and without grace?
THOMAS À. KEMPIS

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[nChrist]

Author: Mary Wilder Tileston
Source: Joy and Strength
Scripture Reference 1 Corinthians 10:31

Do All

Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.

1 CORINTHIANS 10:31

THY glory alone, 0 God, be the end of all that I say;
Let it shine in every deed, let it kindle the prayers that I pray;
Let it burn in my innermost soul, till the shadow of self pass away,
And the light of Thy glory, 0 God, be unveiled in the dawning of day.

FREDERICK GEORGE SCOTT

IT excepts nothing, "do all"; it instances only the very least things, what our Lord includes under "daily bread," that so we may stop at nothing short of all, but our whole being, doing, thinking, willing, longing, having, loving, may be wrapt up, gathered, concentrated, in the One Will and Good Pleasure of our God. Does any again ask, How can such little things be done to the glory of God? Do them as thou wouldest do them if thou sawest Christ by thee.
E. B. PUSEY

THE time of labor does not with me differ from the time of prayer; and, in the noise and confusion of the kitchen where I am at work, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament.
BROTHER LAWRENCE

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[nChrist]

Author: Mary Wilder Tileston
Source: Joy and Strength
Scripture Reference 1 John 3:2 John 12:32

Draws All Men

And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me.
JOHN 12:32

We know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is.
1 JOHN 3:2

FOR if Christ be born within,
Which the soul had lost through sin,
God's own image fair and clear,
And the soul serene and bright
Mirror back His heavenly light.
LAURENTIUS LAURENTI 1700

LORD, never was a magnet so powerful to draw to itself the hard steel, as Thou, the Lord, lifted up on the cross, art powerful to draw unto Thee the hearts of men. 0 beloved Lord, draw me through joy and sorrow, from all that is in the world to Thee and to Thy cross; form me, and shape me into Thine image here below, that I may enjoy Thee eternally in the glory whither Thou art gone.
HENRY SUSO

THINK who Christ is, and what Christ is,--and then think what His personal influence must be--quite infinite, boundless, miraculous. So that the very blessedness of heaven will not be merely the sight of our Lord; it will be the being made holy, and kept holy, by that sight.
CHARLES KINGSLEY

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