Life's Highest Joy - Fellowship with God

HE who suns and worlds upholdeth
Lends us His upholding hand;
He the ages who unfoldeth
Doth our times and ways command.
God is for us;
In His strength and stay we stand.
THOMAS H. GILL

YOU have trusted Him in a few things, and He has not failed you. Trust Him now for everything, and see if He does not do for you exceeding abundantly above all that you could ever have asked or thought, not according to your power or capacity, but according to His own mighty power, that will work in you all the good pleasure of His most blessed will. You find no difficulty in trusting the Lord with the management of the universe and all the outward creation, and can your case be any more complex or difficult than these, that you need to be anxious or troubled about His management of it?
HANNAH WHITALL SMITH

I WILL trust again His love, His power,
Though I cannot feel His hand to-day;
To His help anew I will betake me,
Though His countenance seems turned away!
Though without one smile, one gracious token,
Through the flames and floods my path must go,
When the fires subside, the waves pass over,
My Deliverer I again shall know.
JOACHIM LANGE

IN the night of distress, feel after somewhat which may quiet and stay thy heart till the next springing of the day. The sun will arise, which will scatter the clouds. And in the day of His power thou wilt find strength to walk with Him; yea, in the day of thy weakness His grace will be sufficient for thee.
ISAAC PENINGTON

My times are in Thy hand, O Lord! And, surely, that is the best. Were I to choose, they should be in no other hands, neither mine own, nor any others. When He withholds mercies or comforts for a season, it is but till the due season. Therefore it is our wisdom and our peace to resign all things into His hands, to have no will nor desires, but only this, that we may still wait for Him. Never was any one who waited for Him miserable with disappointment.
ROBERT LEIGHTON

Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.
2 CORINTHIANS 6:2

DO not let your growth in holiness depend upon surrounding circumstances, but rather constrain those circumstances to minister to your growth. Beware of looking onward, or out of the present in any way, for the sanctification of your life. The only thing you can really control is the present--the actual moment that is passing by. Sanctify that from hour to hour, and you sanctify your whole life; but brood over the past, or project yourself into the future, and you will lose all. The little act of obedience, love, self-restraint, meekness, patience, devotion, offered to you actually, is all you can do now, and if you neglect that to fret about something else at a distance, you lose your real opportunity of serving God. A moment's silence, when some irritating words are said by another, may stem a very small thing; yet at that moment it is your one duty, your one way of serving and pleasing God, and if you break it, you have lost your opportunity.
H. L. SIDNEY LEAR

My meditation of Him shall be sweet; I will be glad in the Lord.
PSALMS 104:34

THE more our ideas about God are multiplied, the more various our thoughts, and images, and recollections of things which have to do with Him, of course the more our minds and hearts are engrossed with Him, and so it becomes easier to live all day in His sensible presence. And is not the practice of the presence of God one half of holiness? And so, weary with work or foiled with disappointment, when the dark night is closing in, bringing with it to our sick spirits a sense of imprisonment, and when the dismal rain curtains us round, and we fret to be at liberty and at large, there is the very freedom of a sovereign to a soul traversing this boundless empire of God and Jesus, angels, saints, men, and the blameless creatures, and rejoicing in that never-ceasing sacrifice of praise which is rising up from every nook and corner of creation to the dear Majesty of our most loving God and Father!
FREDERICK WM. FABER

Delight in the happiness of God.
LORENZO SCUPOLL

As flame streams upward, so my longing thought
Flies up with Thee,
Thou God and Saviour, who hast truly wrought
Life out of death, and to us, loving, brought
A fresh, new world; and in Thy sweet chains caught,
And made us free!
MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN

WHAT a blessed and glorious thing human existence would be, if we fully realized that the infinitely wise and infinitely powerful God loves each one of us, with an intensity infinitely beyond what the most fervid human spirit ever felt towards another, and with a concentration as if He had none else to think of! And this love has brought us into being, just that we might be taught to enter into full sympathy with Him, receiving His,--giving our own--thus entering into the joy of our Lord. This is the hope--the sure and certain hope--set before us,--sure and certain,--for "the mountains shall depart, and the hills be re-moved; but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee."
THOMAS ERSKINE

Source: Joy and Strength
Scripture Reference: Jeremiah 33:6 

Center of the Soul

BUT if distractions manifold prevail,
And if in this we must confess we fail,
Grant us to keep at least a prompt desire,
Continual readiness for prayer and praise,
An altar heaped and waiting to take fire
With the least spark, and leap into a blaze.
RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH

WHEN the set time comes round for prayer, it may be, and often is, the case that the mind is de-pressed, and finds it a hard struggle to raise itself up to communion with God. Your purpose is to hold communion with the Infinite Wisdom and Infinite Love; can you do this, or even attempt this, without coming away from the exercise brighter, calmer, hap-pier, stronger against evil? Make a vigorous effort to throw your whole soul into some very short petition, and the spirit of inertness and heaviness shall be exorcised. But if not, and thy mind be dry to the end, do not disquiet thyself. If only thou makest a sincere effort to draw near to God, all shall be well. He sees that thou hast a will to pray, and accounts the will for the deed.
EDWARD MEYRICK GOULBURN

Pray hardest when it is hardest to pray.
CHARLES H. BRENT

SON of the living God! Oh, call us
Once and again to follow Thee,
And give us strength, whate'er befall us,
Thy true disciples still to be.

And if our coward hearts deny Thee,
In inmost thought, or deed, or word,
Let not our hardness still defy Thee,
But with a look subdue us, Lord.
HENRY A. MARTIN

HALF our difficulty in doing anything worthy of our high calling, is the shrinking anticipation of its possible after-consequences. But if Peter had tarried, and cast up all that was to come, the poverty, and wandering, and solitude, and lonely old age, the out-cast life, and chance of a fearful death, it may be he would have been neither an Apostle nor a Christian.
HENRY EDWARD MANNING

Some men will follow Christ on certain conditions--if He will not lead them through rough roads--if He will not enjoin them any painful tasks--if the sun and wind do not annoy them--if He will remit a part of His plan and order. But the true Christian, who has the spirit of Jesus, will say, as Ruth said to Naomi, "Whither thou goest I will go," whatever difficulties and dangers may be in the way.
RICHARD CECIL