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zealousmom
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Name: Rhonda
Birthday: 7/28/1956
Gender: Female
Interests: Jesus, the Word, my kids, my grandbabies, the world and music
Expertise: repenting
Occupation: teaching
Industry: hospitality
Message: message me
Member Since:
4/4/2005
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| Streams in the Desert
December 8th
Put on..........as the elect of God.........kindness.
Colossians 3:12
There is a story of an old man who carried a little can of oil with him everywhere he went, and if he passed through a door that squeaked, he poured a little oil on the hinges. If a gate was hard to open, he oiled the latch. And thus he passed through life lubricating all hard places and making it easier for those who came after him.
People called him eccentric, queer, and cranky; but the old man went steadily on refilling his can of oil when it became empty, and oiled the hard places he found.
There are many lives that creak and grate harshly as they live day by day. Nothing goes right with them. They need lubricating with the oil of gladness, gentleness, or thoughtfulness. Have you your own can of oil with you? Be ready with your oil of helpfulness in the early morning to the one nearest you. It may lubricate the whole day for him. The oil of good cheer to the downhearted one--Oh, how much it may mean! The word of courage to the despairing. Speak it.
Our lives touch others but once, perhaps, on the road of life; and then, mayhap, our ways diverge, never to meet again. The oil of kindness has worn the sharp, hard edges off of many a sin-hardened life and left it soft and pliable and ready for the redeeming grace of the Savior.
A word spoken pleasantly is a large spot of sunshine on a sad heart. Therefore, "Give others the sunshine; tell Jesus the rest."
"Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love." Romans 12:10
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| Streams in the Desert
November 23rd
I have always been glad that the psalmist said to God that some things were hard.
There is no mistake about it; there are hard things in life.
Some beautiful pink flowers were given to me this summer, and as I took them I said,
"What are they?" And the answer came, "They are rock flowers;
they grow and bloom only on rocks, where you can see no soil."
Then I thought of God's flowers growing in hard places; and I feel, somehow,
that He may have a peculiar tenderness for His "rock flowers"
that He may not have for His lilies and roses.
The tests of life are to make, not break us.
Trouble may demolish a man's business but build up his character.
The blow to the outward man may be the greatest blessing to the inner man.
If God, then, puts or permits anything hard in our lives,
be sure that the real peril, the real trouble,
is what we shall lose if we flinch or rebel.
God gets His best soldiers out of the highlands of affliction.
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| Strength will rise as we wait upon the Lord
We will wait upon the Lord
We will wait upon the Lord
Our God, You reign forever
Our hope, our Strong Deliverer
You are the everlasting God
The everlasting God
You do not faint
You won't grow weary
You're the defender of the weak
You comfort those in need
You lift us up on wings like eagles
by Chris Tomlin
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| Streams in the Desert
October 5th
The education of our faith is incomplete if we have not learned that there is a providence of loss, a ministry of failing and of fading things, a gift of emptiness. The material insecurities of life make for its spiritual establishment. The dwindling stream by which Elijah sat and mused is a true picture of the life of each of us. "It came to pass.......that the brook dried up"--- that is a history of our yesterdays and a prophecy of our morrows.
In some way or other we will have to learn the difference between trusting in the gift and trusting in the Giver. The gift may be good for a while, but the Giver is the eternal love.
Cherith was a difficult problem to Elijah until he got to Zarephath, and then it was all as clear as daylight. God's hard words are never His last words. The woe and the waste and the tears of life belong to the interlude and not to the finale.
Had Elijah been led straight to Zarephath he would have missed something that helped to make him a wiser prophet and a better man. He lived by faith at Cherith. And whensoever in your life and mine some spring of earthly and outward resource has dried up, it has been that we might learn that our hope and our help are in God who made heaven and earth.
F. B. Meyer
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| Excerpts from "The World as I Remember It"
by Rich Mullins
God calls us to be strong and we mistake that for a call to omnipotence. We confuse strength to endure trials with an ability to walk unfrustrated thru life. We convince ourselves that if we were strong we would never fail, never tire, never hurt, never need. We begin to measure strength in terms of ease of progress, equate power with success, endurability with invincibility, and inevitably, when our illlusion of omnipotence is shattered, we condemn ourselves for being weak.
God has called us to be lovers and we frequently think that He meant us to be saviors. So we "love" as long as we see "results". We give of ourselves as long as our investments pay off, but if the ones we love do not respond, we tend to despair and blame ourselves and even resent those we pretend to love. Because we love someone, we want them to be free of addictions, of sin, and of self---and that is as it should be. But it might be that our love for them and our desire for their well-being will not make them well. And,if that is the case, their lack of response no more negates the reality of love than their quickness to respond would confirm it.
Love is a virtue and not a feeling. It is fed and fired by God---not by the favorable response of the beloved. Even when it doesn't seem to make a dime's worth of difference to the ones on whom it is lavished, it is still the most prized of all virtues because it is at the heart of the very character of God. By loving, we participate in His Life and Essence.
In a world where quantitative values have obscured the reality of qualitative values---where we long to measure progress and chart growth---it is easy to give in to the temptation to judge ourselves and to try to walk by sight. But into that confused and meaningless effort God speaks with His great, still, and small voice, with His Christ. He speaks thru these invisible virtues with which His people shine and in the light of their lives this desperate, smug world sees not strength, wisdom, or even love, but Him who is the source of these things and the Savior of humankind. Let us in whom He dwells look also to Him so we can shine more brightly.
(just some things I've been learning)
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