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狡兔三窟Streams in Desert 21 janvier Put ForthPut Forth
By Mrs. Charles E. Cowman
"He putteth forth his own sheep" (John10:4). Oh, this is bitter work for Him and us--bitter for us to go, but equally bitter for Him to cause us pain; yet it must be done. It would not be conducive to our true welfare to stay always in one happy and comfortable lot. He therefore puts us forth. The fold is deserted, that the sheep may wander over the bracing mountain slope. The laborers must be thrust out into the harvest, else the golden grain would spoil. Take heart! it could not be better to stay when He determines otherwise; and if the loving hand of our Lord puts us forth, it must be well. On, in His name, to green pastures and still waters and mountain heights! He goeth before thee. Whatever awaits us is encountered first by Him. Faith's eye can always discern His majestic presence in front; and when that cannot be seen, it is dangerous to move forward. Bind this comfort to your heart, that the Savior has tried for Himself all the experiences through which He asks you to pass; and He would not ask you to pass through them unless He was sure that they were not too difficult for your feet, or too trying for your strength. This is the Blessed Life--not anxious to see far in front, nor careful about the next step, not eager to choose the path, nor weighted with the heavy responsibilities of the future, but quietly following behind the Shepherd, one step at a time. Dark is the sky! and veiled the unknown morrowl Dangers are nigh! and fears my mind are shaking; Doubts cast their weird, unwelcome shadows o'er me, HE GOES BEFORE! Be this my consolation! The Oriental shepherd was always ahead of his sheep. He was down in front. Any attack upon them had to take him into account. Now God is down in front. He is in the tomorrows. It is tomorrow that fills men with dread. God is there already. All the tomorrows of our life have to pass Him before they can get to us. --F. B. M. "God is in every tomorrow, 25 mai 很长的流水帐 首先控诉一下blogbus，最近太慢了，尤其是这两天，严重影响了我的点击率，今天居然创下历史新低，到目前为止才10几下，晕。幸亏咱底子厚，前几天有一个200多的在那里撑着，不然这个礼拜不是难以突破900。虽然在意点击率是一件虚荣的事情，我还是每天乐此不疲，没有那么高的点击率哪来那么大的动力啊。
前几天忙得够呛。因为看我比较闲，学校中考录入的工作分派到我身上了，刊看在算工作量这个月能多个几百块的分上，我就努力了一把。结果发现后勤还真是吃*饭的地方，就俺一个人一天到晚都在那里忙活。不过，也好，人多手杂这件事情的效率就提高不了了。咱这个临时后勤人员应该算是比较敬业的吧，对得起那几百块钱。因为是本年段的学生，人都认识，有时候“偷看”一下他们的资料还是很有趣的，让我知道他们谁是红绿色盲，谁的爹妈叫什么，跟他本人的绰号有啥关系，等等。不过，从中也可以看到我们的有些学生或者家长实在是太糊涂了，自己家的地址和身份证号码都写得不清不楚的，家长的名字也写得很不工整，给我得辨认工作造成了很大的不方便，跟医生们开的处方笺有得一拚。 我还发现了一个有趣的现象。班主任们的操行评语真是风格多样。虽然都是公式化的语言，但是某同志真是有点过分，只要是同一等级的学生，其评语的雷同程度达到80%。我们的班主任们不约而同看到喜欢的学生都忍不住多些好几个字，超过200大关，弄得我疲于改写，差点崩溃。不过某同志反其道而行，居然对他班上的“超男超女”不惜笔墨，虽然写得很有文采，但是，改死我了！ 昨天给人放了鸽子，今天也是。罢了，难道我一个人就不能找什么乐子么？于是昨天看了好几集shameless,那个超级风骚的小女生终于退场了。让Frank和Lip父子松了一口气，谁知道随后又冒出一个Lesbian妈妈，我晕。不过编剧真的很厉害，牢牢抓住了我的心。我发现我越来越喜欢Debie了，虽然她有点“迂腐”但是心地最单纯最可爱。那个小光头弟弟居然养了一头很肥的老鼠当宠物，看得我眉头都皱了.... 今天放我鸽子的人是画画，害得我在天虹的都市风像个傻瓜一样转来转去。不过后来看到一个帅哥教练，不错不错。他教的操还是很好学的。今天身体状态很好，跑步也异常轻快，看来锻炼还是有进展的，没有那么喘了。不过把身材练好或者减肥似乎是一个奢望。 但是回家的时候发现吕厝天虹站是全厦门最难等公车的一个地方，难怪的士那么多。最后，一肚子不爽地打的回家了。下了车，经过一直惦记的眼镜店，忍不住进去了，结果又败家了，花了3百多块大洋配了一幅有色的无框眼镜，因为想着夏天到了，太阳太刺眼了，画画同学一直怂恿我配有颜色的，说比较时髦，于是我就嘿嘿嘿..... 就当作给自己的生日礼物吧，呵呵。 16 mai We Wrestle Not Against Flesh and BloodWe Wrestle Not Against Flesh and Blood
By Mrs. Charles E. Cowman "Fear not, Daniel: for from the first day that thou didst set thine heart to understand, and to chasten thyself before thy God, thy words were heard, and I am come for thy words. But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me one and twenty days" (Dan. 10:12, 13). We have wonderful teaching here on prayer, and we are shown the direct hindrance from Satan. Daniel had fasted and prayed twenty-one days, and had a very hard time in prayer. As far as we read the narrative, it was not because Daniel was not a good man, nor because his prayer was not right; but it was because of a special attack of Satan. The Lord started a messenger to tell Daniel that his prayer was answered the moment Daniel began to pray; but an evil angel met the good angel and wrestled with him, hindering him. There was a conflict in the heavens; and Daniel seemed to go through an agony on earth the same as that which was going on in the heavens. "We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers… against wicked spirits in high places" (Eph. 6:12, margin). Satan delayed the answer three full weeks. Daniel nearly succumbed, and Satan would have been glad to kill him; but God will not suffer anything to come above that we "are able to bear." Many a Christian's prayer is hindered by Satan; but you need not fear when your prayers and faith pile up; for after a while they will be like a flood, and will not only sweep the answer through, but will also bring some new accompanying blessing. --Sermon Hell does its worst with the saints. The rarest souls have been tested with high pressures and temperatures, but Heaven will not desert them. --W. L. Watkinson 14 mai Instant Obedience"In the selfsame day, as God had said unto him" (Gen. 17:23). Instant obedience is the only kind of obedience there is; delayed obedience is disobedience. Every time God calls us to any duty, He is offering to make a covenant with us; doing the duty is our part, and He will do His part in special blessing. The only way we can obey is to obey "in the selfsame day," as Abraham did. To be sure, we often postpone a duty and then later on do it as fully as we can. It is better to do this than not to do it at all. But it is then, at the best, only a crippled, disfigured, half-way sort of duty-doing; and a postponed duty never can bring the full blessing that God intended, and that it would have brought if done at the earliest possible moment. It is a pity to rob ourselves, along with robbing God and others, by procrastination. "In the selfsame day" is the Genesis way of saying, "Do it now." --Messages for the Morning Watch Luther says that "a true believer will crucify the question, 'Why?' He will obey without questioning." I will not be one of those who, except they see signs and wonders, will in no wise believe. I will obey without questioning. "Ours not to make reply, Obedience is the fruit of faith; patience, the bloom on the fruit. --Christina Rossetti 2 mai The Key to the WindThe Key to the Wind
By Mrs. Charles E. Cowman "The Lord hath prepared his throne in the heavens; and his kingdom ruleth over all" (Ps. 103:19). Some time since, in the early spring, I was going out at my door when round the corner came a blast of east wind--defiant and pitiless, fierce and withering--sending a cloud of dust before it. I was just taking the latchkey from the door as I said, half impatiently, "I wish the wind would"--I was going to say change; but the word was checked, and the sentence was never finished. As I went on my way, the incident became a parable to me. There came an angel holding out a key; and he said: "My Master sends thee His love, and bids me give you this." "What is it?" I asked, wondering. "The key of the winds," said the angel, and disappeared. Now indeed should I be happy. I hurried away up into the heights whence the winds came, and stood amongst the caves. "I will have done with the east wind at any rate--and that shall plague us no more," I cried; and calling in that friendless wind, I closed the door, and heard the echoes ringing in the hollow places. I turned the key triumphantly. "There," I said, now we have done with that." "What shall I choose in its place?" I asked myself, looking about me. "The south wind is pleasant"; and I thought of the lambs, and the young life on every hand, and the flowers that had begun to deck the hedgerows. But as I set the key within the door, it began to burn my hand. "What am I doing?" I cried; "who knows what mischief I may bring about? How do I know what the fields want! Ten thousand things of ill may come of this foolish wish of mine." Bewildered and ashamed, I looked up and prayed that the Lord would send His angel yet again to take the key; and for my part I promised that I would never want to have it any more. But lo, the Lord Himself stood by me. He reached His hand to take the key; and as I laid it down, I saw that it rested against the sacred wound-print. It hurt me indeed that I could ever have murmured against anything wrought by Him who bare such sacred tokens of His love. Then He took the key and hung it on His girdle. "Dost THOU keep the key of the winds?" I asked. "I do, my child," He answered graciously. And lo, I looked again and there hung all the keys of all my life. He saw my look of amazement, and asked, "Didst thou not know, my child, that my kingdom ruleth over all?" "Over all, my Lord!" I answered; "then it is not safe for me to murmur at anything?" Then did He lay His hand upon me tenderly. "My child," He said, "thy only safety is, in everything, to love and trust and praise." 12 avril God Permits TemptationGod Permits Temptation
By Mrs. Charles E. Cowman "And Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost returned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, being forty days tempted of the devil" (Luke 4:1-2). Jesus was full of the Holy Ghost, and yet He was tempted. Temptation often comes upon a man with its strongest power when he is nearest to God. As someone has said, "The devil aims high." He got one apostle to say he did not even know Christ. Very few men have such conflicts with the devil as Martin Luther had. Why? Because Martin Luther was going to shake the very kingdom of hell. Oh, what conflicts John Bunyan had! If a man has much of the Spirit of God, he will have great conflicts with the tempter. God permits temptation because it does for us what the storms do for the oaks--it roots us; and what the fire does for the paintings on the porcelain--it makes them permanent. You never know that you have a grip on Christ, or that He has a grip on you, as well as when the devil is using all his force to attract you from Him; then you feel the pull of Christ's right hand. --Selected Extraordinary afflictions are not always the punishment of extraordinary sins, but sometimes the trial of extraordinary graces. God hath many sharp-cutting instruments, and rough files for the polishing of His jewels; and those He especially loves, and means to make the most resplendent, He hath oftenest His tools upon. --Archbishop Leighton I bear my willing witness that I owe more to the fire, and the hammer, and the file, than to anything else in my Lord's workshop. I sometimes question whether I have ever learned anything except through the rod. When my schoolroom is darkened, I see most. --C. H. Spurgeon 7 avril Inward StillnessInward Stillness By Mrs. Charles E. Cowman
"Their strength is to sit still." (Isa. 30:7) KJV. In order really to know God, inward stillness is absolutely necessary. I remember when I first learned this. A time of great emergency had risen in my life, when every part of my being seemed to throb with anxiety, and when the necessity for immediate and vigorous action seemed overpowering; and yet circumstances were such that I could do nothing, and the person who could, would not stir. For a little while it seemed as if I must fly to pieces with the inward turmoil, when suddenly the still small voice whispered in the depths of my soul, "Be still, and know that I am God." The word was with power, and I hearkened. I composed my body to perfect stillness, and I constrained my troubled spirit into quietness, and looked up and waited; and then I did "know" that it was God, God even in the very emergency and in my helplessness to meet it; and I rested in Him. It was an experience that I would not have missed for worlds; and I may add also, that out of this stillness seemed to arise a power to deal with the emergency, that very soon brought it to a successful issue. I learned then effectually that my "strength was to sit still." --Hannah Whitall Smith There is a perfect passivity which is not indolence. It is a living stillness born of trust. Quiet tension is not trust. It is simply compressed anxiety. Not in the tumult of the rending storm, 0 Soul, keep silence on the mount of God, All fellowship hath interludes of rest, 0 rest, in utter quietude of soul, Not as an athlete wrestling for a crown, --Mary Rowles Jarvis 5 avril God's Mysterious DealingsGod's Mysterious Dealings
By Mrs. Charles E. Cowman
"Thou shalt shut the door upon thee and upon thy sons" (2 Kings 4:4).
They were to be alone with God, for they were not dealing with the laws of nature, nor human government, nor the church, nor the priesthood, nor even with the great prophet of God, but they must needs be isolated from all creatures, from all leaning circumstances, from all props of human reason, and swung off, as it were, into the vast blue inter-stellar space, hanging on God alone, in touch with the fountain of miracles.
Here is a part in the programme of God's dealings, a secret chamber of isolation in prayer and faith which every soul must enter that is very fruitful.
There are times and places where God will form a mysterious wall around us, and cut away all props, and all the ordinary ways of doing things, and shut us up to something Divine, which is utterly new and unexpected, something that old circumstances do not fit into, where we do not know just what will happen, where God is cutting the cloth of our lives on a new pattern, where He makes us look to Himself.
Most religious people live in a sort of treadmill life, where they can calculate almost everything that will happen, but the souls that God leads out into immediate and special dealings, He shuts in where all they know is that God has hold of them, and is dealing with them, and their expectation is from Him alone.
Like this widow, we must be detached from outward things and attached inwardly to the Lord alone in order to see His wonders. --Soul Food
In the sorest trials God often makes the sweetest discoveries of Himself. --Gems
"God sometimes shuts the door and shuts us in, That He may speak, perchance through grief or pain, And softly, heart to heart, above the din, May tell some precious thought to us again." 28 mars Obstinate FaithObstinate Faith
By Mrs. Charles E. Cowman
"And it shall come to pass, as soon as the soles of the feet of the priests that bear the ark of the Lord, the Lord of all the earth, shall rest in the waters of Jordan, that the waters of Jordan shall be cut off from the waters that come down from above; and they shall stand upon a heap." (Joshua 3:13). Brave Levites! Who can help admiring them, to carry the Ark right into the stream; for the waters were not divided till their feet dipped in the water (ver. 15). God had not promised aught else. God honors faith. "Obstinate faith," that the PROMISE sees and "looks to that alone." You can fancy how the people would watch these holy men march on, and some of the bystanders would be saying, "You would not catch me running that risk! Why, man, the ark will be carried away!" Not so; "the priests stood firm on dry ground." We must not overlook the fact that faith on our part helps God to carry out His plans. "Come up to the help of the Lord." The Ark had staves for the shoulders. Even the Ark did not move of itself; it was carried. When God is the architect, men are the masons and laborers. Faith assists God. It can stop the mouth of lions and quench the violence of fire. It yet honors God, and God honors it. Oh, for this faith that will go on, leaving God to fulfill His promise when He sees fit! Fellow Levites, let us shoulder our load, and do not let us look as if we were carrying God's coffin. It is the Ark of the living God! Sing as you march towards the flood! --Thomas Champness One of the special marks of the Holy Ghost in the Apostolic Church was the spirit of boldness. One of the most essential qualities of the faith that is to attempt great things for God, and expect great things from God, is holy audacity. Where we are dealing with a supernatural Being, and taking from Him things that are humanly impossible, it is easier to take much than little; it is easier to stand in a place of audacious trust than in a place of cautious, timid clinging to the shore. Like wise seamen in the life of faith, let us launch out into the deep, and find that all things are possible with God, and all things are possible unto him that believeth. Let us, today, attempt great things for God; take His faith and believe for them and His strength to accomplish them. --Days of Heaven upon Earth 25 mars Desperate DaysDesperate Days
By Mrs. Charles E. Cowman "But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him." (Heb. 11:6). The faith for desperate days. The Bible is full of such days. Its record is made up of them, its songs are inspired by them, its prophecy is concerned with them, and its revelation has come through them. The desperate days are the stepping-stones in the path of light. They seem to have been God's opportunity and man's school of wisdom. There is a story of an Old Testament love feast in Psalm 107, and in every story of deliverance the point of desperation gave God His chance. The "wit's end" of desperation was the beginning of God's power. Recall the promise of seed as the stars of heaven, and as the sands of the sea, to a couple as good as dead. Read again the story of the Red Sea and its deliverance, and of Jordan with its ark standing mid-stream. Study once more the prayers of Asa, Jehoshaphat, and Hezekiah, when they were sore pressed and knew not what to do. Go over the history of Nehemiah, Daniel, Hosea, and Habakkuk. Stand with awe in the darkness of Gethsemane, and linger by the grave in Joseph's garden through those terrible days. Call the witnesses of the early Church, and ask the apostles the story of their desperate days. Desperation is better than despair. Faith did not make our desperate days. Its work is to sustain and solve them. The only alternative to a desperate faith is despair, and faith holds on and prevails. There is no more heroic example of desperate faith than that of the three Hebrew children. The situation was desperate, but they answered bravely, "Our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning, fiery furnace; and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up." I like that, "but if not !" I have only space to mention Gethsemane. Ponder deeply its "Nevertheless." "If it is possible…nevertheless!" Deep darkness had settled upon the soul of our Lord. Trust meant anguish unto blood and darkness to the descent of hell--Nevertheless! Nevertheless!! Now get your hymn book and sing your favorite hymn of desperate faith. --Rev. S. Chadwick "When obstacles and trials seem "And when there seems no chance, no change, |
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