I always knew...

What a beautiful Tim Keller quote on marriage:

"It is to look at another person and to get a glimpse of the person God is creating, and to say, 'I see who God is making you, and it excites me! I want to be part of that. I want to partner with you and God in the journey you are taking to His throne.' And when we get there, I will look at your magnificence and say, 'I always knew you could be like this. I got glimpses of it on earth, but now look at you!'"

No man like this Man

As I'm yet again beginning to tackle the women-in-ministry question, I found this quote in Rich Nathan's paper on women in leadership. The whole issue really is not primarily about what women (or men) or 'allowed' to do (lead? preach? decide?), but rather what men and women - deep down - are intended to be.

"Perhaps it was no wonder that women were first at the cradle and last at the cross. They had
never known a man like this Man. There never has been such another. A prophet and teacher
who never nagged at them, never flattered or coaxed or patronized; who never made sick jokes
about them…who rebuked without querulousness and praised without condescension; who took
their questions and arguments seriously; who never mapped out this sphere for them, never
urged them to be feminine or jeered at them for being female; who had no ax to grind and no
uneasy male dignity to defend; who took them as he found them and was completely unselfconscious. There was no act, no sermon, and no parable in the whole gospel that borrows pungency from female perversity. Nobody could possibly guess from the words and deeds of Jesus that there was anything “funny” or inferior about women’s nature."
Dorothy L. Sayers (close friend of C. S. Lewis), Are Women Human?

A Prayer to the God of my Life

"By day the LORD directs his love,
at night his song is with me—
a prayer to the God of my life." (Psalm 42:8)

When I hear the multitudes
fast approaching
the enemy prowling
not a second to spare

When I sense I am
losing hold
one to a million
dust in the wind

It is You who reminds me:
I have given my blood
I have parted the waters
Called back the flood

Waves become stepping stones
the lake calms down
You are on the safe side.
The land is won.

But God...

"But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with him, and made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus." (Ephesians 2)

"BUT GOD, when he walked by my open grave, instead of turning away from the stench, he said to his Son, 'I want that mess alive. Will you die for him?' And he said yes. And that's how I got saved. And that's how you got saved—or can get saved." (John Piper)

Holy of Holies

Some more from A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God:

“We sense that the call is for us, but still we fail to draw near, and the years pass and we grow old and tired in the outer courts of the tabernacle. What hinders us? (...) What but the presence of a veil in our hearts?- a veil not taken away as the first veil was, but which remains there still shutting out the light and hiding the face of God from us. It is the veil of our fleshly, fallen nature living on, unjudged within us, uncrucified and unrepudiated. (...) It is woven of the fine threads of the self-life (...). They are not something we do, but something we are (...). Self can live unrebuked at the very altar. It can watch the bleeding victim die and not be in the least affected by what it sees. (...) There must be a work of God in destruction before we are free. (...) We must prepare ourselves for an ordeal of suffering in some measure like that through which our Saviour passed when He suffered under Pontius Pilate (…). In human experience that veil is made of living spiritual tissue, it is composed of the sentient, quivering stuff of which our whole beings consist, and to touch it is to touch us where we feel pain. To tear it away is to injure us, to hurt us and to make us bleed. To say otherwise is to make the cross no cross and death no death at all. It is never fun to die (…).

Let us beware of tinkering with our inner life, hoping ourselves to rend the veil. God must do everything for us. Our part is to yield and trust. We must confess, forsake, repudiate the self-life, then reckon it crucified. But we must be careful to distinguish lazy 'acceptance' from the real work of God. We must insist upon the work of God being done. We dare not rest content with a neat doctrine of self-crucifixion. That is to imitate Saul and spare the nest of the sheep and oxen. Insist that the work be done in very truth and it will be done. The cross is rough and deadly, but it is effective. It does not keep its victim hanging there forever. There comes a moment when its work is finished and the suffering victim dies. After that is resurrection glory and power, and the pain is forgotten for joy that the veil is taken away and we have entered in actual spiritual experience the presence of the living God.”

Gold

My heart turns to gold at the touch of Thy hand; the miracle of a sinful life surrendered to Thee.