A Cherokee elder sitting with his grandchildren told them, “In every life there is a terrible fight – a fight between two wolves. One is evil: he is fear, anger, envy, greed, arrogance, self-pity, resentment, and deceit. The other is good: joy, serenity, humility, confidence, generosity, truth, gentleness, and compassion.” A child asked, “Grandfather, which wolf will win?” The elder looked him in the eye. “The one you feed.”

Which one do you feed?

Congressman Gary Franks (R., Conn.) recalls one thing he learned in college that was not on the curriculum:

I remember taking copious notes and listening to everything the teacher had to say in preparation for my first test at Yale. I looked at the exam and saw it was everything I had studied. I wrote the answers to the three questions thinking, Boy, this is easy!

As we waited to get our tests back I was positive I’d get an A. Instead my grade was a C. Under it, in big red letters, was written, “I know what I said. What do you think?”

It was a valuable awakening. I realized that Yale did not simply want you to absorb ideas but to think about them and challenge them. It forced me to explore things from every possible angle, looking for aspects that might not be obvious at first but were helpful in developing a dialogue on an issue.

In the same way, it’s not enough to simply know what Jesus said and did; we must personally appropriate his finished work by deliberately putting our faith in Him.

Source: Reader’s Digest, June 1996, p. 33.

I have observed the power of the watermelon seed. It has the power of drawing from the ground and through itself 200,000 times its weight. When you can tell me how it takes this material and out of it colors an outside surface beyond the imitation of art, and then forms inside of it a white rind and within that again a red heart, thickly inlaid with black seeds, each one of which in turn is capable of drawing through itself 200,000 times its weight–when you can explain to me the mystery of a watermelon, you can ask me to explain the mystery of God.

Author: William Jennings Bryan

David McCullough in his book Mornings on Horseback tells this story about young Teddy Roosevelt:

“Mittie (his mother) had found he was so afraid of the Madison Square Church that he refused to set foot inside if alone. He was terrified, she discovered, of something called the ‘zeal.’ It was crouched in the dark corners of the church ready to jump at him, he said. When she asked what a zeal might be, he said he was not sure, but thought it was probably a large animal like an alligator or a dragon. He had heard the minister read about if from the Bible. Using a concordance, she read him those passages containing the word ZEAL until suddenly, very excited, he told her to stop. The line was from the Book of John, 2:17: ‘And his disciples remembered that it was written, ‘The ZEAL of thine house hath eaten me up”‘

People are still justifiably afraid to come near the “zeal” of the Lord, for they are perfectly aware it could “eat them up” if they aren’t one of His.

Author: David McCullough
Source: Mornings on Horseback

“Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” -The Apostle Paul- II Corinthians 12:8-10

Our world prizes strength–the physical strength of athletes, the financial strength of companies, the political strength of officeholders, and the military strength of armies. But Paul put a new twist on the notion of strength: weakness can make a person strong.

Most of us would have no problem with God using our natural areas of strength, such as speaking, organizing, managing, or selling. But suppose He chose instead to use us in areas where we are weak?

Moses claimed to be a poor speaker (Ex.4:10), yet God used him as His spokesman on Israel’s behalf. Peter tended to be impulsive and even hot-headed, yet God used him as one of the chief architects of the early church.

Weakness has a way of making us rely on God far more than our strengths do.

Source: “The Word in Life Study Bible” p. 2103

Waiting for God is not laziness. Waiting for God is not going to sleep. Waiting for God is not the abandonment of effort. Waiting for God means, first, activity under command; second, readiness for any new command that may come; third, the ability to do nothing until the command is given.

Author: G. Campbell Morgan

I establish myself today in:

The power of God to guide me,
The might of God to uphold me,
The wisdom of God to teach me,
The eye of God to watch over me,
The ear of God to hear me,
The word of God to speak to me,
The hand of God to protect me,
The way of God to lie before me,
The shield of God to shelter me,
The hosts of God to defend me,
Christ with me, Christ before me,
Christ behind me, Christ within me,
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ at my right, Christ at my left,
Christ in breadth, Christ in length,
Christ in height, Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of every man who hears me.

Taken from “My Sacrifice, His Fire” by Anne Ortlund.