CQOD: 03/18/07 -- Law: the Spirit praying through us

Christian Quotation of the Day

March 18, 2007Meditation:
    How lovely is your dwelling place, O LORD of hosts! My soul longs, yes, faints for the courts of the LORD; my heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God.
    -- Psalm 84:1-2 (ESV)

---

Quotation:
    When a man has had so much benefit from the gospel, as to know his own misery, his want of a redeemer, who he is, and how is he to be found; there everything seems to be done, both to awaken and direct his prayer, and make it a true praying in and by the Spirit. For when the heart really pants and longs after God, its prayer is a praying, as moved and animated by the Spirit of God; it is the breath or inspiration of God, stirring, moving and opening itself in the heart. For though the early nature, our old man, can oblige or accustom himself to take heavenly words at certain times into his mouth, yet this is a certain truth, that nothing ever did, or can have the least desire or tendency to ascend to heaven, but that which came down from heaven; and therefore nothing in the heart can pray, aspire, and long after God, but the Spirit of God moving and stirring in it.
    ... William Law (1686-1761), The Spirit of Prayer [1749]

---

Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You alone animate me towards the blessings You have in store.

---

---

See Believer's Desktop Companion 2007
    http://www.cqod.com/cqoddtcb.html

---

CQOD Compilation Copyright 2007, Robert McAnally Adams, Curator
CQOD Home Page:    http://www.cqod.com/
Subscription info: http://www.cqod.com/cqodlist.htm
Comments and problems: email to curator@cqod.com

CQOD: 03/17/07 -- Carrel: Healer against all odds

Christian Quotation of the Day

March 17, 2007

Feast of Patrick, Bishop of Armagh, Missionary, Patron of Ireland, c.460

Meditation:
    Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise. Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.
    -- James 5:13-15 (ESV)

---

Quotation:
    As a physician, I have seen men, after all other therapy has failed, lifted out of disease and melancholy by the serene effort of prayer. It is the only power in the world that seems to overcome the so-called “laws of nature;” the occasions on which prayer has dramatically done this have been termed “miracles.” But a constant, quieter miracle takes place hourly in the hearts of men and women who have discovered that prayer supplies them with a steady flow of sustaining power in their daily lives.
    ... Alexis Carrel (1873-1944), “Prayer is Power,” [1941]

---

Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You sustain me through prayer.

---

---

See Believer's Desktop Companion 2007
    http://www.cqod.com/cqoddtcb.html

---

CQOD Compilation Copyright 2007, Robert McAnally Adams, Curator
CQOD Home Page:    http://www.cqod.com/
Subscription info: http://www.cqod.com/cqodlist.htm
Comments and problems: email to curator@cqod.com

CQOD: 03/16/07 -- Lewis: command performance

Christian Quotation of the Day

March 16, 2007Meditation:
    Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.
    -- Hebrews 12:1-2 (ESV)

---

Quotation:
    I have called my material surroundings a stage set. In this I can act. And you may well say “act.” For what I call “myself” (for all practical, everyday purposes) is also a dramatic construction; memories, glimpses in the shavinglass, and snatches of the very fallible activity called “introspection,” are the principal ingredients. Normally I call this construction “me,” and the stage set “the real world.” Now the moment of prayer is for me—or involves for me as its condition—the awareness, the reawakened awareness, that this “real world” and “real self” are very far from being rock-bottom realities. I cannot, in the flesh, leave the stage, either to go behind the scenes or to take my seat in the pit; but I can remember that these regions exist. And I also remember that my apparent self—this clown or hero or super—under his grease-paint is a real person with an off-stage life. The dramatic person could not tread the stage unless he concealed a real person: unless the real and unknown I existed, I would not even make mistakes about the imagined me. And in prayer this real I struggles to speak, for once, from his real being, and to address, for once, not the other actors, but—what shall I call Him? The Author, for He invented us all? The Producer, for He controls all? Or the Audience, for He watches, and will judge, the performance?
    ... C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), Letters to Malcolm [1964]

---

Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, uncover my hidden character and give me my true self, as You intended.

---

---

See Believer's Desktop Companion 2007
    http://www.cqod.com/cqoddtcb.html

---

CQOD Compilation Copyright 2007, Robert McAnally Adams, Curator
CQOD Home Page:    http://www.cqod.com/
Subscription info: http://www.cqod.com/cqodlist.htm
Comments and problems: email to curator@cqod.com