Bonhoeffer: the hardness of faith

Saturday, November 11, 2023
    Feast of Martin, Monk, Bishop of Tours, 397
Meditation:
    For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.
    —Ecclesiastes 12:14 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Are you worried because you find it so hard to believe? No one should be surprised at the difficulty of faith, if there is some part of his life where he is consciously resisting or disobeying the commandments of Jesus. Is there some part of your life that you are refusing to surrender at his behest, some sinful passion, maybe, or some animosity, some hope, perhaps your ambition or your reason? If so, you must not be surprised that you have not received the Holy Spirit, that prayer is difficult, or that your request for faith remains unanswered. Go rather and be reconciled with your brother, renounce the sin that holds you fast—and then you will recover your faith!
    ... Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), The Cost of Discipleship, Simon and Schuster, 1959, p. 66-67 (see the book)
    See also Eccl. 12:14; Matt. 5:23-24; 10:26-27; 11:29-30; Mark 4:22; Luke 8:17; 12:2-3; John 14:1; Acts 8:20-23; Rom. 1:5; 7:22-23; 1 Cor. 4:5; 2 Cor. 5:10,18-19; Heb. 4:12; 1 Pet. 1:14-16
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, let me not hesitate to be reconciled to _____. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Calvin: putting them to the test

Friday, November 10, 2023
    Feast of Leo the Great, Bishop of Rome, 461
Meditation:
    In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.
    —1 Peter 1:6-7 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Whomever the Lord has adopted and deemed worthy of his fellowship ought to prepare themselves for a hard, toilsome, and unquiet life, crammed with very many and various kinds of evil. It is the Heavenly Father’s will thus to exercise them so as to put his own children to a definite test. Beginning with Christ, his first-born, he follows this plan with all his children.
    ... John Calvin (1509-1564), The Institutes of the Christian Religion, v. I [1559], tr. John Allen, Presbyterian Board of Publication and Sabbath-School Work, 1921, III.viii.1, p. 629 (see the book)
    See also 1 Pet. 1:6-7; Ps. 26:2-3; 66:10-12; Isa. 48:10; John 1:12-13; 15:18-19; Rom. 5:3-4; 8:38-39; 2 Thess. 1:3-5; Jas. 1:2-3; Rev. 2:10; 3:10
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, strengthen me for Your trials. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Arndt: crucified with Him

Thursday, November 9, 2023
    Commemoration of Margery Kempe, Mystic, after 1433
Meditation:
    Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires.
    —Galatians 5:24 (NIV)
Quotation:
    If thou believest that Christ was crucified for the sins of the world, thou must with Him be crucified... If thou refusest to comply with this order, thou canst not be a living member of Christ, nor be united with Him by faith.
    ... John Arndt (1555-1621), True Christianity, tr. A. W. Boehm, Boston: Lincoln & Edmands, 1809, II.iv.18, p. 383 (see the book)
    See also Gal. 5:24; Matt. 16:24; Mark 8:34; Luke 9:23; John 1:29; Rom. 1:16; 6:6-7; Gal. 2:20; 6:14; Eph. 2:4-5; 1 John 2:2
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, may I daily bear my cross for Your sake. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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MacDonald: forgiveness

Wednesday, November 8, 2023
    Feast of Saints & Martyrs of England
Meditation:
    [Jesus’ example prayer:] “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.”
    —Matthew 6:12 (NIV)
Quotation:
    He who forgives not is not forgiven, and the prayer of the Pharisee is as the weary beating of the surf of hell, while the cry of a soul out of its fire sets the heart-strings of love trembling.
    ... George MacDonald (1824-1905), Sir Gibbie, v. I [1879], Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1880, p. 60 (see the book)
    See also Matt. 6:12,14-15; 18:21-35; Mark 11:25; Luke 11:4; 18:10-14; Eph. 4:32; Col. 3:13; Jas. 2:12-13
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, grant that I may learn truly to forgive. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Sundar Singh: the end of sin

Tuesday, November 7, 2023
    Feast of Willibrord of York, Archbishop of Utrecht, Apostle of Frisia, 739
Meditation:
    This [intercession] is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.
    —1 Timothy 2:3-4 (NIV)
Quotation:
    As men have chosen sin, they must die in sin. God does not bring about this death. God sends no one to hell. The sinner himself brings this punishment down on himself. Let us look at the case of Judas Iscariot. When he betrayed the Lord, Pilate did not hang him, nor did the High Priest, nor did our loving Savior, nor did the Apostles. He hanged himself. He committed suicide. He died in his sin. This is the end of him who lives in sin.
    ... Sadhu Sundar Singh (1889-1929), The Message of Sadhu Sundar Singh, B. H. Streeter & A. J. Appasamy, New York: The Macmillan Company, 1922, p. 124-125 (see the book)
    See also 1 Tim. 2:3-4; Ps. 55:23; Matt. 21:32; 27:5; Acts 1:18-19; Rom. 2:4; 3:19; 2 Pet. 3:9; Rev. 2:21
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You only are the source of salvation. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Temple: gambling

Monday, November 6, 2023
    Feast of William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury, Teacher, 1944
Meditation:
    [Jesus:] “Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back.”
    —Luke 6:30 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Gambling challenges that view of life which the Christian Church exists to uphold and extend. Its glorification of mere chance is a denial of the Divine order of nature. To risk money haphazard is to disregard the insistence of the Church in every age of living faith that possessions are a trust, and that men must account to God for their use. The persistent appeal to covetousness is fundamentally opposed to the unselfishness which was taught by Jesus Christ and by the New Testament as a whole. The attempt (inseparable from gambling) to make a profit out of the inevitable loss and possible suffering of others is the antithesis of that love of one’s neighbour on which our Lord insisted.
    ... William Temple (1881-1944), before the Royal Commission on Lotteries and Betting, 1932, Punch, v. 240, Mark Lemon, et al., Punch Publications Ltd., 1961, p. 671 (see the book)
    See also Luke 6:30; Ex. 20:17; Eccl. 5:10-11; Ps. 119:36; Isa. 33:15-16; Matt. 5:42; 6:19-21; 22:39; Luke 6:38; 12:15,33; 1 Tim. 6:6-10; Heb. 13:5
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, show me how to use money to glorify You. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Griffiths: God in everything

Sunday, November 5, 2023
Meditation:
[Job:] “My ears had heard of you
    but now my eyes have seen you.
Therefore I despise myself
    and repent in dust and ashes.”
    —Job 42:5-6 (NIV)
Quotation:
    I suddenly saw that all the time it was not I who had been seeking God, but God who had been seeking me. I had made myself the centre of my own existence and had my back turned to God. All the beauty and truth which I had discovered had come to me as a reflection of his beauty, but I had kept my eyes fixed on the reflection and was always looking at myself. But God had brought me to the point at which I was compelled to turn away from the reflection, both of myself and of the world which could only mirror my own image. During that night the mirror had been broken, and I had felt abandoned because I could no longer gaze upon the image of my own reason and the finite world which it knew. God had brought me to my knees and made me acknowledge my own nothingness, and out of that knowledge I had been reborn. I was no longer the centre of my life and therefore I could see God in everything.
    ... Bede Griffiths (1906-1993), The Golden String [1954], Bede Griffiths, London: Fount Paperbacks, 1979, p. 97 (see the book)
    See also Job 42:5-6; Ps. 39:4-7; 51:17; Matt. 7:7; Acts 20:24; 1 Cor. 13:1-3; 2 Cor. 12:11; Gal. 6:3; Jas. 4:8-10
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, make me acknowledge my smallness to You. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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