[分享]Streams In the Desert for Nov. 11

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Streams In the Desert for Nov. 11

Streams In the Desert for Nov. 11

“He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass.” (Psalm 72:6.)

Amos speaks of the king’s mowings. Our King has many scythes, and is perpetually mowing His lawns. The musical tinkle of the whetstone on the scythe portends the cutting down of myriads of green blades, daisies and other flowers. Beautiful as they were in the morning, within an hour or two they lie in long, faded rows.

Thus in human life we make a brave show, before the scythe of pain, the shears of disappointment, the sickle of death.

There is no method of obtaining a velvety lawn but by repeated mowings; and there is no way of developing tenderness, evenness, sympathy, but by the passing of God’s scythes. How constantly the Word of God compares man to grass, and His glory to its flower! But when grass is mown, and all the tender shoots are bleeding, and desolation reigns where flowers were bursting, it is the most acceptable time for showers of rain falling soft and warm.

O soul, thou hast been mown! Time after time the King has come to thee with His sharp scythe. Do not dread the scythe-it is sure to be followed by the shower. --- F. B. Meyer.

“When across the heart deep waves of sorrow Break, as on a dry and barren shore; When hope glistens with no bright tomorrow, And the storm seems sweeping evermore;

“When the cup of every earthly gladness Bears no taste of the life-giving stream; And high hopes, as though to mock our sadness, Fade and die as in some fitful dream,

Who shall hush the weary spirit’s childing? Who the aching void within shall fill? Who shall whisper of a peace abiding, And each surging billow calmly still?

“Only He whose wounded heart was broken With the bitter cross and thorny crown; Whose dear love glad words of joy had spoken, Who His life for us laid meekly down.

“Blessed Healer, all our burdens lighten; Give us peace, Thine own sweet peace, we pray! Keep us near Thee till the morn shall brighten, And all the mists and shadows flee away!”

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Streams In the Desert for Nov. 12

Streams In the Desert for Nov. 12

“These were the potters, and those that dwelt among plants and hedges: there they dwelt with the king for his work.” (1 Chron. 4:23.)

Anywhere and everywhere we may dwell “with the king for his work.” We may be in a very unlikely and unfavorable place for this; it may be in a literal country life, with little enough to be seen of the “goings” of the King around us; it may be among the hedges of all sorts, hindrances in all directions; it may be furthermore, with our hands full of all manner of pottery for our daily task.

No matter! The King who placed us “there” will come and dwell there with us; the hedges are right, or He would soon do away with them. And it does not follow that what seems to hinder our way may not be for its very protection; and as for the pottery, why, that is just exactly what He has seen fit to put into our hands, and therefore it is, for the present, “His work.” --- Frances Ridley Havergal.

“Go back to thy garden-plot, sweetheart! Go back till the evening falls, And bind thy lilies and train thy vines, Till for thee the Master calls.

“Go make thy garden fair as thou canst, Thou workest never alone; Perhaps he whose plot is next to thine Will see it and mend his own.

The colored sunsets and starry heavens, the beautiful mountains and the shining seas, the fragrant woods and painted flowers, are not half so beautiful as a soul that is serving Jesus out of love, in the wear and tear of common, unpoetic life. --- Faber.

The most saintly spirits are often existing in those who have never distinguished themselves as authors, or left any memorial of themselves as authors, or left any memorial of themselves to be the theme of the world’s talk; but who have led an interior angelic life, having borne their sweet blossoms unseen like the young lily in a sequestered vale on the bank of a limpid stream. --- Kenelm Digby.

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Streams In the Desert for Nov. 13

Streams In the Desert for Nov. 13

“I know him, that he will command his children.” (Gen. 18:19.)

God wants people that He can depend upon. He could say of Abraham, “I know him, that he will command his children…that the Lord may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken.” God can be depended upon; He wants us to be just as decided, as reliable, as stable. This is just what faith means.

God is looking for men on whom He can put the weight of all His love and power and faithful promises. God’s engines are strong enough to draw any weight we attach to them. Unfortunately the cable which we fasten to the engine is often too weak to hold the weight of our prayer; therefore God is drilling us, disciplining us to stability and certainty in the life of faith. Let us learn our lessons and stand fast. --- A. B. Simpson

God knows that you can stand that trial; He would not give it to you if you could not. It is His trust in you that explains the trials of life, however bitter they may be. God knows our strength, and He measures it to the last inch; and a trial was never given to any man that was greater than that man’s strength, through God, to bear it.

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Streams In the Desert for Nov. 14

Streams In the Desert for Nov. 14

“Except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it remains a single grain, but if it dies away in the ground, the grain is freed to spring up in a plant bearing many grains.” (John 12:24.)

Go to the old burying ground of Northampton, Mass., and look upon the early grave of David Brainerd, beside that of the fair Jerusha Edwards, whom he loved but did not live to wed.

What hopes, what expectations for Christ’s cause went down to the grave with the wasted form of that young missionary of whose work nothing now remained but the dear memory, and a few score of swarthy Indian converts! But that majestic old Puritan saint, Jonathan Edwards, who had hoped to call him his son, gathered up the memorials of his life in a little book and the little book up the memorials of his life in a little book, and the little book took wings and flew beyond the sea, and alighted on the table of a Cambridge student, Henry Martyn.

Poor Martyn! Why should he throw himself away, with all his scholarship, his genius, his opportunities! What had he accomplished when he turned homeward from “India’s coral strand,” broken in health, and dragged himself northward as far as that dreary khan at Tocat by the Black Sea, where he crouched under the piled-up saddles, to cool his burning fever against the earth, and there died alone?

To what purpose was this waste? Out of that early grave of Brainerd and the lonely grave of Martyn far away by the splashing of the Euxine Sea, has sprung the noble army of modern missionaries. --- Leonard Woolsey Bacon.

“Is there some desert or some boundless sea, Where Thou, great God of angels, wilt send me? Some oak for me to rend, Some sod for me to break, Some handful of Thy corn to take And scatter far afield, Till it in turn shall yield Its hundredfold Of grains of gold To feed the happy children of my God? “Show me the desert, Father, or the sea; Is it Thine enterprise? Great God, send me! And though this body lies where ocean rools, Father, count me among all faithful souls.

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Streams In the Desert for Nov. 15

Streams In the Desert for Nov. 15

“Pressed out of measure.” (2 Cor. 1:8.) “That the power of Christ may rest upon me.” (2 Cor. 12:9.)

God allowed the crisis to close around Jacob on the night when he bowed at Peniel in supplication, to bring him to the place where he could take hold of God as he never would have done; and from that narrow pass of peril, Jacob became enlarged in his faith and knowledge of God, and in the power of a new and victorious life.

God had to compel David, by a long and painful discipline of years, to learn the almighty power and faithfulness of his God, and grow up into the established principles of faith ;and godliness, which were indispensable for his glorious career as the king of Israel.

Nothing but the extremities in which Paul was constanly placed could ever have taught him, and taught the Church through him, the full meaning of the great promise he so learned to claim, “My grace is sufficient for thee.”

And nothing but our trials and perils would ever have led some of us to know Him as we do, to trust Him as we have, and to draw from Him the measures of grace which our very extremities made indispensable.

Difficulties and obstacles are God’s challenges to faith. When hindrance confront us in the path of duty, we are to recognize them as vessels for faith to fill with the fullness and all-sufficiency of Jesus; and as we go forward, simply and fully trusting Him, we may be tested, we may have to wait and let patience have her perfect work; but we shall surely find at last the stone rolled away, and the Lord waiting to render unto us double for our time of testing. --- A. B. Simpson.

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　　 Streams In the Desert for Jan. 16

　　 Streams In the Desert for Jan. 16

"And there arose a great storm." (Mark 4:37.)

Some of the storms of life come suddenly: a great sorrow, a bitter disappointment, a crushing defeat. Some come slowly. They appear upon the ragged edges of the horizon no larger than a man's hand, but, trouble that seems so insignificant spreads until it covers the sky and overwhelms us.

Yet it is in the storm that God equips us for service. When God wants an oak He plants it on the moor where the storms will shake it and the rains will beat down upon it, and it is in the midnight battle with elements that the oak wins its rugged fibre and becomes the king of the forest.

When God wants to make a man He puts him into some storm. The history of manhood is always rough and rugged. No man is made until he has been out into the sure of the storm and found the sublime fulfillment of the prayer: "O God, take me, break me, make me." The beauties of nature come after the storm. The rugged beauty of the mountain is born in a storm, and the heroes of life are the storm-swept and the battle-scarred.

You have been in the storms and swept be the blasts. Have they left you broken, weary, beaten in the valley, or have they lifted you to the sunlit summits of a richer, deeper, more abiding manhood and womanhood? Have they left you with more sympathy with the storm-swept and the battle-scarred? -- Selected.

The wind that blows can never kill
The tree God plants;
It bloweth east, it bloweth west,
The tender leaves have little rest,
But any wind that blows is best.
The tree that God plants
Strikes deeper root, grows higher still,
Spreads greater boughs, for God's good will
Meets all its wants.

There is no storm hath power to blast
The tree God knows;
No thunderbolt, nor beating rain,
Nor lightning flash, nor hurricane;
When they are spent, it doth remain,
The tree God knows,
Through every tempest standeth fast,
And from its first day to its last
Still fairer grows.

--Selected.

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Streams In the Desert for Nov. 17

Streams In the Desert for Nov. 17

“Hear what the unjust judge saith. And shall not God avenge his own elect which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them? I tell you that he will avenge them speedily.” (Luke 18:6, 7.)

God’s seasons are not at your beck. If the first stroke of the flint doth not bring forth the fire, you must strike again. God will hear prayer, but He may not answer it at the time which we in our minds have appointed; He will reveal Himself to our seeking hearts, but not just when and where we have settled in our own expectations. Hence the need of perseverance and importunity in supplication.

In the days of flint and steel and brimstone matches we had to strike and strike again, dozens of times, before we could get a spark to live in the tinder; and we were thankful enough if we succeeded at last.

Shall we not be as persevering and hopeful as to heavenly things? We have more certainty of success in this business than we had with our flint and steel, for we have God’s promises at our back.

Never let us despair. God’s time for mercy will come; yea, it has come, if our time for believing has arrived. Ask in faith, nothing wavering; but never cease from petitioning because the King delays to reply. Strike the steel again. Make the sparks fly and have your tinder ready; you will get a light before long. --- C. H. Spurgeon.

I do not believe that there is such a thing in the history of God’s kingdom as a right prayer offered in a right spirit that is forever left unanswered. --- Theodore L. Cuyler.

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I'm really happy to see these articles. Thanks our holy God!
Enjoy God's words and Improve my English.