TFTD - June 2013

[Resource Manager]

01 June 2013

"In writing of the Proverbs there is no difficulty in applying the lessons to the circumstances of our own time. They are astonishingly "up to date". There is a vitality and freshness in the Scriptures after all the centuries that have passed since the words were written. A sermon only a hundred years old seems old-fashioned and dead, but the words of scripture are continually new and living. They keep pace with a growing intelligence, yielding further messages as we are able to receive them."

- Islip Collyer
Principles and Proverbs

[Resource Manager]

02 June 2013

"Faith is the over-arching rainbow of our lives: it reveals the sun shining through our rain, the power of trust glinting through our tears. Streaming in full measure from the Son of God’s love, it meets the rough-faced prism of our characters to spill out in a spectrum of courage, devotion, trust, obedience and thrilling joy, to the eternal glory of God and the salvation of those of whom the world is not worthy."

- Alan Eyre
Active Christianity (1959)

[Resource Manager]

03 June 2013

"To believe in God as our Creator leaves many things unsolved: that is, it leaves them unsolved to our intellects. We may not know why He created ("To fill the earth with His glory", of course, but this pushes the enquiry only a stage back); we may not know in what other creative activities He has engaged, in places or in ages other than our own (though, since our assembled importance is that of the drop in a bucket, we may humbly admit that He could have other interests); we may not know what He intends to do, as it were, when this present phase of His work reaches its culmination: but we know what we need to know. "Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: fear God, and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man." (Ecclesiastes 12:13)."

- Alfred Norris
"I Believe ..." (1963)

[Resource Manager]

04 June 2013

"Only a few men have a passionate desire to be on the side of truth, though all men desire truth to be on their side."

- Islip Collyer
Guidance in Life

[Resource Manager]

05 June 2013

"The commands of Christ and his apostles are:

John 5:39, "search the scriptures"; 1 Timothy 4:13, "give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine"; (1 Timothy 4:16), "take heed unto the doctrine"; 2 Timothy 2:15, "Study to show thyself approved unto God ... rightly dividing the word of truth."

- Searching for the Truth

Pamphlet Series No. 11 (1933)

[Resource Manager]

06 June 2013

"Our heavenly Father is not fickle or capricious, but like His sun is constant and dependable, bringing the promised blessing of light from day to day without fail. Of the sun it is written: "Its going forth is from the end of the heaven, and its circuit unto the ends of it: and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof." (Psalm 19:6). The daily course of the sun is a continuous parable of the watchfulness and care of the Father without whose knowledge not even a sparrow falls to the ground. As our bodies are warmed by the sun, so are our hearts warmed with gratitude for the love it speaks to us of."

- T.P. McCarthy
God Our Father (1971)

[Resource Manager]

07 June 2013

"The power of the Lord was not only to be found in the greatness, the majesty or the glory associated with His name, but in the amazing character which it represented, by which His eternal purpose was and is controlled. The Old Testament closes with the same profound thought:

“For I am the LORD, I change not; therefore you sons of Jacob are not consumed.” (Malachi 3:6).

This is the master key to the history of God’s people, then and now."

- Harold Jenkins
Psalm 86 (1982)

[Resource Manager]

08 June 2013

"The power of the resurrection ... is the power of seeing beyond death and beyond the kingdom, to the time when Jesus will have accomplished all that God planned through him, when he, as Son, shall be subject to the Father, that "God may be all in all". It is the power which should permeate our lives and deeply influence our actions so that we may remain, to the end, "stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord". (1 Corinthians 15:58)"

- John Marshall
The Spiritualities (1965)

[Resource Manager]

09 June 2013

"God is interested in us. He is a God near at hand and not afar off. He has provided for us the Bread of Life, He has prepared a city of refuge. So then as we suffer the cares and woes of this life, let us pause for a moment and remember the words of the psalmist: "Be still, and know that I am God" (Psalm 46:10). This is our confidence, our sure and certain hope that the Lord of hosts is with us, the God of Jacob is our refuge."

- John C. Thomas
"God is Our Refuge" (1978)  

[Resource Manager]

10 June 2013

"Freedom of the Son does not mean that we are free from temptation; it does not mean that we shall never go wrong when we make spiritual decisions; it does not mean that we are free from pain or suffering; it does not mean exemption from faults and failings. But it does mean that under temptation we are delivered from that infirmity of the will which makes defeat certain; we shall always be tempted, as Jesus was, but always beaten we need not be."

- G.D. Gillett
The Freedom of the Son (1961)

[Resource Manager]

11 June 2013

"The Lord Jesus Christ forgave to the uttermost, leaving us a wonderful example of compassion and love. When the woman in the house of Simon anointed him with the precious ointment and wiped his feet with the hairs of her head, he was able to read the heart of her who had been branded a sinful woman by the Pharisees, and so he declares: "Therefore I say unto you, Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much: but to whom little is forgiven, the same loves little."  (Luke 7:47)."

- D.M. Elliott
Forgiveness (1968)

[Resource Manager]

12 June 2013

"We who apart from God can only weigh things in the scale of time, must remember that God is using the measure of eternity. It is our part to fill our minds with His greatness and wisdom shown in the revelation made to us, and to trust that the One who works in great things works in small things too. We are slaves to the ideas of great and small in a way that means nothing to God and the angels. It is folly to fret over the mysteries of grains of sand and drops of water, when we can stand on the beach and look out upon the sea. The sands and the sea are to be accepted, not explained. We know enough of the working, the action and interaction of sand and sea and sun, moon and stars to give us confidence in the laws that govern them, although we can know so little about them. So with God and His ways and all their mystery. We cannot know and understand until "we know as we are known"; but we know enough to have confidence, if we do not allow our faith to be corroded by fretting against the things that cut across the grain of our little lives. It may be we are not able to understand sometimes because we neglect our spiritual education."

- C.A. Ladson
Fret Not Thyself (1932)

[Resource Manager]

13 June 2013

"Bible love is not merely a sentiment as many seem to think, but it does touch the heart and the emotions. The Biblical love is not a feeling, but something moved by the will, moving the heart in the required direction. Love involves loyalty and is the mark of a personal relationship."

- John Carter
Epistle to the Galatians

[Resource Manager]

14 June 2013

"If we fail, or when we fail, let us think of the story of John Mark. Not only the John Mark who turned back from Perga because he could not face the work, but the John Mark who afterwards became profitable for the ministry."

- N.L.E.
Retrieving Failures (1940)

[Resource Manager]

15 June 2013

"The Lord Jesus said that a man must be born out of water and of the Spirit before he could enter the Kingdom of God. He further said, "That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit" (John 3:6). We need not for a moment deny that with the birth of water there is the beginning of Spirit birth, for that is the first step in the essential mental change. The Spirit has given us illumination and the Spirit leads faithful disciples in the way of life."

- Islip Collyer
Newness of Life

[Resource Manager]

16 June 2013

"Greatness is not easy to define; nor indeed is any abstract quality. The Apostle Paul does not give a definition of love after the fashion of a dictionary. He describes its activities and its aversions. A quality in action is powerful, vital and provocative. Greatness is that quality in a man which raises him above anger, above petty feelings of resentment and complaint, and causes him to accept injury with tranquillity, and even with sympathy for those who injure. We find all this, and more, in the incident recorded in Luke 9:51-56."

- Elwyn Humphreys
Cameos of Jesus (1953)

[Resource Manager]

17 June 2013
 
"Soon the Lord will return. His patience and understanding bore fruit in the apostles. Let us hope it will do the same in us. If we keep him ever in mind as Lord he will not be ashamed to acknowledge us as brethren."

- Harry Tennant
Lord, is it I? (1960)

[Resource Manager]

18 June 2013

"The hour in which we accept ... truths of God’s revelation in Christ is the hour in which all the divine promises glow with life, the vision of a glorified earth comes into our perspective, our own life assumes a new meaning and purpose, we become aware of God’s love and feel the desire to respond to it. In a word, faith, hope and love become dominant factors in our life; with Paul we are able to say with all our hearts, "I know whom I have believed". (2 Timothy 1:12)"

- Melva Purkis
Our Spiritual Heritage (1955)

[Resource Manager]

19 June 2013

"If only for the sake of knowing what kindness is, we must know something of what justice is. The old Roman definition has never been bettered: “Justice is the unflagging and unfailing will to give each one his due (or right).” Kindness, on the other hand, is the will to give even more than is due. In other words, our justice gives to everyone all that is theirs. But our kindness not only gives to everyone all that is theirs but adds something that is ours. This “something that is ours” is the very heart of kindness. Justice considers mainly the debt; kindness considers also the one to whom the debt is due."

- The Listener
Justice and Kindness (1937)

[Resource Manager]

20 June 2013

"He will never reach the heart who has not learnt to listen."
- W.B. Carpenter

"Listen, my child, and be wise, and guide your heart on the right way."
Proverbs  23:19

[Resource Manager]

21 June 2013

"Let us keep close to that which is written, and we shall surely rise. Every inch of ascent will give us wider views, we shall have a hill-top vision of which we did not dream in the beginning of our spiritual life. More and more shall we realise what is meant by resurrection. Builders, as Ezra and Nehemiah were, let us realise that our building may cease at any moment, that it is not the actual work we see growing under our hands now but the unseen that counts–the unseen things which are spiritual and eternal."

- C.A. Ladson
Resurrection (1922)

[Resource Manager]

22 June 2013

"A Church of Disciples is an Assembly of Learners; and a Church of Christian Disciples, is an assembly of persons who believe the things of the Kingdom of God, and of the Name of the Lord Jesus, and, thus believing, have been immersed into Christ and patiently continue in the faith and well doing of their vocation, reading, marking, learning, and inwardly digesting all things revealed in the scriptures of truth. Such were the Disciples first called Christians at Antioch. These Christian Disciples shone as lights in the world, holding forth the World of Life."

- John Thomas (1847)

[Resource Manager]

23 June 2013

"For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, has shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." (2 Corinthians 4:6). We know indeed that "we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us." (2 Corinthians 4:7). And we can know to-day more than ever that through that very weakness the power may reach its fullest expression in our lives."

- L.G. Sargent
Power Perfected in Weakness (1940)

[Resource Manager]

24 June 2013

"Life is God’s gift. It is the power to be. It is the silent mystery of growth, the miracle of birth, the wonder of transformation. It is the swelling bud, the ripening fruit, the growing child, the vital energy that bursts from seed and tree. It is the joy of each spring’s renewal, each fresh shoot, and of each pale snowdrop that peeps through the snow and each baby fledgling that breaks through the egg. This surge of growth that flows through all nature, its quiet strength, its rich fruitfulness, its ceaseless revival has always been a marvel to mankind."

- Sheila Harris
The Light of the World (1971)

[Resource Manager]

25 June 2013

"If we are among those who hear and understand, among those who perceive with the eye of faith, then our meditations will be sweet, strength will be available for us in answer to our prayers, and we shall know that peace which passeth all understanding, that perfect peace which is the outcome of a staunch faith, of a heart stayed on God, a heart abundant in its outpourings of love in kind thoughts, gentle words and generous deeds; in other words, an opened heart."

- W.A. McLennan
Ephphatha (1951)