Revitalize Your Church

Here we stand at the threshold of the New Year. 2018 will soon be passed and packed away, living only in the attic of memories.   Looking ahead to 2019, I can guarantee one thing: a lot of living will go into it. How will it turn out? Only God knows. This chapter may be drama. Perhaps it will be romance. Action adventure. Comedy. Tragedy. Mystery. Next December, upon reflection, you will be able to describe the events of 2019 – but not now. The best you can do is throw your shoulders back, trust God, and march right in. You see, although you don’t know anything about the upcoming months, God does – and He will be with you as you travel from mountain top to valley.   Nobody knows what tomorrow holds, but we do know WHO holds tomorrow.  Despite our moments of anxiety, discouragement, lonliness, or sorrow,  God has promised never to leave us or forsake us. An anonymous writer captured this idea with these inspiring words: I said to the man who stood at t...

When the song of the angels is stilled, When the star in the sky is gone, When the kings and the princes are home, When the shepherds are back with their flocks, The work of Christmas begins: To find the lost, To heal the broken, To feed the hungry, To release the prisoner, To rebuild the nations, To bring peace among people, To make music in the heart. -- James Thurman

I have a need of such clearance as the Savior effected in the temple of Jerusalem a riddance of clutter of what is secondary that blocks the way to the all important central emptiness which is filled with the presence of God alone -- Jean Danielou

In her devotional,  Edges of His Ways (1932) ,  the great missionary, Amy Carmichael (1932).wrote the following based on: Psalm 68:13: Though ye have lien among the pots. . . . I think we sometimes feel as though we had. Perhaps we have been especially eager to press through and up into the clear air, and meet our Lord in the radiant, intimate way granted to others, and we do not seem to have been able to do so. The more we looked towards Him Whom our soul loveth, the more we saw His dazzling purity, the more we felt “among the pots”, sooty; like him who “would not lift up so much as his eyes unto Heaven”; like him who said, “Woe is Me! For I am undone . . . for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts.” “Though ye have lien among the pots, yet shall ye be as the wings of a dove covered with silver, and her feathers with yellow gold.” It is the sun striking down upon the bird that gives that look of silver and gold. I have never seen it, on our doves and paddy-birds ...

" Lord, Thou knowest better than I know myself that I am growing older, and will someday be old. "Keep me from getting talkative, and particularly from the fatal habit of thinking I must say something on every occasion. "Release me from craving to try to straighten out everybody's affairs. "Keep my mind free from the recital of endless details-give me wings to get to the point. "I ask for grace enough to listen to the tales of others' pains. Help me to endure them with patience. "But seal my lips on my own aches and pains-they are increasing, and my love of rehearsing them is becoming sweeter as the years go by. "Teach me the glorious lesson that occasionally it is possible that I may be mistaken. "Keep me reasonably sweet; I do not want to be a saint-some of them are so hard to live with-but a sour old person is one of the crowning works of the devil. "Make me thoughtful, but not moody; helpful, but not bossy. W...

Dear Lord and Father of mankind, forgive our foolish ways; reclothe us in our rightful mind, in purer lives thy service find, in deeper reverence, praise.  In simple trust like theirs who heard beside the Syrian sea the gracious calling of the Lord, let us, like them, without a word rise up and follow thee. O Sabbath rest by Galilee, O calm of hills above, where Jesus knelt to share with thee the silence of eternity, interpreted by love! Drop thy still dews of quietness, till all our strivings cease; take from our souls the strain and stress, and let our ordered lives confess the beauty of thy peace. Breathe through the heats of our desire thy coolness and thy balm; let sense be dumb, let flesh retire; speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire, O still, small voice of calm! --  John Greenleaf Whittier

"You cannot effectively lead  from a heart of insecurity. Security encourages debate; insecurity fears debate. Security encourages criticism; insecurity fears criticism. Security welcomes diversity; insecurity builds walls. Beautiful challenge of self-awareness today." -- L. D. Buckingham in Zoom conversation with my Launching Your Ministry Class.   Notes from Paige Rouse.