Stopping to Think

"It's harder to discover our desire for God when things go well." Larry Crabb Commonplace Monday is a series of posts wherein, on Monday mornings, I share short quips, sentences -perhaps as much as a paragraph- which I have collected in my various commonplace books and files. If I wrote down or recall where it came from I will certainly give attribution. However, sometimes I write down things and not where they came from. So if you see anything like that here and recognize it, that's what comment sections are for. 

The day of death is better than the day of birth Death is someplace we all arrive - are you ready? The only way to find your life is to lose it I take that to mean serving others and abandoning my pursuit of fulfillment is the only way to be fulfilled. To live is Christ, to die is gain Jesus has a purpose for me here, a design that I may find life in. But it will never compare to eternity with Him. Love the brotherhood . Fear God. Honor the king. They will know we are disciples by our love. We are disciples by virtue of fearing and following God. One way we display that fear of God by honoring those authorities He has ordained. The Lord is my Shepherd Nothing can pluck me out of the hand, or the sheepfold, of my loving Shepherd. I can have rock solid trust in my God. What then shall we say to these things ? If God is for us, who can be against us? God is the transcendent Lord of all creation. He predestines, calls, justifies, and glorifies His children. He ordains not only...

And they said to him, “The disciples of John fast often and offer prayers, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours eat and drink.” And Jesus said to them, “Can you make wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in those days.” He also told them a parable: “No one tears a piece from a new garment and puts it on an old garment. If he does, he will tear the new, and the piece from the new will not match the old. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed. But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins. And no one after drinking old wine desires new, for he says, ‘The old is good.’” (Luke 5:33-39 ESV) Just a quick note of something I noticed in my devotions the other morning. Many are familiar with this passage, and our typical "lesson" drawn from it, that being tha...