Distress Christian Quotes

Oh, so that's why you're up here. For a pity party." "This isn't a joke. I'm serious." I could tell Lissa was getting angry. It was trumping her earlier distress. He shrugged and leaned casually against the sloping wall. "So am I. I love pity parties. I wish I'd brought the hats. What do you want to mope about first? How it's going to take you a whole day to be popular and loved again? How you'll have to wait a couple weeks before Hollister can ship out some new clothes? If you spring for rush shipping, it might not be so long.

The most experienced psychologist or observer of human nature knows infinitely less of the human heart than the simplest Christian who lives beneath the Cross of Jesus. The greatest psychological insight, ability, and experience cannot grasp this one thing: what sin is. Worldly wisdom knows what distress and weakness and failure are, but it does not know the godlessness of man. And so it also does not know that man is destroyed only by his sin and can be healed only by forgiveness. Only the Christian knows this. In the presence of a psychiatrist I can only be a sick man; in the presence of a Christian brother I can dare to be a sinner. The psychiatrist must first search my heart and yet he never plumbs its ultimate depth. The Christian brother knows when I come to him: here is a sinner like myself, a godless man who wants to confess and yearns for God’s forgiveness. The psychiatrist views me as if there were no God. The brother views me as I am before the judging and merciful God in the Cross of Jesus Christ.

The lighthouse does not qualify your distress; it does not ask if you are black or white, wealthy or less so, Democrat or Republican. It does not concern itself with where you stand on a particular issue. Nor does it blame you for being in the middle of the storm. Rather, its priority is how it might guide you toward safe harbor.

Just as the Torah and Bible teach concern for those in distress, the Koran instructs all Muslims to make caring for widows, orphans, and refugees a priority.

...Whilst on board the Beagle I was quite orthodox, and I remember being heartily laughed at by several of the officers... for quoting the Bible as an unanswerable authority on some point of morality... But I had gradually come by this time, i.e., 1836 to 1839, to see that the Old Testament from its manifestly false history of the world, with the Tower of Babel, the rainbow at sign, &c., &c., and from its attributing to God the feelings of a revengeful tyrant, was no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindoos, or the beliefs of any barbarian. ...By further reflecting that the clearest evidence would be requisite to make any sane man believe in the miracles by which Christianity is supported, (and that the more we know of the fixed laws of nature the more incredible do miracles become), that the men at that time were ignorant and credulous to a degree almost uncomprehensible by us, that the Gospels cannot be proved to have been written simultaneously with the events, that they differ in many important details, far too important, as it seemed to me, to be admitted as the usual inaccuracies of eyewitnesses; by such reflections as these, which I give not as having the least novelty or value, but as they influenced me, I gradually came to disbelieve in Christianity as a divine revelation. The fact that many false religions have spread over large portions of the earth like wild-fire had some weight with me. Beautiful as is the morality of the New Testament, it can be hardly denied that its perfection depends in part on the interpretation which we now put on metaphors and allegories. But I was very unwilling to give up my belief... Thus disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress, and have never since doubted even for a single second that my conclusion was correct. I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother and almost all of my friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine.

I am not a one-issue voter in the sense that indicates I am an ignorant fundamentalist who only cares about one thing. I believe in protecting the environment. I believe in caring for the poor, the orphan, the widow in her distress. These are some of the so-called "issues" that many of us use to justify voting for Obama. How can we possibly claim it is Christian love for the poor and helpless that motivates us to vote for such a man when he is so committed to the killing of the most helpless among us?

I was sorry to see the gloomy picture which you drew of the affairs of your Country in your letter of December; but I hope events have not turned out so badly as you then apprehended. Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind, those which are caused by a difference of sentiments in religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing, and ought most to be deprecated. I was in hopes, that the enlightened and liberal policy, which has marked the present age, would at least have reconciled Christians of every denomination so far, that we should never again see their religious disputes carried to such a pitch as to endanger the peace of Society. [Letter to Edward Newenham, 20 October 1792 about violence between Catholics and Protestants]

No matter what happens to you, if you have life, with faith and hope, you will live to see your situation change.

Those who really can receive bread from a stranger and smile in gratitude, can feed many without even realizing it. Those who can sit in silence with their fellow man not knowing what to say but knowing that they should be there, can bring new life in a dying heart. Those who are not afraid to hold a hand in gratitude, to shed tears in grief, and to let a sigh of distress arise straight from the heart, can break through paralyzing boundaries and witness the birth of a new fellowship, the fellowship of the broken.

The priest invents and encourages every kind of suffering and distress so that man may not have the opportunity to become scientific, which requires a considerable degree of free time, health, and an outlook of confident positivism. Thus, the religious authorities work hard to make and keep people feeling sinful, unworthy, and unhappy.

When we fall, we will rise again.

However alarming, however distressing self-knowledge may be, better that than the tremendous evils of self-ignorance."--Caird.

If you don’t reach out to me when I am in distress, do you want to celebrate my success?

The Founding Fathers of the United States understood the risk of tribal religious conflict very well. George Washington observed, “Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind those which are caused by difference of sentiments in religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing and ought most to be deprecated.” James Madison agreed, noting the “torrents of blood” that result from religious competition. John Adams insisted that “the government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.” America has slipped a bit since then.

As a newborn baby breathes and cries, so the signs of life in a newborn Christian are faith and repentance, inhaling the love of God and exhaling an initial cry of distress. And at that point what God provides, exactly as for a newborn infant, is the comfort, protection, and nurturing promise of a mother. "If God is our father, the church is our mother." The words are those of the Swiss Reformer John Calvin ... it is as impossible, unnecessary, and undesirable to be a Christian all by yourself as it is to be a newborn baby all by yourself.

The comprehensive organization of the church, with its solid roots and the manifold forms of charitable help to the many who were poor and in distress; • Christian monotheism, which commended itself as the progressive and enlightened position in the face of polytheism, with its wealth of myths; • The lofty ethic, which, tested by ascetics and martyrs to the point of death, showed itself to be superior to pagan morality;

May your heart be joyful to overcome painful situation.

You are a wonderful sacred-soul.

There is a 'movement' of meditation, expressing the basic 'paschal' rhythm of the Christian life, the passage from death to life in Christ. Sometimes prayer, meditation and contemplation are 'death' - a kind of descent into our own nothingness, a recognition of helplessness, frustration, infidelity, confusion, ignorance. Note how common this theme is in the Psalms. If we need help in meditation we can turn to scriptural texts that express this profound distress of man in his nothingness and his total need of God. Then as we determine to face the hard realities of our inner life and humbly for faith, he draws us out of darkness into light - he hears us, answers our prayer, recognizes our need, and grants us the help we require - if only by giving us more faith to believe that he can and will help us in his own time. This is already a sufficient answer.

It distresses me somewhat to hear a person say, “I am a born-again Christian.” What’s wrong with such a statement? Well, what other kind of Christian is there? If rebirth is absolutely essential in order to get into the kingdom of God, as Jesus said it is, there cannot be such a thing as a non-born-again Christian. To say “born-again Christian” is like saying “Christian Christian.” It’s a redundancy, a kind of theological stuttering.

O that Christians would learn to live with one eye on Christ crucified and the other on his coming in glory! If everlasting joys were more in your thoughts, spiritual joys would abound more in your hearts. No wonder you are comfortless when heaven is forgotten. When Christians let fall their heavenly expectations but heighten their earthly desires, they are preparing themselves for fear and trouble. Who has met with a distressed, complaining soul where either a low expectation of heavenly blessings, or too high a hope for joy on earth is not present? What keeps us under trouble is either we do not expect what God has promised, or we expect what he did not promise.

You are a Jew?' the Dalai Lama asked him. When Kevin said yes, His Holiness said, 'Judaism and Buddhism are very much alike. You should learn more about both and become a better Jew.' I envy that. My tradition has a hard time blessing strong bonds to other traditions, especially those whose truths run counter to our own. We like people to make a conscious choice for Christ and then stay on the road they have chosen, inviting other people to join them as persuasively as they can. It is difficult to imagine a Christian minister talking to a Buddhist who has spent years studying a Christian concept and then telling him to go become a better Buddhist. In some circles, that would constitute a failure on the minister's part, a missed opportunity to save a soul. This is another way in which Buddhism and Christianity differ. Both are evangelistic - what else is a Buddhist mission doing in a suburb of Atlanta? - but the Buddhists seem to understand what Gandhi meant by the 'evangelism of the rose.' Distressed by the missionary tactics of Christians in his country, he reminded them that a rose does not have to preach. It simply spreads its fragrance, allowing people to respond as they will.

A generous intercourse of charity united the most distant provinces, and the smaller congregations were cheerfully assisted by the alms of their more opulent brethren. Such an institution, which paid less regard to the merit than to the distress of the object, very materially conduced to the progress of Christianity. The Pagans, who were actuated by a sense of humanity, while they derided the doctrines, acknowledged the benevolence of the new sect. The prospect of immediate relief and of future protection allured into its hospitable bosom many of those unhappy persons whom the neglect of the world would have abandonned to the miseries of want, of sickness, and of old age. There is some reason likewise to believe, that great numbers of infants, who, according to the inhuman practice of the times, had been exposed by their parents, were frequently rescued from death, baptised, educated, and maintained by the piety of the Christians, and at the expense of the public treasure.

If anyone thinks he is religious without controlling his tongue, then his religion is useless and he deceives himself. 27 Pure and undefiled religion before our God and Father is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself unstained by the •world.

The Christian who loves his heavenly Father may not discern by outward providences or visible signs any heavenly favor above that given those with little or no consecration. Often he is sorely afflicted, distressed, perplexed, and hedged in on every side. Appearances seem to be against him. .

With respect to the Christian life, death has to accompany you on the way. In my case, for example, I think every day that I am going to die. This does not distress me, because the Lord and life have given me the proper preparation. I saw my ancestors die and now it is my turn. When? I do not know.

The blessings and protection of Heaven are at all times necessary, but especially so in times of public distress and danger,” he assured his men, hoping “that every officer and man will endeavor so to live and act as becomes a Christian soldier defending the dearest rights and liberties of his country.

The Christian knows no change with regard to God. He may be rich to-day and poor to-morrow; he may be sickly to-day and well to-morrow; he may be in happiness to-day, to-morrow he may be distressed-but there is no change with regard to his relationship to God. If He loved me yesterday, He loves me to-day.

The more consciousness there is in such a sufferer who in despair wills to be himself, the more his despair intensifies and becomes demonic. It usually originates as follows. A self that in despair wills to be itself is pained in some distress or other that does not allow itself to be taken away from or separated from his concrete self. So now he makes precisely this torment the object of all his passion, and finally it becomes a demonic rage. By now, even if God in heaven and all the angels offered to help him out of it- no, he does not want that, now it is too late. Once he would gladly have given everything to be rid of this agony, but he was kept waiting; now it is too late, now he would rather rage against everything and be the wronged victim of the whole world and of all life, and it is of particular significance to him to make sure that he has his torment on hand and that no one takes it away from him- for then he would not be able to demonstrate and prove to himself that he is right. This eventually becomes such a fixation that for an extremely strange reason he is afraid of eternity, afraid that it will separate him from his, demonically understood, infinite superiority over other men, his justification, demonically understood, for being what he is.

Just as the god Jupiter defended Rome and Huitzilopochtli protected the Aztec Empire, so every Christian kingdom had its own patron saint who helped it overcome difficulties and win wars. England was protected by St George, Scotland by St Andrew, Hungary by St Stephen, and France had St Martin. Cities and towns, professions, and even diseases – each had their own saint. The city of Milan had St Ambrose, while St Mark watched over Venice. St Florian protected chimney cleaners, whereas St Mathew lent a hand to tax collectors in distress. If you suffered from headaches you had to pray to St Agathius, but if from toothaches, then St Apollonia was a much better audience.

That which is now called natural philosophy, embracing the whole circle of science, of which astronomy occupies the chief place, is the study of the works of God, and of the power and wisdom of God in his works, and is the true theology. As to the theology that is now studied in its place, it is the study of human opinions and of human fancies concerning God. It is not the study of God himself in the works that he has made, but in the works or writings that man has made; and it is not among the least of the mischiefs that the Christian system has done to the world, that it has abandoned the original and beautiful system of theology, like a beautiful innocent, to distress and reproach, to make room for the hag of superstition.

If I hope in anything or anyone less than One who has power over suffering and, ultimately, death, I am doomed to final disappointment. Suffering will drive me to hopelessness. What character I have will disintegrate. It is the hope of Christ that makes it possible for us to persevere in times of tribulation and distress. We have an anchor for our souls that rests in the One who has gone before us and conquered.

The most deeply one sinks into one's own religious truth,' Knitter says, 'the more broadly one can appreciate and learn from other truths.' That has been true for me, both as a teacher and as a spiritual seeker. Unlike the young man bent on keeping his Christian faith uncontested and pure, I have gained insight every time I have put mine to the test. Sometimes the results are distressing, as when I find the silence of the meditation bench more healing than the words of my favorite psalms, or when I take greater refuge in the Buddhist concept of impermanence than in the Christian assurance of eternal life. Yet this is how i have discovered that I am Christian to the core. However many other religious languages I learn, I dream in Christian. However much I learn from other spiritual teachers, it is Jesus I come home to at night.

Many readers are familiar with the spirit and the letter of the definition of “prayer”, as given by Ambrose Bierce in his Devil’s Dictionary. It runs like this, and is extremely easy to comprehend: Prayer: A petition that the laws of nature be suspended in favor of the petitioner; himself confessedly unworthy. Everybody can see the joke that is lodged within this entry: The man who prays is the one who thinks that god has arranged matters all wrong, but who also thinks that he can instruct god how to put them right. Half–buried in the contradiction is the distressing idea that nobody is in charge, or nobody with any moral authority. The call to prayer is self–cancelling. Those of us who don’t take part in it will justify our abstention on the grounds that we do not need, or care, to undergo the futile process of continuous reinforcement. Either our convictions are enough in themselves or they are not: At any rate they do require standing in a crowd and uttering constant and uniform incantations. This is ordered by one religion to take place five times a day, and by other monotheists for almost that number, while all of them set aside at least one whole day for the exclusive praise of the Lord, and Judaism seems to consist in its original constitution of a huge list of prohibitions that must be followed before all else. The tone of the prayers replicates the silliness of the mandate, in that god is enjoined or thanked to do what he was going to do anyway. Thus the Jewish male begins each day by thanking god for not making him into a woman (or a Gentile), while the Jewish woman contents herself with thanking the almighty for creating her “as she is.” Presumably the almighty is pleased to receive this tribute to his power and the approval of those he created. It’s just that, if he is truly almighty, the achievement would seem rather a slight one. Much the same applies to the idea that prayer, instead of making Christianity look foolish, makes it appear convincing. Now, it can be asserted with some confidence, first, that its deity is all–wise and all–powerful and, second, that its congregants stand in desperate need of that deity’s infinite wisdom and power. Just to give some elementary quotations, it is stated in the book of Philippians, 4:6, “Be careful for nothing; but in everything by prayer and supplication and thanksgiving, let your requests be known to God.” Deuteronomy 32:4 proclaims that “he is the rock, his work is perfect,” and Isaiah 64:8 tells us, “Now O Lord, thou art our father; we art clay and thou our potter; and we are all the work of thy hand.” Note, then, that Christianity insists on the absolute dependence of its flock, and then only on the offering of undiluted praise and thanks. A person using prayer time to ask for the world to be set to rights, or to beseech god to bestow a favor upon himself, would in effect be guilty of a profound blasphemy or, at the very least, a pathetic misunderstanding. It is not for the mere human to be presuming that he or she can advise the divine. And this, sad to say, opens religion to the additional charge of corruption. The leaders of the church know perfectly well that prayer is not intended to gratify the devout. So that, every time they accept a donation in return for some petition, they are accepting a gross negation of their faith: a faith that depends on the passive acceptance of the devout and not on their making demands for betterment. Eventually, and after a bitter and schismatic quarrel, practices like the notorious “sale of indulgences” were abandoned. But many a fine basilica or chantry would not be standing today if this awful violation had not turned such a spectacularly good profit. And today it is easy enough to see, at the revival meetings of Protestant fundamentalists, the counting of the checks and bills before the laying on of hands by the preacher has even been completed. Again, the spectacle is a shameless one.

You are the salt of the earth.” Some modern teachers seem to think our Lord said, You are the sugar of the earth, meaning that gentleness and winsomeness without curativeness is the ideal of the Christian. Our Lord’s illustration of a Christian is salt, and salt is the most concentrated thing known. Salt preserves wholesomeness and prevents decay. It is a disadvantage to be salt. Think of the action of salt on a wound, and you will realize this. If you get salt into a wound, it hurts, and when God’s children are amongst those who are “raw” towards God, their presence hurts. The person who is wrong with God is like an open wound, and when salt gets in it causes annoyance and distress and the person is spiteful and bitter. The disciples of Jesus in the present dispensation preserve society from corruption; the salt causes excessive irritation, which spells persecution for the saint.

Alexandria,” he began, the name lingering on the morning air as though it did not belong amongst trees, but instead somewhere much safer, much more enclosed. “Christian,” she breathed after her name had remained uncomfortably within his ears for a most distressing period of time. The tears in her eyes had begun to fill quickly and more tears fell as she stared upon him expectantly, and he was quite suddenly aware that a drink of blood would be most desirable to ease the sheer uncomfortable edge he felt with her stare.

I have no doubt that Mother Teresa would gladly endorse Kuyper’s manifesto: “There is not one square inch of the entire creation about which Jesus Christ does not cry out, ‘This is mine! This belongs to me!’” She knew that Jesus has conquered sin . She believed deeply in the ultimate triumph of the cross . But Mother Teresa did not see the square inches Jesus has redeemed as territory that we must now triumphantly claim as our prize . She knew that many of those square inches are presently occupied by people with stinking, rotting flesh, by grieving parents, by frightened children—the abused, the abandoned, the persecuted and the desperately poor . And she was convinced that our “claiming” those places in the name of Christ means that we must go out to join him “in the distressing disguise” as he makes the agony of the suffering ones his very own . The square inches for which Christ died are still often very lonely and desolate places . And we must be willing to take our place in those situations, knowing that “in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us .

We should not be distracted by anything; neither by dreams, whether evil or seemingly good, nor by the thought of anything, whether good or bad, nor by distress or deceitful joy, nor by self-conceit or despair, nor by depression or elation, nor by a sense of abandonment or by illusory help and strength, nor by negligence or progress, nor by laziness or seeming zeal, nor by apparent dispassion or passionate attachment. Rather with humility we should strive to maintain a state of stillness, free from all distraction, knowing that no one can do us harm unless we ourselves wish for it.

That That a man is beloved of God, should melt him all into esteem and holy veneration. It should make him so courageous as an angel of God. It should make him delight in calamities and distresses for God's sake. By giving me all things else, He hath made even afflictions themselves my treasures. The sharpest trials, are the finest furbishing. the most tempestuous weather is the best seed-time. A Christian is an oak flourishing in winter. God hath so magnified and glorified His servant, and exalted him so highly in His eternal bosom, that no other joy should be able to move us but that alone.

One of the most pathetic pages in the history of Christian missions is that which describes the scene when Judson was finally released and returned to the mission house seeking Ann, who again had failed to visit him for some weeks. As he ambled down the street as fast as his maimed ankles would permit, the tormenting question kept repeating itself, “Is Ann still alive?” Upon reaching the house, the first object to attract his attention was a fat, half-naked Burman woman squatting in the ashes beside a pan of coals and holding on her knees an emaciated baby, so begrimed with dirt that it did not occur to him that it could be his own. Across the foot of the bed, as though she had fallen there, lay a human object that, at the first glance, was no more recognizable than his child. The face was of a ghastly paleness and the body shrunken to the last degree of emaciation. The glossy black curls had all been shorn from the finely-shaped head. There lay the faithful and devoted wife who had followed him so unwearily from prison to prison, ever alleviating his distresses and consoling him in his trials. Presently Ann felt warm tears falling upon her face and, rousing from her daze, saw Adoniram at her side.12

Just as the separation of Church and world became visible only in their continuous conflict, so also does personal sanctification consist in the conflict of the Spirit against the flesh. The saints are only conscious of the strife and distress, the weakness and sin in their lives; and the further they advance in holiness, the more they feel they are fighting a losing battle and dying in the flesh. "They that are of Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with the passions and lusts thereof" (Gal. 5.24). They still live in the flesh, but for that very reason their whole life must be an act of faith in the Son of God, who has begun his life in them (Gal. 2.20). The Christian dies daily (I Cor. 15.31), but although this may mean suffering and decay in the flesh, the inward man is renewed day by day (II Cor. 4.16). The only reason why the saints have to die in the flesh is that Christ through the Holy Spirit has begun to live his life in them. The effect of Christ and his life on the saints is that they die after the flesh. There is no need for them to go out of their way to look for suffering: indeed that would only mean a return to the self-assertion of the flesh. Every day Christ is their death and Christ is their life.

Anybody who lives beneath the Cross and who has discerned in the Cross of Jesus the utter wickedness of all men and of his own heart will find there is no sin that can ever be alien to him. Anybody who has once been horrified by the dreadfulness of his own sin that nailed Jesus to the Cross will no longer be horrified by even the rankest sins of a brother. Looking at the Cross of Jesus, he knows the human heart. He knows how utterly lost it is in sin and weakness, how it goes astray in the ways of sin, and he also knows that it is accepted in grace and mercy. Only the brother under the Cross can hear a confession. It is not experience of life but experience of the Cross that makes one a worthy hearer of confessions. The most experienced psychologist or observer of human nature knows infinitely less of the human heart than the simplest Christian who lives beneath the Cross of Jesus. The greatest psychological insight, ability, and experience cannot grasp this one thing: what sin is. Worldly wisdom knows what distress and weakness and failure are, but it does not know the godlessness of men. And so it also does not know that man is destroyed only by his sin and can be healed only by forgiveness. Only the Christian knows this. In the presence of a psychiatrist I can only be a sick man; in the presence of a Christian brother I can dare to be a sinner. The psychiatrist must first search my heart and yet he never plumbs its ultimate depth. The Christian brother knows when I come to him: here is a sinner like myself, a godless man who wants .to confess and yearns for God’s forgiveness. The psychiatrist views me as if there were no God. The brother views me as I am before the judging and merciful God in the Cross of Jesus Christ. It is not lack of psychological knowledge but lack of love for the crucified Jesus Christ that makes us so poor and inefficient in brotherly confession.

The more consciousness there is in such a sufferer who in despair wills to be himself, the more his despair intensifies and becomes demonic. It usually originates as follows. A self that in despair wills to be itself is pained in some distress or other that does not allow itself to be taken away from or separated from his concrete self. So now he makes precisely this torment the object of all his passion, and finally it becomes a demonic age. By now, even if God in heaven and all the angels offered to help him out of it- no, he does not want that, now it is too late. Once he would gladly have given everything to be rid of this agony, but he was kept waiting; now it is too late, now he would rather rage against everything and be the wronged victim of the whole world and of all life, and it is of particular significance to him to make sure that he has his torment on hand and that no one takes it away from him- for then he would not be able to demonstrate and prove to himself that he is right. This eventually becomes such a fixation that for an extremely strange reason he is afraid of eternity, afraid that it will separate him from his, demonically understood, infinite superiority over other men, his justification, demonically understood, for being what he is.

Similarly, we revere our founding fathers precisely because they were loudmouths on the subject of freedom: Give me liberty or give me death! Even the Christianity of early American religious revivals, dating back to the First Great Awakening of the eighteenth century, depended on the showmanship of ministers who were considered successful if they caused crowds of normally reserved people to weep and shout and generally lose their decorum. “Nothing gives me more pain and distress than to see a minister standing almost motionless, coldly plodding on as a mathematician would calculate the distance of the Moon from the Earth,” complained a religious newspaper in 1837.

The unChristian faith is distressing. So is our culture. Yet to see spiritual resurgence among Mosaics and Busters, I hope our response to this observation is like that of the recipients of Paul’s letter. I hope we put aside casual forms of Christianity, piercing the antagonism of our peers with service and sacrifice. We may think the answer to the perception of our being unChristian is for outsiders to understand our faith. The church is not effective when it calls outsiders to live virtuously, which is never really possible apart from regeneration through Christ anyway. The reprieve from our deep-seated image problem comes when Christ followers become more faithful to a God who has redeemed us and more concerned about a hostile culture in need of the same redemption. 4

February 20 MORNING “God, that comforteth those that are cast down.” — 2 Corinthians 7:6 AND who comforteth like Him? Go to some poor, melancholy, distressed child of God; tell him sweet promises, and whisper in his ear choice words of comfort; he is like the deaf adder, he listens not to the voice of the charmer, charm he never so wisely. He is drinking gall and wormwood, and comfort him as you may, it will be only a note or two of mournful resignation that you will get from him; you will bring forth no psalms of praise, no hallelujahs, no joyful sonnets. But let God come to His child, let Him lift up his countenance, and the mourner’s eyes glisten with hope. Do you not hear him sing — “ ’Tis paradise, if thou art here; If thou depart, ’tis hell”? You could not have cheered him: but the Lord has done it; “He is the God of all comfort.” There is no balm in Gilead, but there is balm in God. There is no physician among the creatures, but the Creator is Jehovah-rophi. It is marvellous how one sweet word of God will make whole songs for Christians. One word of God is like a piece of gold, and the Christian is the goldbeater, and can hammer that promise out for whole weeks. So, then, poor Christian, thou needest not sit down in despair. Go to the Comforter, and ask Him to give thee consolation. Thou art a poor dry well. You have heard it said, that when a pump is dry, you must pour water down it first of all, and then you will get water, and so, Christian, when thou art dry, go to God, ask Him to shed abroad His joy in thy heart, and then thy joy shall be full. Do not go to earthly acquaintances, for you will find them Job’s comforters after all; but go first and foremost to thy “God, that comforteth those that are cast down,” and you will soon say, “In the multitude of my thoughts within me Thy comforts delight my soul.

What do you have in here?” [the Archbishop] asked, pointing to one of the little bottles. “Quinine, Vladika,” answered the father confused. “Preparation against fever… How often must one take it per day and for how many days?” “Three, four times a day, depending on the gravity of the illness. One should take it until the fever breaks down.” “Therefore, in order to get rid of such a disease that, in fact, is a just trifle, one has to take this medicine three or four times a day and pay the doctor a few visits. Do the same with the Great Medicine that our Lord gave us. The Apostles and the first Christians would commune daily, spending their time in love and continuous praying. And we, the haters, the flatterers, always ready to trip someone, come to our Heavenly Doctor once a year and want immediate cure from all diseases, distresses and sufferings inherited from our ancestors; we want nature, which deteriorated over thousands of years, to instantly revive and we want ourselves to become new people. [Chapter IX]

Pray that you may be open to any painful memories that arise and to His healing presence in your life. Now think about your relationship with your unfaithful partner. Allow yourself to remember some of the painful incidents with your partner, for example, the discovery of the affair with all of your reactions of stunned disbelief, rage, and deep sorrow. Allow yourself to embrace all the distressful thoughts and feelings at the time. Relive the moment, despite your natural resistance to recall it. Then, as far as you are able, express your forgiveness to your unfaithful partner. Next, relive that painful moment again, but this time, imagine that Jesus is standing by your side. Even if Christianity isn’t the religion you subscribe to, you can still imagine Jesus and his presence. Imagine what Jesus would say to you and your partner at that moment, how he would extend his love and compassion. Imagine Jesus embracing your partner in forgiveness and then holding you in his arms, reassuring you of his love and protection. Finally, thank Jesus for his love and healing, for not leaving you alone in your suffering.

Another way of expressing the history of religion is that faith has hijacked religious spirituality. The prophets and leaders of organized religions, consciously or not, have put spirituality in the service of groups defined by their creation myths. Awe-inspiring ceremonies and sacred rites and rituals and sacrifices are given the deity in return for worldly security and the promise of immortality. As part of the exchange the deity must also make correct moral decisions. Within the Christian faith, among most of the denominational tribes, God is obliged to be against one or more of the following: homosexuality, artificial contraception, female bishops, and evolution. The Founding Fathers of the United States understood the risk of tribal religious conflict very well. George Washington observed, “Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind those which are caused by difference of sentiments in religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing and ought most to be deprecated.” James Madison agreed, noting the “torrents of blood” that result from religious competition. John Adams insisted that “the government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.” America has slipped a bit since then. It has become almost mandatory for political leaders to assure the electorate that they have a faith, even, as for the Mormonism of Mitt Romney, if it looks ridiculous to the great majority. Presidents often listen to the counsel of Christian advisers. The phrase “under God” was introduced into the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954, and today no major political candidate would dare suggest it be removed.

the ages. The Epicureans, he wrote, felt that suicide was justified when life became unbearable. The Stoics approved of it, too. There was that brilliant Seneca quote: “I shall not abandon old age, if old age preserves me intact for myself, and intact as regards the better part of myself; but if old age begins to shatter my mind and to pull its various faculties to pieces … I shall rush out of a house that is crumbling and tottering.” In Irwin’s chronology, it was vapid Christian theologians who pulled common sense away from this reasonable position, with their insistence that suicide was self-murder, and so a kind of murder, and so a sin. Still, there were always brave thinkers who believed otherwise. Thomas More, in his 1516 book Utopia, wrote that in a true utopic world, a man who was suffering from an “incurable but also distressing and agonizing” disease, who had become “a burden to himself, and a trouble to others,” would “free himself from this bitter life.” When he did, it would be more than an act of prudence; it would be “a pious and holy action.

I'm convinced that faithful remembering is critical to faithful living, I'm distressed by the "historylessness" that generally characterizes American Christians. Among its other costs, our historical amnesia contributes directly to our dysfunctional engagement with contemporary politics, a pattern distinguished chiefly by its worldly pragmatism and shallowness. I fear we are giving the culture reason to view followers of Christ as simply one more interest group, one more strategically savvy voting bloc willing to trade political support for political influence.

God’s clothing of Adam and Eve has provided a thought model and a metaphor that have been repeatedly used and enjoyed all down the centuries. The Jewish poet and prophet Isaiah describes how the redeemed phrase their song of gratitude to God: I will greatly rejoice in the Lord; my soul shall exult in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation; he has covered me with the robe of righteousness. (Isa 61:10) In the parable of the Prodigal Son, Christ describes how the prodigal came home in all his filthy rags, shame and disgrace, and then what his father’s response was: ‘the father said to his servants, “Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him”’ (Luke 15:22). The picturesque metaphors of the Revelation say of the redeemed: They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. ‘Therefore they are before the throne of God.’ (Rev 7:14–15) And this same age-long symbolic gesture and metaphor, translated into the straightforward theological language of the New Testament reads like this: God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not reckoning unto them their trespasses . . . him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in him. (2 Cor 5:19, 21 rv) For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous. (Rom 5:19) This, then, in any generation is the first stage of redemption.1 The Christian gospel does not pretend that upon believing in Christ we shall never thereafter suffer any more pain, distress, sickness or death. Far from it. But it does affirm that God stands waiting to put into effect, for any who will, the first stage of redemption here and now: that is, personal reconciliation and peace with God, and the certainty that God will never reject us, because in Christ God is for us: If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. (Rom 8:31–34)

But in their distress, they turned to the LORD, the God of Israel, and sought him, and he was founded by them. 2 Chronicles 15:4

all human beings remain aware of God, guiltily, with uncomfortable inklings of coming judgment that they wish they did not have. Only the gospel of Christ can speak peace to this distressful aspect of the human condition.

On the basis of the Bible, the church fathers did not speak out in favor of this Stoic ideal. Augustine8 and later Thomas Aquinas9 interpreted the word misericordia in its linguistic sense: to have one’s heart (cor) with the unfortunate (miseri), with those who, in the widest sense of the word, are poor and in distress. They

The promise of the psalm—and both Hebrews and Christians have always read it this way—is not that we shall never stub our toes but that no injury, no illness, no accident, no distress will have evil power over us, that is, will be able to separate us from God’s purposes in us.

Man has been aware of this danger since the earliest times, even in the most primitive stages of culture. It was to arm himself against this threat and to heal the damage done, that he developed religious and magical practices. This is why the medicine-man is also the priest; he is the saviour of the body as well as of the soul, and religions are systems of healing for psychic illness. This is especially true of the two, greatest religions of man, Christianity and Buddhism. Man is never helped in his suffering by what he thinks for himself, but only by revelations of a wisdom greater than his own. It is this which lifts him out of his distress.

It’s been a hard week at the office. Because I work at a Christian organization, my co-workers ask if they can pray for me. I am moved that they’ve noticed my emotional distress. They gather round, lay their hands on my shoulders. I close my eyes and breathe deeply, listening to their words. But before I know it, the prayers take a turn. They are no longer about my circumstances but about me. They ask not that I would be understood but that I would find it within myself to give more grace. The prayers don’t ask that doors would open for me; they ask that God would gift me with skills they wish I had. These prayers aren’t for me. The prayers are that I would become who they want me to be. “Lord, make this Black person just like us.

When we neglect right-brain development in our discipleship, we ignore the side of the brain that specializes in character formation. Left-brained discipleship emphasizes beliefs, doctrine, willpower, and strategies but neglects right-brain loving attachments, joy, emotional development, and identity. Ignoring right-brain relational development creates Christians who believe in God’s love but have difficulty experiencing it in daily life, especially during distress.

There are so many issues distressing children today. As Christians and as writers in many formats --- text messages, social media posts, blogs, notes, articles, and so on --- we need to address those issues by preparing encouraging words that children can understand and relate to so that we may help them heal.

In August, 1746, disputes about baptism were first brought into this church; and while the pastor, Mr. Backus, was prayerfully considering the subject, ten persons were baptized by Elder Moulton. The description of his subsequent exercises, and the result to which he was brought, is thus given in his own words.   “About three months after, when the heat of controversy was abated, the question was put to my conscience in my retired hours, Where is it, and in what relation to the church, do those stand, who are baptized, but not converted? I could see that all the circumcised were obliged to keep the passover; and I had seen that there was no halfway in the Christian church, nor any warrant to admit any to communion therein, without a credible profession of saving faith. No tongue can tell the distress I now felt. Could I have discovered any foundation in Scripture for my former practice, I should most certainly have continued therein: But all my efforts failing, I was at last brought to the old standard, so as to leave good men and bad men out of the question, and simply inquire, What saith the Scriptures?” By this means his mind was at length settled, in the full conviction of the baptism of believers only, and he submitted himself to this ordinance, August 22, 1751.

What nonsense you do talk, to be sure,’ said Stephen. ‘What “balls”, as you sea-officers say: it is a matter of common observation that a man may be sincerely attached to two women at once – to three, to four, to a very surprising number of women. However,’ he said, ‘no doubt you know more of these things than I. No: what I had in mind were those wider loyalties, those more general conflicts – the candid American, for example, before the issue became envenomed; the unimpassioned Jacobite in ‘45; Catholic priests in France today – Frenchmen of many complexions, in and out of France. So much pain; and the more honest the man the worse the pain. But there at least the conflict is direct: it seems to me that the greater mass of confusion and distress must arise from these less evident divergencies – the moral law, the civil, military, common laws, the code of honour, custom, the rules of practical life, of civility, of amorous conversation, gallantry, to say nothing of Christianity for those that practise it. All sometimes, indeed generally, at variance; none ever in an entirely harmonious relation to the rest; and a man is perpetually required to choose one rather than another, perhaps (in his particular case) its contrary. It is as though our strings were each tuned according to a completely separate system – it is as though the poor ass were surrounded by four and twenty mangers.

Distressingly, everyone thought I should do something different. The religious experts insisted that a good Christian would stay. Feminists argued that a strong woman would leave. Parenting articles preached that a good mother thinks only of what is best for her children. All of those differing opinions meant that I quite literally could not please everyone. That was a relief. When a woman finally learns that pleasing the world is impossible, she becomes free to learn how to please herself.

Our right brain governs our emotions and awareness of our bodies. In times of distress, low joy, or general left-brained dominant living, this integration dims or breaks down. We will often feel “outside our bodies” or “in our minds.” In left-brained Christianity, we tend to lose our sense of feeling God’s presence in our body. The right brain governs this ability, so as we gravitate toward a full-brained discipleship, we grow to experience God in our bodies.

Joy helps us regulate our emotions and endure suffering. Jesus refused to relinquish joy in the midst of His suffering on the cross. When we are able to stay relationally connected to others and God, we experience joy while we suffer. Joy does not remove our pain, but it gives us the strength to endure. Remember that joy is relational, so “joy in suffering” means that God and our community are glad to be with us in our distress. They do not allow us to suffer alone. We are able to bear our suffering like Jesus, “who for the joy set before Him endured the cross” (Heb. 12:2 NASB).

Eventually that energy will flow out as either hostility or love. The energy must and will find a form, a shape, in our lives. It is now, as we wade into the secret distress of the feminine and encounter the largeness of the wound, that we need to be very conscious and keep the despair we might feel from becoming channeled into bitterness. We have to work very hard to keep it flowing toward compassion. The Tamper-Proof Bottle During those months when I was forming my feminist critique, I watched a friend struggle to open a tamper-proof bottle of medication.

Salvation is healing [sozo], fullness of life, and life in abundance. And we learn in this ancient teaching at the dawn of time that this is the kind of Uncreated One and mystery at the heart of the universe who made us. And then we hear a teaching, „Now wait for the Lord. My soul waits.“ Now it‘s not like waiting at a bus stop. It‘s an intentional attentive waiting. It‘s patience. It‘s certainty that God will come to help us. Who dares to wait patiently in the midst of distress? That is the way that we are given. That is the spiritual instruction. Wait for the Lord knowingly, expecting that you will have help. If you don‘t wait, if you run off and give up and say, „Okay, time‘s up. I tried that; I‘m going to do something else“ – that‘s what we call outer darkness, you‘re on your own. Wait for the Lord. (p. 44)

Our Savior was a suffering Savior. He went before us into the uncharted land of agony and death. He went where no man is called to go. His Father gave Him a cup to drink that will never touch our lips. God will not ask us to endure anything comparable to the distress Christ took on Himself. 'Wherever God calls us to go, whatever He summons us to endure, will fall far short of what Jesus experienced.

True believing Christians are sheep among wolves, sheep for the slaughter. They must be baptized in anxiety, distress, affliction, persecution, suffering, and death.

Interpreting the verses as referring to the Catholic Church or, as one writer conjectured – to “corrupt Christianity” in the last days, is fraught with problems, as there is no “mother” of the Church in the world today who would be distressed by its fall.

When his teaching is more straightforward, it is no less baffling or challenging. Blessed are the meek (Mt 5:5); to look at a woman with lust is to commit adultery (Mt 5:28); forgive wrongs seventy times seven (Mt 18:22); you can't be my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions (Lk 14:33); no divorce (Mk 10:9); love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you (Mt 5:44). A passage that gives us the keys to the reign, or kingdom, of God is Matthew 25:31–46, the scene of the judgment of the nations: Then the king will say to those on his right hand, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” As Mother Teresa put it, we meet Christ in the distressing disguise of the poor. Jesus’ teaching and witness is obviously relevant to social, economic, and political issues. Indeed, the Jewish leaders and the Romans (the powers that be of the time) found his teaching and actions disturbing enough to arrest him and execute him. A scene from the life of Clarence Jordan drives home the radicalism and relevance of Jesus’ message. In the early 1950s Clarence approached his brother, Robert Jordan, a lawyer and future state senator and justice of the Georgia Supreme Court, to legally represent Koinonia Farm. Clarence, I can't do that. You know my political aspirations. Why if I represented you, I might lose my job, my house, everything I've got. We might lose everything too, Bob. It's different for you. Why is it different? I remember, it seems to me, that you and I joined the church the same Sunday, as boys. I expect when we came forward the preacher asked me about the same question he did you. He asked me, “Do you accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior?” And I said, “Yes.” What did you say? I follow Jesus, Clarence, up to a point. Could that point by any chance be—the cross? That's right. I follow him to the cross, but not on the cross. I'm not getting myself crucified. Then I don't believe you're a disciple. You're an admirer of Jesus, but not a disciple of his. I think you ought to go back to the church you belong to, and tell them you're an admirer not a disciple. Well now, if everyone who felt like I do did that, we wouldn't have a church, would we? The question, Clarence said, is, “Do you have a church?”25 The early Christian community tried to live according to the values of the reign of God that Jesus proclaimed, to be disciples. The Jerusalem community was characterized by unlimited liability and total availability for each other, sharing until everyone's needs were met (Acts 2:43–47; 4:32–37).26 Paul's exhortation to live a new life in Christ in his letter to the Romans, chapters 12 through 15, has remarkable parallels to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, chapters 5 through 7, and Luke 6:20–49.27 Both Jesus and Paul offer practical steps for conflict resolution and peacemaking. Similarly, the Epistle of James exhorts Christians to “be doers of the word and not merely hearers who deceive themselves” (1:22), and warns against class divisions (2:1–13) and the greed and corruption of the wealthy (5:1–6).

He led them forth by the right way." Psalm 107:7 Changeful experience often leads the anxious believer to inquire "Why is it thus with me?" I looked for light, but lo, darkness came; for peace, but behold, trouble. I said in my heart, my mountain standeth firm; I shall never be moved. Lord, thou dost hide thy face, and I am troubled. It was but yesterday that I could read my title clear; today my evidences are bedimmed, and my hopes are clouded. Yesterday, I could climb to Pisgah's top, and view the landscape o'er, and rejoice with confidence in my future inheritance; today, my spirit has no hopes, but many fears; no joys, but much distress. Is this part of God's plan with me? Can this be the way in which God would bring me to heaven? Yes, it is even so. The eclipse of your faith, the darkness of your mind, the fainting of your hope, all these things are but parts of God's method of making you ripe for the great inheritance upon which you shall soon enter. These trials are for the testing and strengthening of your faith--they are waves that wash you further upon the rock--they are winds which waft your ship the more swiftly towards the desired haven. According to David's words, so it might be said of you, "So he bringeth them to their desired haven." By honour and dishonour, by evil report and by good report, by plenty and by poverty, by joy and by distress, by persecution and by peace, by all these things is the life of your souls maintained, and by each of these are you helped on your way. Oh, think not, believer, that your sorrows are out of God's plan; they are necessary parts of it. "We must, through much tribulation, enter the kingdom." Learn, then, even to "count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations." "O let my trembling soul be still, And wait thy wise, thy holy will! I cannot, Lord, thy purpose see, Yet all is well since ruled by thee.

True believing Christians are sheep among wolves, sheep for the slaughter. They must be baptized in anxiety, distress, affliction, persecution, suffering, and death.

In times of adversity and affliction, may you wait for the Lord to rescue and deliver you.

The end of the persecutions was, paradoxically, a source of disappointment for many Christians. In the new climate of imperial favour, bishops were increasingly at war with their congregations and with one another, arguing about matters ranging from the mundane to the mystical. Money was often at the root of the problem, and this was distressing.

And another thing needs to be said. Nothing, absolutely nothing, in the weeks preceding Zero Day made it possible to predict it. There were wars, of course, and famines and massacres. And here and there a few atrocities. Some of them flagrant (in the underdeveloped countries), others less obvious (in the Christian countries). But nothing, taken all in all, in any way different from what we had been seeing for the past thirty years. And all of these things had in any case occurred at a convenient distance, among peoples far removed from us. We were distressed by them, of course, we expressed indignation, signed petitions, or even donated small sums of money on occasions. But at the same time, in our heart of hearts, after having dutifully experienced these vicarious sufferings, we returned to our usual feeling of security. Death was something that always happened to others.

But even that distress must be balanced by enthusiastic hope. It is his task always to sound the note of biblical optimism that is warranted by the promises of God. A counselor must be, above much else, a man of hope.

As distressing to the Catholic Church as was the discovery of their mythos and ritual in Mexico was finding it in Asia, from the Near to Far East. In the 19th century, Catholic missionary Abbe Huc traveled to Asia, where he encountered rites and rituals startlingly similar to those of Catholicism. In his book Christianity in China, Tartary, and Thibet, Huc makes the following surprising statements: The Gospel of the Christian religion, when preached successively to all the nations of the earth, excited no astonishment, for it had been everywhere prophesied, and was universally expected.

Grace freely given by God,

Surely his love proves he is the person to comfort you. Therefore, let him into your heart, Christian, so he may comfort you in your distress. He is a faithful Comforter. Shakespeare tells us (in King Lear) that a thankless child is “sharper than a serpent’s tooth” and so is an unfaithful friend. To have a friend turn away from me in my distress is more bitter that “the gall of bitterness.” Oh, misery of miseries, to have someone who loves me in my prosperity forsake me in the dark day of my trouble! That is very sad, but God’s Spirit is not like that. He always loves and loves even to the end. He is a faithful Comforter.

Korie: When I was a student at Ouachita Christian School, my senior-year Bible teacher, David Matthews, adopted a little five-year-old boy. In class that year, we talked a lot about how important it was for Christians families to adopt and that children should never be left without a home and loving parents. The idea always stuck with me. James 1:27 says: “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” When we were dating, like most couples, Willie and I talked about how many kids we wanted to have. I told Willie about my desire to adopt and he was all for it. We both grew up with big families so we decided we wanted to have four kids, with at least one of them through adoption. We never knew how that would happen. We didn’t know if we would adopt a boy or a girl or a newborn baby or older child. We decided we would remain open, and if God wanted it to happen, it would happen. There were several families at White’s Ferry Road Church that adopted children, including one couple that had adopted biracial twins. Their lawyer came to them and asked if they were interested in adopting another biracial child who was about to be born. They told her they couldn’t do it at the time, but they remembered that we had expressed an interest in adopting a child. Their lawyer called Willie and me and told us how difficult it was to place biracial children in homes in the South. We were shocked. It was the twenty-first century. We committed to being a part of changing that in our society. Skin color should not make a difference.

If God has called you to be really like Jesus in your spirit, He will draw you into a life of crucifixion and humility, and put on you such demands of obedience that He will not allow you to follow other Christians; and in many ways He will seem to let other good people do things that He will not let you do. Other Christians and ministers who seem very religious and useful may push themselves, pull wires and work schemes to carry out their schemes, but you cannot do it; and if you attempt it, you will meet with such failure and rebuke from the Lord as to make you sorely penitent. Others may brag on themselves, on their work, on their success, on their writings, but the Holy Spirit will not allow you to do any such thing; and if you begin it, He will lead you into some deep mortification that will make you despise yourself and all your good works. Others may be allowed to succeed in making money, but it is likely that God will keep you poor, because He wants you to have something far better than gold, and that is a helpless dependence upon Him, that He may have the privilege (the right) of supplying your needs day by day out of an unseen treasury. The Lord will let others be honoured and put forward, and keep you hidden away in obscurity, because He wants some choice fragrant fruit for His coming glory which can only be produced in the shade. He will let others do a work for Him and get the credit for it, but He will let you work and toil on without knowing how much you are doing; and then to make your work still more precious, He will let others get the credit for the work you have done, and this will make your reward ten times greater when Jesus comes. The Holy Spirit will put a watch over you, with a jealous love, and will rebuke you for little words and feelings or for wasting your time, over which other Christians never seem distressed. So make up your mind that God is an infinite Sovereign, and has the right to do as He pleases with His own, and He may not explain to you a thousand things which may puzzle your reason in His dealings with you. He will take you at your word and if you absolutely sell yourself to be His slave, He will wrap you up in a jealous love and let other people say and do many things which He will not let you say or do. Settle it for ever that you are to deal directly with the Holy Spirit, and that He is to have the privilege of tying your tongue, or chaining your hand, or closing your eyes, in ways that He does not deal with others. Now when you are so possessed with the Living God, that you are in your secret heart pleased and delighted over the peculiar, personal, private, jealous guardianship of the Holy Spirit over your life, you will have found the vestibule of heaven. These

If revival should ever occur, it will revolve around the energetic resolve of doctrinally accurate church members, ministers and theologians of our day bound together in the truth.  Revival has often happened when the country or state is under their greatest duress of sin and blindness.  However, no matter how far a country or state may sink into sin, or despise the Gospel, revival will never occur at the expense of the truth.  Wickliffe was in his Roman Catholic Oxford, Huss in his dark Bohemia, and Luther was in his religiously superstitious Germany.  Calvin and Zwingli were Roman Catholic priests turned Christian in a politically tender Switzerland, and the Scottish Presbyterians were facing the onslaught of a Roman Catholic persecution.  This is how God brings revival – in deep darkness and distress, but never at the expense of the truth.  For, as our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ said, only the truth shall set you free.

Vassal and lord alike belonged to the noble class and passed their lives in the same round of warlike occupations and amusements. To their life is given the name “chivalry,” derived from the Romance word for “horse” and denoting the life of cavaliers or knights. The earliest literature of feudal times extols physical hardihood and bravery, condones brigandage, and shows war brutally waged as almost the only ideal of the early chevalier. Later history indicates that it too often continued to be his practice. But this military aristocrat in time developed, or rather had constructed for him by the Church and the poetical romancers, a set of social ideals of which our present- day use of the term “chivalry” is a reminiscence. The medieval clergy insisted that the true knight should be a manly Christian, should respect and defend the Church, should fight against heathen and heretics, and should protect the needy and those in distress. The minstrels and romancers, who sometimes found the lords away and only the ladies at home when they visited the castles, depicted the true knight as an accomplished gentleman and perfect lover.

We find this even more clearly expressed in Paul, who stresses that justification is apart from works of the law. We might be surprised, then, to see that Paul also emphasizes the necessity of good works for final salvation. God repays every person “according to his works” (Rom 2:6). Those who do evil will suffer “wrath and indignation” (2:8) and “affliction and distress” (2:9), while those who do good will enjoy “eternal life” (2:7, 10). Some have taken these verses to be hypothetical, but the conclusion to Romans 2 shows that the hypothetical reading isn’t convincing, for we see that those who obey do so because of the work of the Spirit in them (2:26 – 29). Their obedience isn’t self-generated but the result of the supernatural work of the Spirit in their lives. Hence, their obedience doesn’t earn or merit eternal life but is the result of the new life they already possess, showing that God’s grace has transformed them in Jesus Christ. It is important to recognize that obedience isn’t motivated by a desire to be accepted by God. Acceptance with God is by faith alone through the work of Christ alone and to the glory of God alone. Obedience, then, stems from joy, from a delight in God, from a desire to do what pleases him. Obedience is necessary, for those who don’t obey reveal that they haven’t truly been accepted by God and show that they don’t know God’s love. But the obedience of believers isn’t animated by a desire to receive God’s love. On the contrary, it is a response to his love. All Christian obedience enshrines the principle: “we love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). So too, we obey because we know his love. Obedience, then, flows out of our freedom and joy. Though it is required, it isn’t simply a duty, it is a delight.

Your blessings far outweigh your bitterness.

We will share each other’s burdens with love and kindness.

Don’t allow the fear to weaken you. You must conquer fear with faith.

I carry my burdens to the Lord. He lightens the weight on my shoulders.

Don’t cry for them to be happy. Find courage to overcome the circumstance.

Find the courage to live life.

Prayer for sisters   “I thank you God, for blessing me with such a darling sister, And thank you for all those wonderful times we have spend together, Thank you for all the encouragement she gave me in times of distress and hardships, I pray that she remains away from all kinds of hardships, I pray that she is never in distress, I pray that her every wish is fulfilled, that she always remains happy, that she is in the best of her health always and may your hand of protection be always on her head.” Amen!

if I found the sermon neither healing nor inspiring, I found the prayers full of hope and consolation. They at least are safe beyond human caprice, conceit, or incapacity. Upon them, too, the man who is distressed at the thought of how little of the needful food he had been able to provide for his people, may fall back for comfort, in the thought that there at least was what ought to have done them good, what it was well worth their while to go to church for. But I did think they were too long for any individual Christian soul, to sympathise with from beginning to end, that is, to respond to, like organ-tube to the fingered key, in every touch of the utterance of the general Christian soul. For my reader must remember that it is one thing to read prayers and another to respond; and that I had had very few opportunities of being in the position of the latter duty. I had had suspicions before, and now they were confirmed—that the present crowding of services was most inexpedient. And as I pondered on the matter, instead of trying to go on praying after I had already uttered my soul, which is but a heathenish attempt after much speaking, I thought how our Lord had given us such a short prayer to pray, and I began to wonder when or how the services came to be so heaped the one on the back of the other as they now were. No doubt many people defended them; no doubt many people could sit them out; but how many people could pray from beginning to end of them

The Christian knows no change with regard to God. He may be rich today and poor to-morrow; he may be sickly today and well to-morrow; he may be in happiness today, to-morrow he may be distressed--but there is no change with regard to his relationship to God. If he loved me yesterday, he loves me today. My unmoving mansion of rest is my blessed Lord. Let prospects be blighted; let hopes be blasted; let joy be withered; let mildews destroy everything; I have lost nothing of what I have in God. He

And if we must take historical blunders in our stride, how will we cope with flat-out contradictions? Did Mary Magdalene at the empty tomb of Jesus see an angel of the Lord [Matthew 28:2] or merely a young man in white [Mark 16:5]? Or was it two men in shining garments [Luke 24:4]? Or two angels [John 20:12]? And how do we deal with the omission of pivotal events? Did Mary see Jesus himself near the tomb, at first mistaking him for a gardener [John 20:14-15]? Surely a sighting of Jesus is critically important evidence of the resurrection, the central mystery of the Christian faith. Yet the encounter at the tomb is mentioned only in the Gospel of John. How could Matthew, Mark and Luke have missed such a crucial point? Historical scholars, and most theologians, recognize that the authors who penned the ancient documents were doing the best they could with the sources available to them, writing in the traditions and expectations of their time, more concerned with presenting a coherent message than with precise historical accuracy. Some biblical scholars, however, even to this day maintain the inerrancy of scripture. They see the Bible as the Word of God, divinely inspired and supernaturally protected from error down the centuries. Unless one reads without comprehension (a distressingly common affliction), a belief in biblical inerrancy demands considerable mental gymnastics. Adherents typically construct a unified account of the gospel stories, not by resolving conflicts, but by adding together all the elements from the different narratives. Thus, Mary Magdalene visited the tomb several times, seeing the different combinations of divine presences on different occasions. For some inscrutable reason, God chose to drop the accounts of those visits into different gospels instead of presenting them logically in a single document.

JULY 1 Be of Good Cheer In the world you have tribulation and trials and distress and frustration; but be of good cheer [take courage; be confident, certain, undaunted]! For I have overcome the world. [I have deprived it of power to harm you and have conquered it for you.] JOHN 16:33 Life in today’s world can be stressful and frustrating—but as a Christian you do not have to operate on the world’s system. Yes, you will face difficult and trying situations, but you can refuse to be agitated, disturbed, and upset (see John 14:27). Even in the midst of your problems you can be happy and confident, cheerful and courageous. Now that’s good news! When you come to the end of a tiring and frustrating day, it is good to spend time with God, thanking Him for overcoming the world on your behalf. Reflecting on His goodness will calm your spirit and prepare you for a peaceful

The great GOD is a tower of refuge to the poor. The great GOD is a tower of refuge to the needy in distress.

Whereas “ruthless nations” used their strength to bring oppression and foster injustice (vv. 3, 4, 5), God is a “stronghold to the poor, a stronghold to the needy in his distress, a shelter from the storm and a shade from the heat” (v. 4). While they may be forgotten and mistreated by society, God remains a refuge for them. Biblically, a paradox arises: it is precisely God’s impartiality that makes him partial to the poor (Deut. 10:17–18; cf. James 3:17). We think of fairness as treating everyone the same, yet God sees perfectly the many ways in which things are not the same for all people. The world gives inherent priority to the powerful, wealthy, and beautiful. Impartiality for God does not mean treating everyone the exact same way at all times, since he alone perfectly takes into consideration all things (Rom. 11:33–35). It is in fairness that God favors the forgotten and receives the rejected (Psalm 113; cf. Ps. 107:41; 136:23). God’s royal majesty is seen in his tender mercy (Ps. 138:6; cf. Luke 1:52–53). How easy it is for us to forget that God gives priority to the weak, the vulnerable, and the needy (James 2:5). Accordingly, one of the marks of a healthy church, and a healthy Christian, is an impulse to extend God’s compassionate care to those most in need—supremely those in spiritual need, but also those in physical need. The church thus becomes a “stronghold” for those must vulnerable, bringing the peace of Christ to trial-ridden lives.

By honour and dishonour, by evil report and by good report, by plenty and by poverty, by joy and by distress, by persecution and by peace, by all these things is the life of your souls maintained, and by each of these are you helped on your way. Oh, think not, believer, that your sorrows are out of God's plan; they are necessary parts of it. "We must, through much tribulation, enter the kingdom." Learn, then, even to "count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations.

Supreme Court ruled in Lynch v. Donnelly (1984) that the creche was not objectionable if it was in the context of other “secular” Christian symbols, many mainstream Jews were distressed. They worried that Christianity was creeping back into the public square. Although Chabad, like some other Orthodox groups, had no objection to the ruling—after all, they wanted to display Menorahs in public spaces, and if Lynch opened the door to Christian displays, it would do the same for Jews—most American Jews instinctively embraced what Richard John Neuhaus, a Roman Catholic priest and American public intellectual, called “the naked public square.” Ironically, in Israel, even secular Israelis implicitly agreed with American Chabad. They instinctively felt that for civic life to be meaningful, the public square should not be overly naked. Neuhaus agreed. He argued that a meaningful public moral discourse had to be based on tradition of some sort. Otherwise, he said, “politics becomes civil war carried on by other means.” Either we have some shared, essentially agreed-upon tradition that sets the tone and content of our society, or internecine cultural warfare becomes virtually unavoidable.

As in the Yale University experimentation, most subjects in the Sheridan-King research illustrated high levels of distress during the ordeal, yet 50 percent of the male subjects and 100 percent of the females obeyed the authority figure and continued to “electrocute” the puppy

Our shepherd intends that we experience his love every day, by living a life that is FREE FROM FEAR … There is not a single day in your future when God will not be seeking you out to give you goodness, to give you love, even in those times, when you walk through the darkest valley. David doesn’t say that there won’t be pain; he doesn’t say that there won’t be trouble and distress, but he DOES say that there will always be goodness, there will always be love, there will always be kindness, hot on your heels.

You have been a stronghold for the poor, a stronghold for the needy  person in his distress, a refuge from the rain, a shade from the heat.  When the breath of the violent is like rain against a wall, 5 like heat in a dry land, You subdue the uproar of barbarians. As the shade of a cloud cools the heat of the day, so He silences the song of the violent.

There is grace for survival; I survived two years without a regular salary.

When faced with many rejections, don’t give up. Hold fast to your dreams and keep up with sacred-work, you will succeed in the sacred-time.

The Lord shall be your comfort in times of distress.

For traditional Christians, the refusal to believe in moral absolutes is perhaps the most distressing aspect of postmodernism. The distress lies at the heart of what I called “the moral concern” with postmodernism in the first chapter. How should a Christian respond?

Finally, the Reformers also agreed that worship should be in the vernacular and that the twofold structure of Word and sacrament be maintained. Zwingli was the only Reformer who disagreed with the desire to return to the ancient structure of Word and sacrament. His emphasis was on the Word only. Zwingli’s position remained the most influential in the circles of Calvinism, and, to the distress of John Calvin, quarterly communion, rather than weekly communion, became standard in the churches most influenced by Calvinism. This influence extended through the English Puritans to the Baptists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and independents and spread through them to most of American Protestant Christianity.

Because of our spiritual union, Christians are drawn together by an internal force. They love one another, they care for one another, and they feel closest to heaven when they are assembled together. In the past, persecution, distress, and various threats could not deter Christians from regularly assembling. Christians of old often met in the forests, fields, or even in dark dens or caves. They did not mind traveling many miles in difficult conditions. All they knew was that they loved the Lord, and desired to meet with the brethren to worship the living God collectively, and enjoy the fellowship of the saints.

I am saddened and distressed, Budayr. However, so long as you have found in your new religion that which places you on the path of truth and justice, you have the right to pursue what you see as right. As for me, beloved, I do not think I could ever abandon my religion, nor do I think I could embrace any other. I lived my entire life buffeted about by apprehensions, misgivings, and conflicting thoughts, my mind a battleground for competing philosophies, until I became an orthodox Christian, and in this faith I will die. May God have mercy on us all, my goodhearted son. May He forgive me and you, since it is He who has foreordained and willed what was and is to be.

I hated life because the work that was done under the sun was distressing to me.

The Christian knows no change with regard to God. He may be rich to-day and poor to-morrow; he may be sickly to-day and well to-morrow; he may be in happiness to-day, to-morrow he may be distressed--but there is no change with regard to his relationship to God. If He loved me yesterday, He loves me to-day. My unmoving mansion of rest is my blessed Lord. Let prospects be blighted; let hopes be blasted; let joy be withered; let mildews destroy everything; I have lost nothing of what I have in God. He is "my strong habitation whereunto I can continually resort." I am a pilgrim in the world, but at home in my God. In the earth I wander, but in God I dwell in a quiet habitation.

MARCH 26 SUGGESTED READING: JUDE 21 – 25 For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps (1 Pet. 2:21). Do you suffer on account of somebody else or for somebody else? In your agonizing prayers before the Lord on behalf of what you consider a “distressing situation,” are you longing for release because the “distressing situation” hurts and discomforts you? If so, you are not having fellowship with His suffering. But if your soul, out of love, longs and bears in a voluntary and vicarious way for others, then you are having fellowship with Jesus in His sufferings. When your Christian work seemingly is in ruins and you wail before God, is it because the work of your hands is in ruins? Are you tempted to say, “I thought this was to be my life work; now it is broken and blighted and shattered”? If so, you do not know what fellowship with His sufferings means. But when you see people defiling the work of God, making His house of worship a place for worldly business for the engendering of false affections and pursuits, and you agonize before the Lord with tears, then you are learning to have fellowship with our Lord in His sufferings. PRAYER THOUGHT: Oh, to be like You—in suffering!

March 6 Amid a Crowd of Paltry Things . . . in much patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses. 2 Corinthians 6:4 It takes Almighty grace to take the next step when there is no vision and no spectator—the next step in devotion, the next step in your study, in your reading, in your kitchen; the next step in your duty, when there is no vision from God, no enthusiasm and no spectator. It takes far more of the grace of God, far more conscious drawing upon God to take that step, than it does to preach the Gospel. Every Christian has to partake of what was the essence of the Incarnation, he must bring the thing down into flesh-and-blood actualities and work it out through the finger-tips. We flag when there is no vision, no uplift, but just the common round, the trivial task. The thing that tells in the long run for God and for men is the steady persevering work in the unseen, and the only way to keep the life uncrushed is to live looking to God. Ask God to keep the eyes of your spirit open to the Risen Christ, and it will be impossible for drudgery to damp you. Continually get away from pettiness and paltriness of mind and thought out into the thirteenth chapter of St. John’s Gospel.

March 7 Undaunted Radiance Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us. Romans 8:37 Paul is speaking of the things that might seem likely to separate or wedge in between the saint and the love of God; but the remarkable thing is that nothing can wedge in between the love of God and the saint. These things can and do come in between the devotional exercises of the soul and God and separate individual life from God; but none of them is able to wedge in between the love of God and the soul of the saint. The bedrock of our Christian faith is the unmerited, fathomless marvel of the love of God exhibited on the Cross of Calvary, a love we never can and never shall merit. Paul says this is the reason we are more than conquerors in all these things, super-victors, with a joy we would not have but for the very things which look as if they are going to overwhelm us. The surf that distresses the ordinary swimmer produces in the surf-rider the super joy of going clean through it. Apply that to our own circumstances, these very things—tribulation, distress, persecution, produce in us the super joy; they are not things to fight. We are more than conquerors through Him in all these things, not in spite of them, but in the midst of them. The saint never knows the joy of the Lord in spite of tribulation, but because of it. “I am exceeding joyful in all our tribulation,” says Paul. Undaunted radiance is not built on anything passing, but on the love of God that nothing can alter. The experiences of life, terrible or monotonous, are impotent to touch the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

When your heart is heavy and your spirit in distress, Reach out your arms to Jesus, and sense his sweet caress. He answers when we call him, our every prayer he hears, Reach out your arms to Jesus, for he is always near.

Then,” I said, “the divine judgment, as it seems to me, does not bring punishment upon sinners according to the foregoing discussion, but rather, as the discourse demonstrated, it only effects the separation of good from evil and direction toward the fellowship of blessedness, but the tearing in pieces of what has grown together brings about pain for the one being torn apart.” “So,” said the Teacher, “that is also my reasoned opinion, and that the measure of suffering is the quantity of evil in each person; for it is not likely that the one who has become involved to such an extent in forbidden evils and the one who has fallen into moderate evils will be distressed on an equal basis in the purification of bad habits, but rather that painful flame will be kindled either to a greater or lesser degree according to the amount of matter, as long as its source of nourishment exists. Accordingly if one has a great load of the material, then the consuming flame of necessity will be great and longer-lasting for that one, but if the consumption of the fire is introduced to a lesser degree, then the punishment diminishes in degree its actions of greater violence and ferocity, in proportion to the lesser measure of evil which exists in that one. For it is necessary that at some time evil be wholly and completely removed out of existence, and as was said previously, that what does not really exist should not exist at all. For since it does not belong to its nature that evil have existence outside of the will, when every will rests in God evil will depart into utter destruction, since there is no receptacle remaining for

Acknowledging and voicing uncomfortable emotions is essential for dealing constructively with trauma-related distress. Unfortunately, that is not a characteristic of all present-day conservative Christian churches or organizations. There may be expectations that those who are “right with Christ” and have “enough faith” do not have negative feelings. Consequently, people expressing sorrow, pain, sadness, doubt, or anger (in the American context often described as “negative” emotions) can attract disapproval or even condemnation from fellow believers.

Nevertheless the gloom will not be upon her who is distressed, As when at first He lightly esteemed The land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, And afterward more heavily oppressed her, By the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan, In Galilee of the Gentiles. 2 The people who walked in darkness Have seen a great light; Those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death,  Upon them a light has shined." (Isaiah 9:1-2)

In the Discourse, a few verses further along: “Immediately after the distress of those days the sun will be darkened, the moon will not give its light, the stars will fall from the sky and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. And then the sign of the Son of man will appear in heaven; then, too, all the peoples of the earth will beat their breasts; and they will see the Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory” (Matthew 24:29-30). It’s almost like a mythological description of depression. Have you ever had a day when it all doesn’t make any sense? Emptiness has to precede fullness. Usually our old securities have to be wrested from us before we will move into the new. We seldom do it deliberately. Spirituality is always about letting go—not just in Christianity, but in Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism. All the great world religions at their higher levels teach the mystery and the art of letting go. You let go, and hopefully collapse back into your true self, into who you really are. The work of religion is to guide us on the path of the fall and onto the path of the return. What Jesus is painting here with his words is a cosmic liturgy, a cosmic image of everything falling apart. Out of that emptiness comes the possibility of a new kind of fullness. “Take

St. Bernard was distressed at what he heard of these Irish Culdees, who had no Confession, never paid tithes, and lived like wild beasts, as they disdained marriage by the clergy. In his righteous anger, he stigmatized them as "beasts, absolute barbarians, a stubborn, stiff necked, and ungovernable generation, and abominable; Christian in name, but in reality pagans." This harsh language is not worse than that employed by the Pope, when he entreated our Henry II. to take over Ireland, so as to bring the Irish into the Christian Church, compel them to pay tithes, and so civilize them.

When the wickedness of the wicked grieves and humbles and distresses Christians. Sometimes Christians do not seem to mind anything about the wickedness around them. Or, if they do talk about it, it is in a cold, and callous, and unfeeling way, as if they despaired of a reformation: they are disposed to scold sinners - not to feel the compassion of the Son of God for them. But sometimes the conduct of the wicked drives Christians to prayer, breaks them down, and makes them sorrowful and tender-hearted, so that they can weep day and night, and instead of scolding the wicked they pray earnestly for them. Then you may expect a revival. Indeed, it is begun already.

Another key finding is that in non-distressed families, the spouses do not reciprocate each others’ negative behavior—only positive behavior. The same is true for parents and kids. You don’t have to reciprocate your child’s negative words and actions by doing likewise yourself. By not reacting, but leading, you will raise the positives in your home. You build an environment of grace.[72]

AS LONG AS YOU LIVE BY YOUR OLD NATURE YOU WILL BE open to all of the injustices of men. Your temper will get you into fights, your passions will clash with your neighbors, your desires will be like tender spots open to your enemies’ arrows. Everything will be against you—attacking you from all sides. If you live at the mercy of a crowd of greedy and hungry desires, then you will never find peace. You will never be satisfied because everything will bother you. You will be like an invalid who has been bedridden for many years—anywhere you are touched you will feel pain. Your self-love is terribly touchy. No matter how slightly it is insulted, it screams, “Murderer.” Add to this all the insensitivity of others, their disgust at your weakness (and your disgust at theirs), and you have the children of Adam forever tormenting each other. The only hope is to come out of yourself. Lose all your selfinterest. Only then can you enjoy the true peace reserved for “men of good will.” Such people have no other will but God’s. If you come to such a place, then what can harm you? You will no longer be attacked through your hopes or fears. You may be worried, inconvenienced, or distressed, but you can rest in Him. Love the hand that disciplines you. Find peace in all things—even in going to the cross. Be happy

COME OUT OF YOURSELF AS LONG AS YOU LIVE BY YOUR OLD NATURE YOU WILL BE open to all of the injustices of men. Your temper will get you into fights, your passions will clash with your neighbors, your desires will be like tender spots open to your enemies’ arrows. Everything will be against you—attacking you from all sides. If you live at the mercy of a crowd of greedy and hungry desires, then you will never find peace. You will never be satisfied because everything will bother you. You will be like an invalid who has been bedridden for many years—anywhere you are touched you will feel pain. Your self-love is terribly touchy. No matter how slightly it is insulted, it screams, “Murderer.” Add to this all the insensitivity of others, their disgust at your weakness (and your disgust at theirs), and you have the children of Adam forever tormenting each other. The only hope is to come out of yourself. Lose all your selfinterest. Only then can you enjoy the true peace reserved for “men of good will.” Such people have no other will but God’s. If you come to such a place, then what can harm you? You will no longer be attacked through your hopes or fears. You may be worried, inconvenienced, or distressed, but you can rest in Him. Love the hand that disciplines you. Find peace in all things—even in going to the cross. Be happy with what you have. Wish for nothing more. Surrender to God and find true peace. —Fénelon LIVE DAY BY DAY YOUR SPIRITUAL WALK IS A LITTLE TOO RESTLESS AND uneasy.

Christian Consultants of Texas is a real estate company that helps distressed homeowners facing foreclosure to either stay in their homes or relocate. They work with people who have credit issues and late payments on their mortgage and help them find new accommodations.

Irenaeus was particularly distressed about the widespread presence of Gnostic Christians in the midst of the church.

In our day non-Christian mysticism attracts many who despair at the banality and emptiness of the contemporary scene. They are ignorant of the true essence of Christianity. Christianity entails suffering; but through suffering we penetrate the mysteries of Being. Suffering makes it possible to comprehend one’s own humanity and freedom. In times of distress the Christian remembers that ‘the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain’ (Rom. 8.22) and his spirit is conscious of the same life flowing through all of us. To extend the range of our consciousness makes us kin with millions of fellow-beings scattered over the face of the earth. An enhanced recognition of human suffering begets intense prayer which transfers all things into the realm of the spirit.

Therein lieth his excellence. The thorn pierces, but the lily soothes: the very sight of it gives pleasure. Who would not stop and turn aside to see a lily among thorns, and think he read a promise from bis God to comfort him amid distress? ... He is all tenderness and gentleness... The lily cries, “I come to you, I shed my soul abroad to please you.” The sweet odours of the lily of the valley are well known; perhaps no plant has so strong a savour about it of intense and exquisite sweetness as that lily of the valley which is found in Palestine. Such is the sanctified believer. There is a secret something about him, a hallowed savour which goeth out from his life, so that his graciousness is discovered; for grace, like its Lord; “cannot be hid.” ... The violets had hidden themselves from sight, but they had betrayed themselves by their delicious scent. So doth a Christian reveal his hidden life; his tone and temper and manners bespeak his royal lineage, if indeed the Spirit of God be in him. Such are the people of God; they court no observation, but are like that modest flower...