Month: September 2024

July 2nd – Day 66

Hear me when I call,

O God of my righteousness:

Thou hast enlarged me when I was in distress;

Have mercy upon me, and hear my prayer.

Psalm 4:1 KJV

Answer me when I call to You,

O my righteous God.

Give me relief from my distress;

Be merciful unto me and hear my prayer.

NIV

“I have been driven many times to my knees

by the overwhelming conviction that I have nowhere else to go.

My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for the day.”

-Abraham Lincoln

Lord, You always hear my cry.

You comfort me.

You heal my heart.

You lift my spirit.

You restore my soul.

Monday, July 1^st

Day 65

Luke 1:45

And blessed is she that believed:

for there shall be a performance of those things which were told her from the Lord.

KJV

Blessed is she who has believed that what the Lord has said to her will be accomplished!

NIV

Blessed woman, who believed what God said, believed every word would come true!

The Message

Lord, I believe, help me my unbelief.

Sunday, June 30^th

Day 64

And it came to pass after many days,

that the word of the Lord came to Elijah in the third year,

saying,

Go, show thyself to Ahab; and I will send rain upon the earth.

I Kings 18:1

-for He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good,

and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

Matthew 5:45b

And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit.

James 5:18

It is 4 a.m. and I am listening to the rumble of thunder and the sound of the rain hitting the windows and I am thanking God for sending the rain!

What a beautiful sound it is, especially when it has been so dry.

Thank You, God !

O God, teach me to see You, and reveal Yourself to me when I seek You . . .

Let me seek You in longing, and long for You in seeking.

Let me find You in love, and love You in finding.

-Ambrose of Milan, 339-397

Saturday, June 29^th

Day 63

There is a prevalent idea that the power of God in a human life

should lift us above all trials and conflicts.

The fact is,

the power of God always brings a conflict and a struggle.

God has nothing worth having that is easy.

There are no cheap goods in the heavenly market.

Our redemption cost all that God had to give,

and everything worth having is expensive.

Hard places are the very school of faith and character,

and if we are to rise over mere human strength

and prove the power of life divine in these mortal bodies,

it must be through a process of conflict

that may well be called the birth travail of a new life.

-Streams In The Desert

Lord, You never promised life would be easy but it will be worth it!

It will be worth it all when we see Jesus!

Life’s trials will seem so small when we see Christ.

One glimpse of His dear face, all sorrow will erase.

So bravely run the race till we see Christ.

-Esther K. Rusthoi

Friday, June 28^th

Day 62

Lord, Is it always going to feel this fresh?

How could anyone go through this without You?

I refuse to listen to Satan’s lies because GREATER IS HE THAT IS WITHIN ME!

Lord, You are greater.

You defeated death on the cross.

The battle is won.

The irritations of yesterday are just that – irritations – not catastrophes.

• A bad business practice that will cost them a customer
• A malfunction in the vehicle that will require another trip to the mechanic, but the funds are there and it will be fixed
• The garden will get weeded.
• The tea I spilled was quickly wiped up. There was no permanent damage.

In this world I will have trouble but You have overcome the world!

Thursday, June 27^th

Day 61

Then Samuel took a stone, and set it between Mizpeh and Shem,

and called the name of it Ebenezer,

saying,

Hitherto hath the Lord helped us.  

I Samuel 7:12

Come, Thou fount of every blessing,

Tune my heart to sing Thy grace;

Streams of mercy, never ceasing,

Call for songs of loudest praise.

Teach me some melodious sonnet,

Sung by flaming tongues above;

Praise the mount! I’m fixed upon it,

Mount of Thy redeeming love.

Here, I raise mine Ebenezer;

Hither by Thy help I’m come;

And I hope, by Thy good pleasure,

Safely to arrive at home.

Jesus sought me when a stranger,

Wandering from the fold of God;

He, to rescue me from danger,

Interposed His precious blood.

O to grace how great a debtor

Daily I’m constrained to be!

Let Thy goodness like a fetter,

Bind my wandering heart to Thee:

Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,

Prone to leave the God I love;

Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,

Seal it for Thy courts above.

Lord, You planted these hymns of the faith deep in my soul years ago and they have born fruit.

They are bearing fruit this day.

You bring to my mind just what I need to hear – just when I need to hear it – and I praise You!

 No distant Lord have I,

Loving afar to be;

Made flesh for me, He cannot rest

Until He rests in me.

Brother in joy or pain,

Bone of my bone was He;

Now – intimacy closer still –

He dwells Himself in me.

I need not journey far,

This dearest Friend to see;

Companionship is always mine,

He makes His home with me.

-Maltbie D. Babcock

-Springs in The Valley

Wednesday, June 26^th

Day 60

Have you come to the Red Sea place in your life,

Where in spite of all you can do,

There is no way out, there is no way back,

There is no other way but through?

Then wait on the Lord with a trust serene

Till the night of your fear is gone;

He will send the wind, He will heap the floods,

When He says to your soul, “Go on.”

And His hand will lead you through – clear through –

Ere the watery walls roll down,

No foe can reach you, no wave can touch,

No mightiest sea can drown;

The tossing billows may rear their crests,

Their foam at your feet may break,

But over their bed you shall walk dry shod

In the path that your Lord will make.

In the morning watch, ‘neath the lifted cloud,

You shall see but the Lord alone,

When He leads you on from the place of the sea

To a land that you have not known;

And your fears shall pass as your foes have passed,

You shall be no more afraid;

You shall sing His praise in a better place,

A place that His hand has made.

-Annie Johnson Flint

-Streams In The Desert

Lord, this is where I am – 60 days on this journey –

There is no way out, there is no way back,

There is no other way but through!

All that I can do is go where You lead me.

And so I trust.

Tuesday, June 25^th

Day 59

But I want you to know, brethren,

that the things which have happened to me

have actually turned out for the furtherance of the gospel.

Philippians 1:12

While the yoke of the Lord is easy and His burden light,

nevertheless the furrow that He calls us to undertake is not always by any means easy plowing.

There is no yoke that fits so smoothly and handily as His,

but there is no work that requires more steady trudging and persistent faithfulness than His.

Three stages of that work are strikingly set forth by Hudson Taylor when he says:

“Commonly there are three stages in work for God:

Imposible, Difficult, Done!

-Springs In The Valley

We say that there ought to be no sorrow,

but there is sorrow,

and we have to receive ourselves in its fires.

If we try and evade sorrow, refuse to lay our account with it, we are foolish.

Sorrow is one of the biggest facts in life; it is no use saying sorrow ought not to be.

Sin and sorrow and suffering are,

and it is not for us to say that God has made a mistake in allowing them.

Sorrow burns up a great amount of shallowness, but it does not always make a man better.

Suffering either will give me myself or it destroys myself,

You cannot receive your self in success, you lose your head;

you cannot receive yourself in monotony, you grouse.

The way to find yourself is in the fires of sorrow.

Why it should be so is another matter,

but that it is so

is true in the Scriptures and in human experience.

. . . . . . . . . .

If you receive yourself in the fires of sorrow,

God will make you nourishment for other people.

-Oswald Chambers

Lord, This is my life. It wasn’t my choice but I can accept it because You are with me in this.

Monday, June 24^th

Day 58

We are still in a hot, dry spell.

85 degrees at 5 a.m.

The thunder storms have all passed us by.

This is an inconvenience for me – I will have to water the garden – but for our farmers who have no irrigation systems it is a disaster – crops will die if they get no rain.

I pray for rain to fall on those fields.

I pray for the farm families depending on those crops for their income for the year.

Most of all I pray that they know You, Lord, and are trusting in You to provide a way – even if the rains do not come – even if the crops fail – You will provide for Your people.

Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines,

though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food,

though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls,

yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.

Habakkuk 3: 17-18

Sunday, June 23^rd

Day 57

My song for today:

Does Jesus care when my heart is pained

Too deeply for mirth and song?

Where the burdens press and the cares distress

And the way grows weary and long?

Oh, yes, He cares, I know He cares

His heart is touched with my grief

When the days are weary – the long night dreary

I know my Jesus cares.

Does Jesus care when my way is dark

With a nameless dread and fear?

As the daylight fades into deep dark shades

Does He care enough to be near?

Oh, yes, He cares, I know He cares

His heart is touched with my grief

When the days are weary – the long night dreary

I know my Jesus cares.

Does Jesus care when I’ve tried and failed

To resist some temptation strong?

When for my deep grief there is no relief

Though the tears flow all the day long.

Oh, yes, He cares, I know He cares

His heart is touched with my grief

When the days are weary – the long night dreary

I know my Jesus cares.

Does Jesus care when I’ve said”Goodbye”

To the dearest on earth to me

And my sad heart aches till it nearly breaks

Is it aught to Him? Does He see?

Oh, yes, He cares, I know He cares

His heart is touched with my grief

When the days are weary – the long night dreary

I know my Jesus cares.