• “They only did what God permitted them to do, which enabled me always to keep God in sight… When we suffer, we should always remember that God inflicts the blow. Wicked men, it is true, are not infrequently His instruments; and the fact does not diminish, but simply develops their wickedness. But when we are so mentally disposed that we love the strokes we suffer, regarding them as coming from God, and as expressions of what He sees best for us, we are then in the proper state to look forgivingly and kindly upon the subordinate instrument which He permits to smite us.” – Madame Guyon

No Further Than Natural Things By Elisabeth Elliot

“Well, it’s perfectly natural for you to feel that way,” I was telling myself when I was upset with the way someone had treated me. “It’s a normal reaction.”

It was a normal reaction for a carnal mind. It was not normal for a spiritual one. The carnal attitude deals with things on one level only–this world’s. It “sees no further than natural things” (Rom 8:5 JBP).

Is there a telescope that will bring into focus things I would not see with merely “natural” vision? There is.

“The spiritual attitude reaches out after the things of the spirit.” It is a different means of perceiving. It will enable me to see what I could not have seen with the naked–that is, the carnal–eye.

It works. When I looked at that person who had offended me through the “spiritual eye,” I saw in him one of God’s instruments to teach me, instead of one of the devil’s to torment me. I saw something more. I saw a person God loves, and whom He wants to love through me.

 

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  • “We say, then, to anyone who is under trial, give Him time to steep the soul in His eternal truth. Go into the open air, look up into the depths of the sky, or out upon the wideness of the sea, or on the strength of the hills that is His also; or, if bound in the body, go forth in the spirit; spirit is not bound. Give Him time and, as surely as dawn follows night, there will break upon the heart a sense of certainty that cannot be shaken.” – Amy Carmichael

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Verse of the Day

And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of My Father’s hand. I and My Father are one.” — John 10:28-30 (NKJV)

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