2010 - A New Year, a New Me?

Since I am not that creative nor have what you would call a talent for writing so I am hoping that for 2010 I can share devotionals that I have read during the year for all. My devotional of choice for this year is 'His Victorious Indwelling' edited by Nick Harrison. A collection of writings by a group of Christians known as 'Victorious Christian Life' Christians who focus on God's grace and God's view of who we are. Watchman Nee and his book 'The Normal Christian Life' transformed my Christian walk from one of trying to please God to one of simply trying to listen and do what God asks me to do. Afterall, isn't that what His son Jesus simply did? Many of these writers you will have never heard of but they should be. Many come from the late 1800's Brethren movement and they have captured what it means to serve God in a way that pleases God and because of that these men and women experienced God in a way that many will never witness. In essence they found the joy of being a Christian and they lived the 'Victorious Christian Life'. I do hope you enjoy these selected writings.

In Him,
John G.

January 1st:

Alexander Maclaren
Let us face this New Year, with all its hidden possibilities, with quiet, brave hearts, resolved to fulfill our duty as those ought who have a past to remember and a future to hope for. It may be the last on earth for some of us. It will probably contain great sorrows for some of us, and great joys for others. It will be comparatively uneventful for others. It may bring great outward changes for us, or it may leave us much as it found us. But, at all events, God will be in it, and work for Him should be in it.

May it be, that when its final hours have slidden away into the gray past, they continue to witness to us of His love, even as, while they were wrapped in the mists of the future, they prevailed on us to hope in Him!

Today's had two great excerpts.

John Newton
I compare the troubles which we have to undergo in the course of a year to a great bundle of sticks, far too large for us to lift. But God does not require us to carry the whole at once. He mercifully unties the bundle, and gies us first one stick, which we are to carry today, and then another, which we are to carry tomorrow, and so on. This we might easily manage, if we should only take the burden appointed for each day - instead we choose to increase our troubles by carrying yesterday's stick over again today, and adding tomorrow's burden to the load, before we are required to carry it.