Today's Soul Food — November  1

 

Golden Words

      


Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.

Colossians 3:13 NIV

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Sometimes it is very difficult to forgive. It seems especially difficult to forgive when you are wronged by a Christian brother or sister. Remembering just how much our Father has forgiven us, may help us to forgive those who have wronged us.

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"I can forgive, but I can't forget" is only another way of saying, ''I will not forgive.'' A forgiveness ought to be like a cancelled note, torn in two and burned up, so that it can never be shown against the man.

Henry Ward Beecher, Life Thoughts,1858 


Daily Meditations by  Pat Nordman ©

 


November 1

"I do not ask Thee to take them out of the world...(John 17:15 NAS). 

Jesus' disciples are the salt of the earth. We are the preservers of His goodness. We are to stay in the world and be quiet and effective and unassuming. Moderation is the key word. The only time we notice there is salt is when there is either too much or too little. God does not ask us to be sensationalists about our religion, but to be in the world day by day, in the common round of life. If we lose our salt of love and hope in a world that so needs these, then we lose God's gift of preservation for others.

Pat Nordman ©

 

 


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Excerpts from today's Spurgeon's Devotions

With links to the entire devotion

Spurgeon's Morning for November 1

Spurgeon's Evening for November 1


"The church in thy house."

- Philemon 2


"And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away: so shall also the coming of the Son of man be."

- Matthew 24:39

 

If there be such a Church in our house, let us order it well, and let all act as in the sight of God. Let us move in the common affairs of life with studied holiness, diligence, kindness, and integrity.

All men are negligent of their souls till grace gives them reason, then they leave their madness and act like rational beings, but not till then.

 

   

 

 

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November 1  John 1:1 - 3:36

365 days of Bible Readings Linked to Bible Gaitway TM 

 

Current Bible Question



It appears that Solomon was always called Solomon, but at his birth he was named what by God?       
 

Previous question and Answer:

What was Saul doing when David crept up behind him and cut off a corner of his robe?

He was relieving himself. (1 Samuel 24:3-4)

 

 

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Today's  Devotion
 

 

...and by his light I walked through darkness!    JOB 29:3 NIV

 

Upturned Cup

by Pat Nordman 

 

"Lord, you have assigned me my portion and my cup. . ."

Psalm 16:5

 "My cup overflows" 

Psalm 23:5b

In his book, The God Who Would Be Man, H.M.S. Richards tells of the visit of a chaplain-general of the forces, Bishop Taylor Smith, to a military hospital during World War I. He noticed two wounded men sitting by a table on which was a bowl turned upside down. He asked the men, "Do you know the two things that are under that bowl?" "No," one of the men said. "Darkness and uselessness," the chaplain replied. Quickly he turned the bowl right side up. "Now," he said to the two curious men, "it's full of light, and ready to hold porridge, soup, or anything you might like to use it for. It's a converted bowl."

What a grand concept this is. God has assigned us our cup. We can choose to turn it upside down and be dark and morose and finally useless, or we can choose to turn it right side up and fill it to overflowing with His blessings and then share these serendipities with others.

Sometimes we are asked to drink a cup of sorrow. Rather than inverting or controverting what can be a spiritual lesson for us, we can convert our cup of sorrow into a dessert of comfort instead of a desert of corrosive grief. God then blesses the upturned cup for ourselves and others. "When [we] walk through the Valley of Weeping it will become a place of springs where pools of blessing and refreshment collect after rains!" Psalm 84:6 TLB. "The pilgrim band, rich in hope, forget the trials and difficulties of the way. Hope changes the rugged and stony waste into living fountains. The vale blossoms as if the sweet rain of heaven had covered it with blessings. Hope sustains them at every step. From station to station they renew their strength as they draw nearer the end of their journey, till at last they appear before God." Perowne. 

From The Biblical Illustrator, Psalm 84, page 468. 

© Pat Nordman

Send a note to Pat Nordman , the writer of this devotion.
 

God has assigned us our cup. We can choose to turn it upside down and be dark and morose and finally useless, or we can choose to turn it right side up and fill it to overflowing with His blessings and then share these serendipities with others.

 

More Walking Through the Darkness



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~ The Night Niagara Falls Stopped ~ 

On the night of March 29, 1848, Niagara Falls stopped completely— unheralded, unassisted and unbelievably. As the rapids dwindled and the falls disappeared, silence flooded the surrounding countryside so overwhelmingly that it wakened sleeping people and brought them to their doors, frightened by a phenomenon they couldn't identify. As the realization came that the falls had stopped, they snatched up clothing and ran to the river. There, the flare of torches showed stretches of mud and boulders gleaming nakedly between scattered pools of black water. By the next afternoon spectators lined the river banks, exploring the exposed river bed and turning up ancient tomahawks and other implements of Indian warfare. For the first time in history, a detachment cavalry rode the river bed, and people walked dry-shod from shore to shore. 

While the matter-of-fact looked for a scientific explanation for the phenomenon, the superstitious regarded it as an ominous portent. Nightfall found most of the churches jammed with people praying or talking in frightened voices about the end of the world. Fear began to assume the proportions of panic. And then, from up the river bed came a low growling, spreading out and reaching forward until the earth and air seemed to tremble and vibrate. In an unbroken wall of water, the torrent of Niagara surged forward to crash over the brink of the falls. Again the familiar roar filled the air, and faces that had been white and strained softened, and fingers clenched in fear relaxed. 

The explanation for the awful silence came later. During the day of March 29 a heavy wind had started the Lake Erie ice field in motion and tons of ice jammed at the river's entrance near Buffalo, damming up the river for almost 30 hours till the ice shifted and the dam broke up. —Edgar D. Smith 


How much greater shall be the fear of those who are unprepared to meet the Lord when the portents really do point to His return and the end of this world. 

—Duane V. Maxey   

And so we know the love that God has for us, and we trust that love.

1 John 4:16 (NCV)

Today's Religion News
From Goshen Web News Service

 

 


All the Rest November 1


Today in History for November 1

 

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