Lent: Day Forty-six ~ Quotation Saturday ~ Easter

Pss. 69: 16 Hear me, O LORD; for thy lovingkindness is good: turn unto me according to the multitude of thy tender mercies.

LENT

"All throughout my life I have been living recklessly. I have sinned a lot and done things that I know I should not have done. Now I will return back to God and change myself."

~  Genevieve Shaw

"As Lent is the time for greater love, listen to Jesus' thirst...'Repent and believe' Jesus tells us. What are we to repent?  Our indifference, our hardness of heart.  What are we to believe?  Jesus thirsts even now, in your heart and in the poor -- He knows your weakness. He wants only your love, wants only the chance to love you." 

~ Blessed Teresa of Calcutta

“God shapes the world by prayer. The more prayer there is in the world the better the world will be, the mightier the forces of against evil …”

~ E.M. Bounds

"Lent is like a long 'retreat' during which we can turn back into ourselves and listen to the voice of God, in order to defeat the temptations of the Evil One. It is a period of spiritual 'combat' which we must experience alongside Jesus, not with pride and presumption, but using the arms of faith: prayer, listening to the word of God and penance. In this way we will be able to celebrate Easter in truth, ready to renew the promises of our Baptism."

~ Pope Benedict XVI

FAITH

If I cannot hear “The sound of rain’ long before the rain falls, and then go out to some hilltop of the Spirit, as near to my God as I can and have faith to wait there with my face between my knees, though six times or sixty times I am told “There is nothing’, till at last there arises a little cloud out of the sea, then I know nothing of Calvary love. (Read 1 Kings 18:41-45)

~ Amy Carmichael

Believe that when you come into the presence of God you can have all you came for. You can take it away, and you can use it, for all the power of God is at your disposal in response to your faith.

~ Smith Wigglesworth

The issue of faith is not so much whether we believe in God, but whether we believe the God we believe in.

~ R. C. Sproul

The more we allow ourselves to personally experience sanctification by faith, the more we also experience healing by faith. These two doctrines walk together. The more the Spirit of God lives and acts in the soul of believers, the more miracles He will work in the body. By this, the world will recognize what redemption means.

~ Andrew Murray

 EASTER

When a man really gives up trying to make something out of himself – a saint, or a converted sinner, or a churchman, a righteous or unrighteous man,…when in the fullness of tasks, questions, success or ill-hap, experiences and perplexities, a man throws himself into the arms of God…then he wakes with Christ in Gethsemane. That is faith, and it is thus that he becomes a man and Christian.

~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“Come, see the place where the Lord lay,” with joy and gladness. He does not lie there now. Weep, when ye see the tomb of Christ, but rejoice because it is empty. Thy sin slew him, but his divinity raised him up. Thy guilt hath murdered him, but his righteousness hath restored him. Oh! he hath burst the bonds of death, he hath ungirt the cerements of the tomb, and hath come out more than conqueror, crushing death beneath his feet. Rejoice, O Christian, for he is not there—he is risen.

~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

And he departed from our sight that we might return to our heart, and there find Him. For He departed, and behold, He is here.

~ St Augustine

“Dost thou understand me, sinful soul? He wrestled with justice, that thou mightest have rest; He wept and mourned, that thou mightest laugh and rejoice; He was betrayed, that thou mightest go free; was apprehended, that thou mightest escape; He was condemned, that thou mightest be justified; and was killed, that thou mightest live; He wore a crown of thorns, that thou mightest wear a crown of glory; and was nailed to the cross, with His arms wide open, to show with what freeness all His merits shall be bestowed on the coming soul; and how heartily He will receive it into His bosom?”

~ John Bunyan

NEW YEAR

If this is to be a Happy New Year, a year of usefulness, a year in which we shall live to make this earth better, it is because God will direct our pathway. How important then, to feel our dependence upon Him!  

~ Matthew Simpson

I pray that the Lord might crown this year with His goodness and in the coming one give you a hallowed dare-devil spirit in lifting the biting sword of Truth, consuming you with a passion that is called by the cultured citizen of Christendom ‘fanaticism’, but known to God as that saint ly madness that led His Son through bloody sweat and hot tears to agony on a rude Cross—and Glory!

~ Jim Elliott

We should take advantage of His faithfulness and make every day a fresh start. Resolve to make each day the beginning of a new year, a new morning, a new adventure. He wipes the slate clean and goes back to zero so we can be filled up again with His spirit and give it out all day long. Enjoy the blessings of a new year, in Christ, one day at a time! 

~ Debbie Carroccio

Renewal is rooted in faith, not in resolutions! They are made for New Year’s and forgotten on an average of thirteen days later, say the surveys. Faith is the result of a decision about Christ. I cannot make a new me or a new you, but Christ can make you new and me new, as well, if we decide for Him. 

~ Frank Harrington

Easter Sunday I celebrate my New Year. It is when I renew my Spirit in the Lord and thus go forth to a year of transition and change.

May the Lord God be with you all. Have a blessed Easter one and all!

Luke 7:16 And there came a fear on all: and they glorified God, saying, That a great prophet is risen up among us; and, That God hath visited his people.