I asked the Lord that I might grow In faith, and love, and every grace; Might more of His salvation know, And seek, more earnestly, His face. ’Twas He who taught me thus to pray, And He, I trust, has answered prayer! But it has been in such a way, As almost drove me to despair. I hoped that in some favored hour, At once He’d answer my request; And by His love’s constraining pow’r, Subdue my sins, and give me rest. Instead of this, He made me feel The hidden evils of my heart; And let the angry pow’rs...

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"Spiritual renewal is a gradual process. All growth is progressive, and the finer the organism, the longer the process. It is from measure to measure: thirtyfold, sixtyfold, an hundredfold. It is from stage to stage: ‘first the blade, then the ear, and after that, the full corn in the ear.’ And it is from day to day. How varied these are! There are great days, days of decisive battles, days of crises in spiritual history, days of triumph in Christian service, days of the right hand of God upon us. But there are also idle days, days apparently useless, when...

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"Many people are willing to believe regarding those things that seem probable to them. Faith has nothing to do with probabilities. The province of faith begins where probabilities cease and sight and sense fail. Appearances are not to be taken into account. The question is—whether God has spoken it in His Word."God delights to increase the faith of His children. We ought, instead of wanting no trials before victory, no exercise for patience, to be willing to take them from God’s hand as a means. I say—and say it deliberately — trials, obstacles, difficulties, and sometimes defeats, are the very...

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In a meeting with a small group of missionaries in China, Hudson Taylor, founder of the China Inland Mission (now Overseas Missionary Fellowship) reminded them that there were three ways to do God’s work: “One is to make the best plans we can and carry them out to the best of our ability. Two, carefully lay out our plans and determine to carry them through, we may even ask God to help us and to prosper us in connection with them. Three, another way of working is to begin with God; to ask His plans, and to offer ourselves to...

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Robert Murray McCheyne, a Scottish Presbyterian minister, died in 1843 at the age of thirty, he left God’s people a great treasure in his memoirs and other writings.  See The Memoirs and Remains of Robert Murray McCheyne by Andrew Bonar. One of his treasures he left the church is this poem based upon Jeremiah 23:5-6. The phrase "Jehovah Tsidkenu" is taken from the Anglicized Hebrew of this particular text. “The days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will raise up to David a righteous Branch, a King who will reign wisely and do what is just and right in...

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