A faithful minister had labored for years for souls. He had been successful; he had been a blessing to many. One day a certain person spoke of him, half jestingly, in a manner that aroused the suspicions of some others who were present. These suspicions grew until they became whispers, and the whispers grew until they became open charges. The minister could not prove them to be false. They hindered his labors. They bowed down his head with sorrow. Someone had put a cloud over his sun and over his name and for years the dark shadow of it rested upon his life.
How easy it is to put a cloud over someone’s sun, to make some life dark that might have been bright! It may seem only a little thing, but sometimes a little cloud can make a dark shadow. We may not see either the cloud or the shadow, but the heart that is darkened both sees and feels. How many times parents, by unkind words or actions, becloud their children’s sky! One way in which parents do this is by telling the faults of their children to visitors, in the presence of the children. There is scarcely anything more disheartening to a child than this. He feels humiliated and hurt. He feels, and justly feels, that he has been mistreated. It sinks down into his soul and rankles there. It discourages him, and if it is often repeated he comes not to care if he is at fault. Constant reproof and faultfinding make a child’s life gloomy and sad. That is not the way to cure faults; it is the way to make them worse.
Heart Talks by C. W. Naylor
Links for book in bio.
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After the Lord called me to His work, I endured some great soul conflicts. In them, I suffered inexpressibly. I almost despaired at times, but I look back upon those things now as being the things that made me understand the human heart, that gave me a broader sympathy—and have since enabled me to enter into the sorrows and needs of others, to minister comfort and help as I could not otherwise have done. Those early sufferings unlocked a thousand mysteries and enriched not only my own life but also the lives of others. Endure these things with patience, for out of them will come to you that which is more precious than gold. If you do not suffer, you can be of little use to those who do suffer. The promise is, “If we suffer with him, we shall also reign with him.”
Abraham suffered in that one supreme sacrifice, but his example of faithfulness in the test has enriched millions of souls. Job suffered not only physical agony but the keenest and deepest of spiritual agony, yet that suffering was only an opportunity for God to manifest His mercy and kindness. How much Job learned of God by enduring through these dark days, and how much the world has learned! If we should take out of the Bible the record of suffering and its results that are written there, we should take out of it all that is best and noblest and most helpful and encouraging. How much poorer we should be if the sacred record told only of joy and peace and comfort, if it spoke only of victory and achievement and told us nothing of the hard road that leads up to them! If the Lord chastises us, it is “for our profit;” if God smites, it is only to enrich; so bear with patience, endure as seeing Him who is invisible. Be “patient in tribulation,” drink the cup of your Gethsemane, wear your thorny crown without complaint, endure your Calvary; for unto you is given both to suffer and to reign with Him.
Heart Talks by C. W. Naylor
Link for book in bio.
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We know in reality only what we know by experience. Those who would be instruments in God’s hands to help others must often have a preparatory training course in the school of sufferings; how else could they know how to help others? Brother, sister, has God called you to do a work for Him? If so, you need not marvel if He lets the rod of pain be laid upon you. If you have hindrances which seem to shut up the way before you, if you have trials that you cannot understand, if you have disappointments and perplexities, if you have spiritual conflicts that threaten to overwhelm you, do not think it strange. How can you teach others how to bear such things if you have not borne them? How can you know the way out for others if you have never gone that way? How can you teach others to look for the blessings in these things if you have not their fruitage in your own life? Those who have suffered most can enter most into the sufferings of others.
The successful worker will find that the strength and wisdom that bring him success was the gift of pain, and had not pain brought him strength and knowledge success could not now be his. Likewise sometimes we must suffer for others if we would save them. So if you would be a worker for God and know how to enter truly into the sorrows and needs of others, you must yourself drink the bitter cup and feel the chastening rod.
Heart Talks by C. W. Naylor
Link for book in bio.
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There is nothing that brings Christ so close to men as His sufferings; there is nothing that makes men trust in Him so much as the story of those last days. If that story were taken from the pages of the Bible what would Christ be to us? Only a great teacher whose morality was high and wonderful, though to us unattainable. But with this record added, He becomes a Savior and makes His righteousness attainable by us all. Had He not suffered, He could not have brought us to God. How much poorer we should be today without the story of Gethsemane and Calvary, without knowing that “it pleased the Lord to bruise him.” Out of His sighs and tears and groans has flowed into our hearts a fountain of joy and love and tenderness whereby we have been enriched, and the angels of God have been caused to sing a song for joy!
If God was pleased to bruise His own beloved Son, need we marvel if He is sometimes pleased to bruise us? If we are sometimes bowed down with grief, if anguish takes hold upon us, if the sky grows dark above us, and if God seems to have turned away, is it any proof that He no longer loves us? Is it not only the proof that God sees something to be accomplished that can be accomplished in no other way, and He is pleased for the sake of that gain to let us suffer? The things that are worthwhile come through pain. Joy does not make us stronger nor bring us nearer God, nor does it refine, ennoble, or enrich us. The pure gold comes from the fire only, and the tempered steel also must have passed through the flame. God would have us pure as gold and as strong as steel, and to have us so He cannot spare the flame. We must pass through the furnace of affliction. We are told that God “...doth not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men.” Lamentations 3:33. It is only that something may come out of it that will be better and more blessed than could have been without it.
Heart Talks by C. W. Naylor
Link for book in bio.
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Sometimes we have wilderness periods in our lives, when God lets us be shut up in a corner, as it were, and do the little things that do not seem to count. But they count on us, if they do not count anywhere else. There is one thing—and just one— that stands out above all other things in the human life and that is faithfulness. No matter what our life may be, nor where we may be, nor what is our situation, if we are just faithful, it is sure to count and to count a great deal. That is one thing that you can do; you can be faithful to the Lord. You can do what He wants you to do. You can live pure, holy, undefiled and keep shining every day, no matter what the circumstances may be. Just remember to keep shining. That is the thing that counts. Keep living clean and as God wants you to live. If you do this, He will know where He can find somebody who is faithful when He wants something else done. But ever keep this before you; there is no greater nor more necessary work in the world than putting the truth of God into visible form in a pure and quiet life.
Heart Talks by C. W. Naylor
Link for book in bio.
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When Moses was at Pharaoh’s court, I suppose he thought that he was doing something really worthwhile. He amounted to something there. But when the Lord let him be driven, or rather frightened away from that court and he went out into the wilderness, I suppose he thought his occupation there was hardly worthwhile. Why, what was he doing anyway? Just taking care of the sheep, leading them out in the morning to the pasture, bringing them back to the fold at night, seven days in the week—just doing this and nothing more. I suppose it did not look very big to Moses, but it did to God. God thought it worth so much that He kept him at that work for forty years. Then Moses, at the age of eighty, when it looked as if he were about done with this world, was called to go to do something for the Lord. That forty years in the wilderness counted now. It had given him experience that helped to quality him for the work to which God had called him. He came out of there worthwhile because he had done something worthwhile in those years. He had learned about God—oh, so many things he had learned! And now he was ready to put that knowledge into practice.
Heart Talks by C. W. Naylor
Link for book in bio.
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Just simply living salvation before people—yes, that is what counts, and it counts more than anything else. That is one of the very greatest things that an individual has ever done in this world. Talk is cheap, and many people can talk all day and say scarcely anything either. Some people can sway great crowds by their eloquence, they can accomplish wonderful things, but still they cannot live salvation, or at least, they do not. There is no power so great in this world as the simple power of a holy, quiet life.
If all God’s people could learn this lesson—if they could learn that it really counts just simply to live right, just simply to be an ordinary, everyday Christian; if they could once get that thoroughly fixed in their minds and hearts—it would glorify their lives. It would exalt the common service, it would shed a halo over their lives, and they would not feel discouraged.
Heart Talks by C. W. Naylor
Link for book in bio.
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We all like to feel what we are doing counts for something, that it is really worthwhile. We like to see practical results. We know that much labor is lost in the world, and we do not want ours to be lost. The ordinary things of life seem to amount to so little. Some think: “If I could just preach I shouldn’t mind working for the Lord. But, oh! I can do so little—nothing worthwhile at all, nothing worth the effort. What can my feeble efforts accomplish anyway?”
Others think that if they could go to a foreign land and work among the heathen, draw people to Christ there, send back home great reports of what they have accomplished, have their names published in the paper and have people talking about them, then that would be worthwhile. But since they are only ordinary people and can do only ordinary things, it seems to them that it hardly pays to try. They will just follow the line of least resistance and do things the easiest way. Of course they want to do what they can for God, but they want to do something really worthwhile.
And now, reader, what is really worthwhile in life? Is it only those things that make a great show? Is it only those things that the world counts great? A sister said to me recently in a letter, “I used to think that I could no nothing worthwhile, but I have found that just simply living salvation before people is a great work.” Now, that sister has learned a wonderful lesson. She has found a truth so great that most people do not recognize it as truth when they do find it. It is one of those truths that have the peculiarity of seeming small and insignificant, though they are the very fundamentals of truth.
Heart Talks by C. W. Naylor
Link for book in bio.
#devotionals #devotional #daily devotional #dailydevotions #scriptureoftheday #christiandevotional #morningdevotional #inspiration #bible #freebooks #christian #motivationalquote #inspirationalquote #churchofgod
