What matters?

-From Beginning to Pray by Anthony Bloom

"Let us think about our prayers,
yours and mine;
think of the warmth,
the depth and intensity of your prayers
when it concerns someone you love
or something which matters to your life.
Then your heart is open,
all your inner self is recollected in the prayer.

Does it mean that God matters to you?

No, it does not.

It simply means that the subject matter
of your prayer matters to you.

For when you have made your passionate,
deep, intense prayer concerning the person you love
or the situation that worries you,
and you turn to the next item,
which does not matter so much-
if you suddenly grow cold,
what has changed?

Has God grown cold?
Has He gone?

No, it means that all the elation,
all the intensity in your prayer
was not born of God's presence,
of your faith in Him,
of your longing for Him,
of your awareness of Him;
it was born of nothing
but your concern for him or her or it,
not for God."

Spinach or cake?

by Vance Havner

"There are alot of questions the Bible
doesn't answer about the Hereafter.

But I think one reason is illustrated
by the story of a boy sitting down
to a bowl of spinach
when there's a chocolate cake
at the end of the table.

He's going to have a rough time eating that spinach
when his eyes are on the cake.

And if the Lord had explained everything to us
about what's ours to come,
I think we'd have a rough time with
our spinach down here."

Close Walk

from Beth Moore~

"One reliable rod for measuring closeness
to God would be the time
that lapses between sin and repentance.

The spiritual man still sins,
but he cannot bear to resist
immediate repentance.

His overwhelming sensitivity
results in a holier life
because he repents
in the early stages
of what otherwise would
become a contagion of sin.

Indeed,
those who walk closely with God
frustrate the efforts of the accuser;
by the time he arrives in the heavenlies
to register his accusations,
God can say with pleasure,
"I have no memory of that sin."