Tears streamed down my cheeks as I sat on the stripped bed in my tiny room. Luggage sat ready to be taken to the train station. Goodbyes had been made the night before, there was nothing left to do but to leave; leaving behind my dreams, my hopes and what I had hoped to be my home for many years. I had clung in desperation to a dream I had felt the Lord plant in my heart years before. I longed to be used by Him in full time service, using the creative heart he had instilled within me. I believed that I had a calling on my life and it had been confirmed through others and through time spent with the Lord. Why did everything fall apart? What happened? Looking back now across the years at that broken girl; I now know the answer that that girl was not ready to receive. I was determined to make my dream come true and that was my downfall. I had my heart set on reaching the goal, rather than reaching the heart of Jesus. I put service to Christ above relationship with Christ. Along the way, I allowed my fears and insecurities to be the decision makers in my life. Instead of trusting God's direction as he led me along a different path toward his goals for my life, I tried to return to my comfort zone. God, in his graciousness, waited and waited, then waited some more until my bruised ego and broken heart allowed my heart to truly hear his answer to the "Why?" my heart had asked that cold winter morning. It took me a long time to understand and that to obey is better than sacrifice. God still had a way to go in my heart. His gracious yet severe mercy allowed circumstances to further crumble under my feet for a few more years until I finally hit rock bottom. The creative 'me' found herself hidden in an office in an industrial park of a large urban center. I was alone, doing routine accounting, answering occasional phone calls, selling books to keep the office running. All the dreams and idealist hopes I had thirteen years earlier seemed unfulfilled. Although God blessed my work somewhat during those years and I was able to touch hearts of a few people around me, I knew God could not fully endorse my efforts. I gave in. I couldn't reach the goal no matter how many times I tried to knock down that brick wall of the dead end in which I found myself. I gave God the keys to my heart and stepped back. God finally could move. Now, several years later, all the dreams I had as a young, wide-eyed Christian have come to pass. I'm reaching more people through the Internet than I ever could before. I am expressing His gift of creativity through my writing, through graphics and web design. I am loved, cherished, respected and 'needed' in my local body. I make a difference. I learned that a dead end is only the end if you fail to take the turn. I wasted much needless energy trying to find a way across a dead end street than I would have if I had stopped and asked for directions to get to where he was leading me in the first place. From the DCQ Archives: Trying to do the Lord's work in your own strength is the most confusing, exhausting, and tedious of all work. But when you are filled with the Holy Spirit, then the ministry of Jesus just flows out of you. Corrie Ten Boom http://www.corrietenboom.com/ Corrie Ten Boom Museum NEWS FLASH I Lift My Eyes has partnered with an online christian bookstore to provide you with deep discounts of books, gifts, church supplies, music DVDs, pastoral helps and apparel. Your purchases help offset some of the online costs of this ministry. Please go to http://psalm121.ca/books/books.html in order to start your journey into Christianbook.com so we can can get the referral bonus. You may also make a donation through paypal by sending funds to our paypal account ps121ilme@... Until Next Week © 2011 Katherine Walden Important news for Facebook users. We have moved to a new home on Facebook, one that allows more interaction than what our former home provided. However, in order for you to interact, it is important that you go to this address and look for the 'like' button to the right of the 'wall' menu. Once you 'like' the new page, you will be given permission to reply to posts on the wall and dialogue on the discussion board. http://www.facebook.com/pages/I-Lift-My-Eyes-Ministries/156519567732957 ------------- If you would prefer to receive the quotes below on a daily basis rather than in a weekly summary go to http://dailychristianquote.com/subscribe.html and join the daily quote mailing list. You will not receive the devotional using this method but you can read past devotionals at http://psalm121.ca/edify2.html ------------- DCQ Archive January 18 - 31, 2011 January 18, 2011 It is difficult to believe, but it is nevertheless true, that the sudden and wonderful change wrought by divine mercy in sinners, is usually more perfect and solid than that wrought in the just. Full of a sense of their own wretchedness and of God's overwhelming goodness, they give themselves to Him more generously, are more deeply humbled by His favours, and bear His purifying trials more bravely. Jean Nicolas (J N) Grou http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Grou Wiki Article ------------ January 19, 2011 True evangelical faith is of such a nature it cannot lie dormant, but spreads itself out in all kinds of righteousness and fruits of love; it dies to flesh and blood; it destroys all lusts and forbidden desires ; it seeks, serves and fears God in its inmost soul; it clothes the naked; it feeds the hungry; it comforts the sorrowful; it shelters the destitute; it aids and consoles the sad; it does good to those who do it harm; it serves those that harm it; it prays for those who persecute it; it teaches, admonishes and judges us with the Word of the Lord; it seeks those who are lost; it binds up what is wounded; it heals the sick; it saves what is strong (sound); it becomes all things to all people. The persecution, suffering and anguish that come to it for the sake of the Lord’s truth have become a glorious joy and comfort to it. Menno Simons http://www.mennosimons.net/ Informational Website ------------ January 20-22, 2011 To be crucified means three things. First, the man who is crucified is facing only one direction.... If he hears anything behind him he can't turn around to see what's going on. He has stopped looking back. The crucified man on the cross is looking in only one direction and that is the direction of God and Christ and the Holy Spirit and the direction of the edifying of the church, the direction of sanctification and the direction of the Spirit-filled life. Second, the fellow going out to die on the cross doesn't say to his wife, "Good-bye, honey. I'll be back shortly after five." When you go out to die on the cross you bid goodbye - you're not going back! Another thing about the man on the cross,...he has no further plans of his own.... Somebody else made his plans for him, and when they nailed him up there all his plans disappeared. On the way up to the hill he didn't see a friend and say, "Well, Henry, next Saturday about three I'll come by and we'll go fishing up on the lake." He was going out to die and he had no plans at all. A. W. Tozer http://www.awtozerclassics.com/ The Works Of A. W. Tozer ------------ January 23, 2011 What God may hereafter require of you, you must not give yourself the least trouble about. Everything He gives you to do, you must do as well as ever you can, and that is the best possible preparation for what He may want you to do next. If people would but do what they have to do, they would always find themselves ready for what came next. George Macdonald http://www.george-macdonald.com/ The Golden Key Website ------------ January 24, 2011 Faith draws the poison from every grief, takes the sting from every loss, and quenches the fire of every pain; and only faith can do it. Josiah Gilbert Holland ------------ January 25-26 No DCQ posted ------------ January 27, 2011 We have assigned the obligations of our faith to a few while keeping the privileges for us all. David Platt ------------ January 28, 2011 The soul hardly ever realizes it, but whether he is a believer or not, his loneliness is really a homesickness for God. Hubert van Zeller ------------ January 29, 2011 Let each one do what she can; what one cannot herself do, she does by another who can do it, if she loves in another that which personal inability alone hinders her from doing; wherefore let her who can do less not keep back the one who can do more, and let her who can do more not urge unduly her who can do less. For your conscience is responsible to God; to each other owe nothing but mutual love. Augustine http://www.ccel.org/a/augustine/ Works And Biography ------------ January 30, 2011 I believe the holier a man becomes, the more he mourns over the unholiness which remains in him. Charles Haddon Spurgeon http://www.spurgeon.org/ The Spurgeon Archive ------------ January 31, 2011 You who have yielded so readily to your friend's persuasion and have joined him in doing wrong, you know not how many times a very little resistance would have saved both him and yourself. You know not how many times he was hesitating already and would have drawn back altogether if you had but given him an opening to do so. You know not how often at the very time he was arguing with you, he was in reality arguing against his own conscience and might have been turned back with ease if you had not given way. Frederick Temple http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Temple Biography ------------ Important addresses: http://psalm121.ca/home.html I Lift My Eyes Web Ministries Site Index - please take note of this address To change your address for receiving this list, please unsubcribe from your old address and subscribe with your new address. © 2011 All articles written by Katherine Walden are copyrighted and as such, please do not send them on to others without including all the contact information that is included in every newsletter you receive from this ministry. Feel free to pass on the "Daily Christian Quotes" themselves, no permission is needed to do so.