The world looks for happiness through self-assertion. The Christian knows that joy is found in self-abandonment. 'If a man will let himself be lost for My sake,' Jesus said, 'he will find his true self.

Cold prayers, like cold suitors, are seldom effective in their aims.

The pain of loneliness is one way in which he wants to get our attention. We may be earnestly desiring to be obedient and holy. But we may be missing the fact that it is here, where we happen to be at this moment and not in another place or another time, that we may learn to love Him - here where it seems He is not at work, where He seems obscure or frightening, where He is not doing what we expected Him to do, where He is most absent. Here and nowhere else is the appointed place. If faith does not got to work here, it will not work at all.

Are you afraid? Remember the "fear nots" of the Bible.

Until the will and the affections are brought under the authority of Christ, we have not begun to understand, let alone to accept, His lordship.

The only basis of peace is the cessation of the conflict of two wills: my will vs God’s.

The life of faith is lived one day at a time, and it has to be lived - not always looked forward to as though the "real" living were around the next corner. It is today for which we are responsible. God still owns tomorrow.