Bread Crumbs – Devotions for Life

Everything exists for the purpose of glorifying God.

 What is the chief end and purpose of mankind?

To glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.

He cannot bless us unless He has us.

For it is not so much of our time and so much of our attention that God demands; it is not even all our time and all our attention; it is ourselves. For each of us the Baptist’s words are true: “He must increase and I decrease.”

He will be infinitely merciful to our repeated failures; I know no promise that He will accept a deliberate compromise. … What cannot be admitted, what must exist only as an undefeated but daily resisted enemy, is the idea of something that is “our own,” some area in which we are to be “out of school,” on which God has no claim. For He claims all, because He is love and must bless

C. S. Lewis (2009-03-17). A Year with C. S. Lewis (p. 38). Harper Collins, Inc.. Kindle Edition

 

The Master never used a more unfit and wretched instrument 

to do His work than when He used me

In fact I know He never did; and I don’t wonder that He has laid me aside. If He needs me He will use me again someday, and meanwhile I trust He will fashion me into a vessel a little better fitted for His service.

Self has a thousand voices that assume the appearance of divine ones, and the heart that has any regard left for it is easily deceived. But let the soul lose absolutely all concern for self; let it be indifferent to its reputation; careless of its honor; inattentive to its ease.

Hannah Smith Hannah Whitall Smith and Melvin Easterday Dieter, The Christian’s Secret of a Holy Life : The Unpublished Personal Writings of Hannah Whitall Smith (Oak Harbor: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1997).

 

God makes us broken bread and poured-out wine to please Himself.

Discipleship has an option with it—“IF any man …”  Paul’s words have to do with being made a servant of Jesus Christ, and our permission is never asked as to what we will do or where we will go.

God makes us broken bread and poured-out wine to please Himself. To be “separated unto the gospel” means to hear the call of God; and when a man begins to overhear that call, then begins agony that is worthy of the name. Every ambition is nipped in the bud, every desire of life quenched, every outlook completely extinguished and blotted out, saving one thing only—“separated unto the gospel.” … Beware of competitors when God does grip you.

Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest : Selections for the Year (Grand Rapids, MI: Discovery House Publishers, 1993).