If you want to know what someone is really like, you must pray with them," a friend tells me. Perhaps she is right because it appears that Jesus judges our character by our prayers and meditations. When He saw Nathaniel, He gave him a high compliment: "Here is a true Israelite, in whom there is nothing false" (John 1:47). He was saying Nathaniel was sincere, transparent, and without hypocrisy. 

Lavena offered to chauffeur her elderly parents on a trip of a couple hundred miles. She finds driving in heavy traffic a harrowing experience, so she didn't sleep well the night before the trip. When morning finally came, she was too tired to start the journey.

God makes an abundance of promises for those who are meek--those who are humble and cheerful and content with what their gracious God allows them. The meek are not annoyed because they think they deserve better. They refuse to be irritated when they see others possessed of more honor or riches than their wise God has given them.

Imagine the Maker of heaven and earth offering to make of you a great nation! God made that offer to Moses. 

Roy Hession tells of a lesson God taught him as a young Christian. In his book My Calvary Road, he writes, "I saw a man walking the streets carrying sandwich boards on which were inscribed texts of Scripture--you know, encouraging ones like 'The wicked shall be turned into hell!'"

Hudson Taylor gave his heart to God at age fourteen, but later left his faith and even leaned toward skepticism.

Matta Boush, an outspoken evangelist in South Sudan was arrested and given a sentence of thirty years at a local military prison. He asked prison authorities for permission to hold prayer meetings. At first they declined, saying, "We already have a mosque; you should go there." But Boush persisted and eventually the authorities relented. For the first prayer meeting, only six people showed up. In a few weeks, more people were going to the prayer meeting than the mosque.

When I was a girl, mother would occasionally take me to the huge stores in St. Louis for a day of shopping the sale racks.