Spurgeon on staying cheerful for work

Labor is light to a man of cheerful spirit!
You can work all day and almost all night, when the spirits are right. But once let the heart sink and your soul lack encouragement, and then you grow weary, and cry, “Would God it were evening, and the shadows were drawn out, that we might rest from our toil.”
Success waits upon cheerfulness.
The man who toils, rejoicing in his God, believing with all his heart, has success guaranteed.
He who sows in hope shall reap in joy.
He who trusts in the Lord and laughs at impossibilities, shall soon find that there are no impossibilities to laugh at, for to the man who is confident in Jehovah, all things are possible. It is thus of paramount importance that the spirits of the Christian should be constantly kept up.

SOURCE: C.H. Spurgeon, sermon delivered on October 18, 1863.

from Thriving Pastor

Quick Review: All Hell Let Loose

...by Max Hastings


Short review for a big book: a huge one-volume history of WWII.  In short: a global perspective of the most significant events, but with the everyday lives of military and civilian woven in.  Harrowing, to say the least; sometimes disturbing and distressing.  WWII isn't all Churchill and the tidy movement of troops.

Not a book to read at bedtime.  Which is a caution: explicit descriptions of death, violence, destruction, with the explicit language also.  But you emerge knowing why we must remember, and why we must prevent anything like it again.

Welch: doing hope (something of a manifesto) -the last quote!

We must do hope...We have bought the lie that tragedy is the last word...

How will I practice hope?  I plan to take a sabbatical from worry and pursue an obstinate optimism.  I anticipate falling on my face, but much less often than before. 

- I have some reasons to worry in the near future.  I plan to go completely against type and speak with hope to my wife when the threat comes closer.

- I know I have to practice, so I am going to meditate on passages like Psalm 27 and Psalm 46.

- I will speak about hope to my friend who has cancer.

- I will pray that I have power to turn quickly to Christ when I am afraid.

-I will listen to worry and go after it at its roots.

How will you protest? How will you do hope?

Running Scared, p308 &310.

Welch: facing fears

Fears tend to lose their grip when people face them. As Emmi Bonhoeffer states, “From the very moment one feels called to act is born the strength to bear whatever horror one will feel or see.  In some inexplicable way, terror loses its overwhelming power when it becomes a task that must be faced.”  Conversely when we experience past difficulties as uncontrollable and unpredictable, we are more likely to carry and accumulate fears and worries.  

Running Scared, p298