THE GLORY OF REST!

This past weekend we (my wife, son (amazingly) and myself) rested. Like many families, weekends are often filled with activities: church, visiting friends, going ice skating and on and on. I'm not against any of these "things-to-do" per se. They all have a place and a time. But here is my experience: setting aside a major block of time to rest, focus on the Lord and just BE, and especially in the context of your family or other community, can do wonders.

This morning, after the weekend was over, I believe the Lord shared with me several crucial insights for areas I have been struggling in, sometimes over a period of years. Yes, I plan to share these with you! But for the moment, I want (and hope that you will also desire) to step back and, in wonder, proclaim the Glory of Rest!

To My Family and Friends...

To my Friends and Family-in-the-Lord:
I want to thank so many of you for the encouragement you've given to and confidence you've shown in me. As Zig Ziglar notes, even those who try to encourage others need to be encouraged themselves.
All of us can reach our God-ordained potential, the "high calling" He has for us, of that I am now sure. All that is required is staying the course, which we can only do with the help of our friends and family. Doing so involves willingness to endure pain. Pain requires us to grow in love, for without love, none can withstand it.
These are amazing times in which we live. Evil is growing in intensity and scope, yes.  But, even more, the Kingdom of Light is igniting. The fires of the Holy Spirit are being kindled, in far-off places as well as close to home. Many hearts are being joined into the Great Family that We will be (and already are) for eternity.
My prayer is that I can be there for you and others as you have been for me.
Let's each bring our fuel to the fire. We have much to give.
There is much more to say. Let me close as I began:
THANK YOU!
Quaife Nichols
Ps I recently read (or better put, experienced) a book that has had more effect on me than any other than the Bible itself: Heaven Awaits the Bride, by Anna Rountree. Some may have a theological issue with someone visiting heaven. If so, perhaps you could read it as an allegory (such as the Narnia Chronicles) that contains much truth.

How to influence nations

The apostles of nations were all interior men, endowed with a sublime spirit of prayer. The salvation of souls being a supernatural end, the instruments ought to bear a proportion to it, and preaching proceed from a grace which is supernatural. To undertake this holy function, without a competent stock of sacred learning, and without the necessary precautions of human prudence and industry, would be to tempt God. But sanctity of life and the union of the heart with God, are a qualification far more essential than science, eloquence, and human talents. Many almost kill themselves with studying to compose elegant sermons, which flatter the ear yet reap very little fruit. Their hearers applaud their parts, but very few are converted. Most preachers, now-a-days, have learning, but are not sufficiently grounded in true sanctity, and a spirit of devotion. Interior humility, purity of heart, recollection, and the spirit and the assiduous practice of holy prayer, are the principal preparation for the ministry of the word, and the true means of acquiring the science of the saints. A short devout meditation and fervent prayer, which kindle a fire in the affections, furnish more thoughts proper to move the hearts of the hearers, and inspire them with sentiments of true virtue, than many years employed barely in reading and study. St. Patrick, and other apostolic men, were dead to themselves and the world, and animated with the spirit of perfect charity and humility, by which they were prepared by God to be such powerful instruments of his grace, as, by the miraculous change of so many hearts, to plant in entire barbarous nations not only the faith, but also the spirit of Christ. Preachers, who have not attained to a disengagement and purity of heart, suffer the petty interests of self-love secretly to mingle themselves in their zeal and charity, and have reason to suspect that they inflict deeper wounds in their own souls than they are aware, and produce not in others the good which they imagine.
Rev. Alban Butler (1711–73). Volume III: March.
The Lives of the Saints. 1866. March 17 St. Patrick, Bishop and Confessor, Apostle of Ireland

A Prayer for 2012

Lord, I offer up the coming year to You. Use it and me as You would. Set me free from fear, laziness or any other besetting sin that keeps me from fullfilling Your perfect Plan for my life.
Help your vision for my life to be realized, first in Jerusalem, then in Judea, Samaria and the the Ends of the Earth 9metoaphorically speaking).
I commit to follow Your Word, Your Spirit, and godly counsel in the year to come, as You enable me. Make me willing to obey, as you promise to do in Your Word.
Let not desire for comfort or any other earthly desire keep me from fulfilling Your desires. May the anointing of Your Spirit break every yoke in my life and the lives of all I influence.
So be it, Amein, let it be so, Amen!