Me: With Christ is better than anything else without Christ.
This is from Intimacy with the Beloved by Pat Chen
Those who give themselves completely to Christ are often despised, mocked and looked upon as weird. The crowd demands that we prove who He is in us. They told Jesus to prove who He was. The world demands that we be just like everybody else. If we are not, they think something is wrong with us. We are constantly challenged to be like the crowd and to prove ourselves. But we don’t have to prove anything. Jesus has already proved who He is on the cross. We must battle against those same mocking spirits that Jesus battled on the cross. The evil spirits are intruders into our private lives with Christ. Our passion for Jesus is despised by the enemy. He hates our passion, and he hates us.
Present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. Romans 12:1
As soon as we lay ourselves entirely at His feet, we have enough light given us to guide our own steps; as the foot-soldier, who hears nothing of the councils that determine the course of the great battle he is in, hears plainly enough the word of command which he must himself obey.
And Abraham was old, and well stricken in age: and the LORD had blessed Abraham in all things. Genesis 24:1 (KJV)
There are exceptional women, there are exceptional men, who have other tasks to perform in addition to , not in substitution for, the task of motherhood and fatherhood, the task of providing for the home and of keeping it. But it is the tasks connected with the home that are the fundamental tasks of humanity. After all, we can get along for the time being with an inferior quality of success in other lines, political or business or of any kind; because if there are failings in such matters we can make them good in the next generation; but if the mother does not do her duty, there will either be no next generation, or a next generation that is worse than none at all. In other words, we cannot as a Nation get along at all if we haven’t the right kind of home life. Such a life is not only the supreme duty, but also the supreme reward of duty. Every rightly constituted woman or man, if she or he is worth his or her salt, must feel that there is no such ample reward to be found anywhere in life as the reward of children, the reward of a happy family life.
The LORD hear thee in the day of trouble; the name of the God of Jacob defend thee; Psalms 20:1 (KJV)
This is from the book The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: “ye were bought at a price,” and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us.
But he said unto them, Have ye not read what David did, when he was an hungred, and they that were with him; Matthew 12:3 (KJV)