The water is with you wherever you go. But still, you must drink. The Spirit comes from within and satisfies you, so that you can then be satisfied with what the Spirit is doing around you. The active presence of God connects your inward life with your outward circumstances.

Curiosity itself is always good, and only increases with holiness. The danger is in feeding the mind at the expense of the spirit.

Job was a deeply spiritual man, yet his intellectual knowledge of God was no match for a direct encounter. The advice of his friends only made things worse. God’s presence, however, instantly cured him of his delusions.

The apostle Paul was talking about money when he said, “God loves a cheerful giver,” but the same thing can be said about the gift of yourself. The delivering over of your entire being into the hands of God is the gift he seeks from you.

Without the grace to accept your failures, where will you get the grace to accept your successes?

From root to branches, everything we do is like a single tree, and is seen by God in its entirety. A pure heart, knowing this, suffers failure with grace, and bears with its own weaknesses just as it does with the weaknesses of others.

When you know that your soul is resting in God with faith and full surrender, you have nothing else to worry about. On the other hand, when all is not well with you, check your soul.

Perhaps you have witnessed this: God whispers a vision or idea into someone’s heart, but before it is implemented, it passes through a filter of pride, self-interest, and carnal ambition. The vision comes to pass in the real world, but it is not exactly right. It is not a faithful echo of the God’s true intention. Remove such filters from your heart. Better yet, give yourself over to God and allow him to remove them however he sees fit to do so. Then your heart will become a faithful echo, repeating what it hears to the rest of your being.

To say that Christ’s kingdom is not of this world does not mean that it has no physical effect.

The gift of heart purity silences that interior background noise, and reveals your own motives to you.