Since every moment is the beginning of the rest of your life and every moment is the end of the past, then every moment should be governed by the glad accompaniment of both gratitude and faith!
Love is the crowning grace in Heaven, but faith is the conquering grace on earth. Sorrow looks back. Worry looks around. Faith looks up then ahead.
Francois Fenelon (1651 – 1715) had much to write on faith and religion. From his perspective: “religion is primarily that which God Himself wills and does in and upon man. It is God who is utterly sovereign in history, even over the slightest details.” Providence is therefore central in most of Fenelon’s writings. His view about faith was that the soul’s central act is to abandon her life into the hands of God’s wise and loving sovereignty, and one by one stop every inner resistance to God’s redemptive work in her.
“Give a quiet calm attention to those things assigned to your care by providence. It is not that you cannot do what is required of you. It is [probably] that you do not want to be able to do it… Acquiesce to God’s assignment calmly and in a spirit of faith; for everything will be achieved by degrees.”
Crosses borne with quiet endurance unite us to Jesus, and work untold good in us and around us. But crosses we reject, by degrees, dry up the fountain of grace! “As you learn to worship, praise, and bless God for all things – to see His hand everywhere – you will feel nothing to be an unbearable evil, for everything, even the cruelest sufferings, will turn to good for you… Let God do as He sees fit with you.”
The soul that looks where it is going, without losing time arguing over every step or looking back perpetually, possesses true simplicity… The soul [of simplicity] is indifferent as to what others may think. It is always doing everything as well as possible, cheerfully, heartily, but not worried about success or failure. Full resignation and unfeigned acquiescence is true freedom, and from this arises perfect simplicity.
Faith breaks the peace between what is and what ought to be. Go forth in faith that He will be in you exactly what you need Him to be.
God's Word on That 