He can turn your sadness into gladness!

She read the words written to her and could not believe what she was reading.  Her heart sank and that was when the sadness began.  That is when the enemy began to whisper lies to her.  They did not sound like lies at the time.  They sounded like truth and the more of them she believed the sadder she became until she was crying.  She continued to feel worse and worse...about things, about who she was, about who she wasn't.  She could not bring herself out of this sadness, even when she thought she heard the Lord reminding her of things totally opposite of what she was believing. She wanted to take hold of truth spoken but it was quickly replaced with the lies that were being repeated over and over to her. Several days later she called a friend to check on her.  They hung up after a short conversation but the friend called back to ask if she had read a particular day in Streams in the Desert. She hadn't read it.  The friend told her how much it had helped her with the sadness she was feeling over the loss in her life. She only told the friend she would read it but knew that God had something for her in this. She got the devotional and found the day. As she read, she read it as if it were written to her by someone that knew how she was feeling, because that is how it seemed. She cried, but this time it was because she was seeing things God's way. She began to change her thinking and in doing so the sadness began to leave.  God was replacing it with His joy. A few days later she was able to share this devotional with another person that was going through something that had made them sad in hopes it would be an encouragement to them. Someone reading this may be needing God to replace the sadness you have with God's gladness/joy! He will do it! Then when you see the need, pass it on to another.

Streams in the Desert - Oct. 15 by Mrs. Charles Cowman

Satan's Tools

"Let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and, let us run with patience the race that is set before us" (Heb. 12:1).
There are weights which are not sins in themselves, but which become distractions and stumbling blocks in our Christian progress. One of the worst of these is despondency. The heavy heart is indeed a weight that will surely drag us down in our holiness and usefulness.
The failure of Israel to enter the land of promise began in murmuring, or, as the text in Numbers literally puts it, "as it were murmured." Just a faint desire to complain and be discontented. This led on until it blossomed and ripened into rebellion and ruin. Let us give ourselves no liberty ever to doubt God or His love and faithfulness to us in everything and forever.
We can set our will against doubt just as we do against any other sin; and as we stand firm and refuse to doubt, the Holy Spirit will come to our aid and give us the faith of God and crown us with victory.

It is very easy to fall into the habit of doubting, fretting, and wondering if God has forsaken us and if after all our hopes are to end in failure. Let us refuse to be discouraged. Let us refuse to be unhappy. Let us "count it all joy" when we cannot feel one emotion of happiness. Let us rejoice by faith, by resolution, by reckoning, and we shall surely find that God will make the reckoning real. --Selected

The devil has two master tricks. One is to get us discouraged; then for a time at least we can be of no service to others, and so are defeated. The other is to make us doubt, thus breaking the faith link by which we are bound to our Father. Lookout! Do not be tricked either way. --G.E.M.

Gladness! I like to cultivate the spirit of gladness! It puts the soul so in tune again, and keeps it in tune, so that Satan is shy of touching it--the chords of the soul become too warm, or too full of heavenly electricity, for his infernal fingers, and he goes off somewhere else! Satan is always very shy of meddling with me when my heart is full of gladness and joy in the Holy Ghost.
My plan is to shun the spirit of sadness as I would Satan; but, alas! I am not always successful. Like the devil himself it meets me on the highway of usefulness, looks me so fully in my face, till my poor soul changes color!
Sadness discolors everything; it leaves all objects charmless; it involves future prospects in darkness; it deprives the soul of all its aspirations, enchains all its powers, and produces a mental paralysis!

An old believer remarked, that cheerfulness in religion makes all its services come off with delight; and that we are never carried forward so swiftly in the ways of duty as when borne on the wings of delight; adding, that Melancholy clips such wings; or, to alter the figure, takes off our chariot wheels in duty, and makes them, like those of the Egyptians, drag heavily.


Elaine