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Do not be overly concerned about your defects. Instead concentrate on having an unceasing love for Jesus, and you shall be much forgiven, because you have loved much. (Luke 7:47). However, we need to be aware of the tendency to seek the good feelings and selfish thrills of love (which are the by-products of love) instead of love itself. We can so easily deceive ourselves on this matter.”
– François Fénelon, 17th century Archbishop and spiritual advisor to courtiers of Louis XIV.
Filed under A Thought for Today
Remaining steadfast is all about perseverance – through trying situations and especially in relationships. Marriage, it’s been said, is meant to make us holy, not happy. Grrr. This rubs against all my idealistic romance-writer sensibilities. If you’re like me, you carry around lovely little snow-globe images of what relationships should look like, whether they be with our spouses, children, friends, co-workers, or whoever. And if you’re like me, you nurture and polish those images all the time, worshiping and perfecting them.
But if I’m honest with myself I have to recognize that all of life is meant to make me holy, not happy. All I have to do is peruse a few flannel-board Bible stories to see that. No snow-globes there. Amy Carmichael once wrote this to someone who had prayed for her healing:
Amy wondered whether He’d prefer that the emphasis were on making sure we didn’t miss any good thing that might come from the illness, instead of: ‘Health is a good thing. Lord, give it.’” – Quoted from Candles in the Dark
Father God, let me respond to the stresses of life and relationship in ways that make me more holy.
Filed under A Verse for Today, Uncategorized
“Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”
– James 1:2-4
I read these verses to my five-year-old daughter Megan this morning and asked if she felt joy the last time she scraped her knee and needed a band-aid. “No,” she replied, laughing. But according to my ESV Study Bible, these verses are a call to understand suffering from the vantage point of confidence in God’s sovereignty. Trials can be considered pure joy only when we recognize they’re designed by God for a purpose—tests of faith given in order to develop perseverance, which produces mature Christian character. Do I praise God only when I receive pleasant blessings from His hand? Do I want it to be said of me, like Satan predicted of Job, that I would curse God if He took away all He’s given me?
More later . . .
Filed under A Verse for Today, Uncategorized
From John Piper’s Good News of Great Joy (a free e-book download):
“Mary and Elizabeth are wonderful heroines in Luke’s
account. He loves the faith of these women. The thing that
impresses him most, it appears, and the thing he wants to
impress on Theophilus, his noble reader, is the lowliness and
cheerful humility of Elizabeth and Mary.
Elizabeth says,“Why is this granted to me that the mother of
my Lord would come to me?” (Luke 1:43). And Mary says, “He
has looked on the humble estate of his servant” (Luke 1:48).
The only people whose soul can truly magnify the Lord are
people like Elizabeth and Mary—people who acknowledge
their lowly estate and are overwhelmed by the condescension
of the magnificent God.”
Filed under Advent, Uncategorized
Mary Elizabeth Hall 