True Christianity

William Wilberforce wrote in Real Christianity:

Measure your progress by your experience of the love of God and its exercise before men....

In contrast, servile, base, and mercenary is the notion of Christian practice among the bulk of nominal Christians. They give no more than they dare not withhold. They abstain from nothing but what they dare not practice. When you state to them the doubtful quality of any action, and the consequent obligation to refrain from it, they reply to you in the very spirit of Shylock, "they cannot find it it the bond."

In short, they know Christianity only as a system of restraints. It is robbed of every liberal and generous principle. It is rendered almost unfit for the social relationships of life,and only suited to the gloomy walls of a cloister, in which they would confine it.

But true Christians consider themselves as not satisfying some rigorous creditor, but as discharging a debt of gratitude. Accordingly, theirs is not the stinted return of a constrained obedience, but the large and liberal measure of voluntary service.

From: Passion and Purity by Elizabeth Elliot

Love God more

As I was reading "Passion and Purity" by Elizabeth Elliot, I came across this Christina Rossetti poem:

Trust me, I have not earned your dear rebuke,
I love, as you would have me, God the most;
Would lose not Him, but you, must one be lost,
Nor with Lot's wife cast back a faithless look,
Unready to forego what I forsook;
This say I, having counted up the cost,
This, though I be the feeblest of God's host,
The sorriest sheep Christ shepherds with His crook.

Yet while I love my God the most, I deem
That I can never love you over-much;
I love Him more, so let me love you too;
Yea, as I apprehend it, love is such
I cannot love you if I love not Him,
I cannot love Him, if I love not you.

It reminded me of what Elizabeth Prentiss says in "Stepping Heavenward" when someone accuses her of loving her children too much:

You cannot love your children too much. You simply love God more.

Book Giveaway---Prayer by C. H. Spurgeon

I am giving away this wonderful book! It is open to all readers who want to enter. Just leave a comment ON MY BOOK BLOG POST and share about a spiritual/devotional book that has led you to come closer to God.

Here are some sentences from the back of Prayer:

"You feel like you don't know how to pray--you can't find the right words, or just can't seem to get God's attention. You will be encouraged by this treasury of devotional expressions for Charles Spurgeon."

His elegant prayers, beautiful in their simplicity, will invite you to be vulnerable before your Creator.

His profound trust in God will set an example for your own pursuit of peaceful spirit.

His persistence in intercession will motivate you to pursue God in prayer.

Also, part of one of the prayers from within Prayer:

You who are King of Kings and Lord of Lords, we worship You. "Before Jehovah's awful throne, we bow with sacred joy." We can truly that we delight in God. There was a time when we feared You with the fear of bondage. Now we reverence You, but we love as much as we reverence. The thought of Your omnipresence was once horrible to us. We said, "Whither shall [we] flee from thy presence?" (Psalm 139:7). It seemed to make hell itself more dreadful, because we heard, "If I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there" (v. 8).

But now, O Lord, we desire to find You. Our longing is to feel Your presence, and it is heavenly that You are there. The sick bed is soft when You are there. The furnace of affliction grows cool when You are there. The house of prayer when You are present is none other than the house of God, the very gate of heaven.

I'm in !! Midwifery program 2009!!!!

After completing a year of nursing at university, I have been accepted into Canberra's first Bachelor of Midwifery program.

I love nursing, but my passion is in caring for women and babies. I knew that it was going to be hard to get into this as there were many applicants, and few places; but after much prayer, and a lot of work on my curriculum vitae (read Resumé), I was accepted!!