Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it

I read this quote in Elisabeth Elliot's book "Keep a Quiet Heart" this morning and was so blessed and challenged by it!  It's an area the Lord has been speaking to me about lately.  I hope it will be an encouragement to some of you as well!

~Breanna

"Say not you cannot gladden, elevate, and set free; that you have nothing of the grace of influence; that all you have to give is at the most only common bread and water.  Give yourself to your Lord for the service of men with what you have.  Cannot He change water into wine?  Cannot He make stammering words to be instinct (imbued, filled, charged) with saving power?  Cannot He change trembling efforts to help into deeds of strength?  Cannot He still, as of old, enable you in all your personal poverty 'to make many rich?' God has need of thee for the service of thy fellow men.  He has a work for thee to do.  To find out what it is, and then to do it, is at once thy supremist duty and thy highest wisdom. 'Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it.'" (Canon George Body, b. 1840)

A Test of Our Spiritual Condition

I so enjoy the Psalms.  They are such a blessing, encouragement, and challenge.  Reading this makes me think that I need to read them more. :-)
“Thou art weighed in the balances and art found wanting.”  - Daniel 5:27
It is well frequently to weigh ourselves in the scale of God’s Word. You will find it a holy exercise to read some psalm of David, and, as you meditate upon each verse, to ask yourself, “Can I say this? Have I felt as David felt? Has my heart ever been broken on account of sin, as his was when he penned his penitential psalms? Has my soul been full of true confidence in the hour of difficulty as his was when he sang of God’s mercies in the cave of Adullam, or in the holds of Engedi? Do I take the cup of salvation and call upon the name of the Lord?” Then turn to the life of Christ, and as you read, ask yourselves how far you are conformed to his likeness. Endeavor to discover whether you have the meekness, the humility, the lovely spirit which he constantly inculcated and displayed. Take, then, the epistles, and see whether you can go with the apostle in what he said of his experience. Have you ever cried out as he did-”O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” Have you ever felt his self-abasement? Have you seemed to yourself the chief of sinners, and less than the least of all saints? Have you known anything of his devotion? Could you join with him and say, “For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain”? If we thus read God’s Word as a test of our spiritual condition, we shall have good reason to stop many a time and say, “Lord, I feel I have never yet been here, O bring me here! give me true penitence, such as this I read of. Give me real faith; give me warmer zeal; inflame me with more fervent love; grant me the grace of meekness; make me more like Jesus. Let me no longer be ‘found wanting,’ when weighed in the balances of the sanctuary, lest I be found wanting in the scales of judgment.” “Judge yourselves that ye be not judged.”
-Charles Spurgeon's Morning Meditation, June 12th
~Brittany

Random Pictures of the Week

Tayte has recently become a reader.

Part of his marriage prep training. :-)

Three matching buddies at church.

And yes, they planned it. :-)

(Thanks to Amanda for the picture.)

~Brittany

The Ground of Faith

“Thou shalt see now whether my word shall come to pass unto thee or not.”  -Numbers 11:23
God had made a positive promise to Moses that for the space of a whole month he would feed the vast host in the wilderness with flesh. Moses, being overtaken by a fit of unbelief, looks to the outward means, and is at a loss to know how the promise can be fulfilled. He looked to the creature instead of the Creator. But doth the Creator expect the creature to fulfill his promise for him? No; he who makes the promise ever fulfills it by his own unaided omnipotence. If he speaks, it is done-done by himself. His promises do not depend for their fulfillment upon the co-operation of the puny strength of man. We can at once perceive the mistake which Moses made. And yet how commonly we do the same! God has promised to supply our needs, and we look to the creature to do what God has promised to do; and then, because we perceive the creature to be weak and feeble, we indulge in unbelief. Why look we to that quarter at all? Will you look to the north pole to gather fruits ripened in the sun? Verily, you would act no more foolishly if ye did this than when you look to the weak for strength, and to the creature to do the Creator’s work. Let us, then, put the question on the right footing. The ground of faith is not the sufficiency of the visible means for the performance of the promise, but the all-sufficiency of the invisible God, who will most surely do as he hath said. If after clearly seeing that the onus lies with the Lord and not with the creature, we dare to indulge in mistrust, the question of God comes home mightily to us: “Has the Lord’s hand waxed short?” May it happen, too, in his mercy, that with the question there may flash upon our souls that blessed declaration, “Thou shalt see now whether my word shall come to pass unto thee or not.”
-Charles Spurgeon's Evening Meditation, June 8th
~Brittany

Good Quotes

I've had these quotes saved in my inbox from my email subscription to What They Said, (one of our favorite websites listed on the side of our blog).  These are a few that I've saved that I wanted to share on here.

"The world today is looking for, and desperately needs, true Christians. I am never tired of saying that what the Church needs to do is not to organize evangelistic campaigns and attract outside people, but to begin herself to live the Christian life."  -Martyn Lloyd-Jones

"It is often ignorantly and frivolously charged against Christian men that it is selfish in them to seek heaven and glory for their own souls; but no man who is truly seeking salvation will be moved by that accusation. When men really begin to seek their salvation, and to turn their faces to the glory of heaven, then it is that all selfish and ignoble desires receive their death-blow. It is not selfish, surely, for the diseased to seek healing, or the hungry food, or the prodigal his father’s house. So far from this being a sign that the heart is selfish, there is no surer sign that it is being sanctified." -Alexander Whyte

"I say the answer is simple, but it is not easy for it requires that we obey God rather than man, and that always brings down the wrath of the religious majority.  It is not a question of knowing what to do; we can easily learn that from the Scriptures.  It is a question of whether or not we have the courage to do it." -A.W. Tozer

"Ought we not to be more thorough in our service, not simply doing well that which will be seen and notice, but as our Father makes many a flower to bloom unseen in the lonely desert, so to do all that we can do, as under His eye, though no other eye ever take note of it?" -J. Hudson Taylor

“To argue from mercy to sin is the devil's logic” -James Janeway

"To forsake Christ for the world, or a lust, is to leave a treasure for a trifle; a mountain of gold, for a heap of dung; the pure, lasting fountain, for the muddy, broken cistern; eternity for a moment; reality for a shadow; all things for nothing." -William Jenkyn

~Brittany

The Weapon of Meekness

I was very blessed, encouraged, and challenged when I read this yesterday.

Meekness is teachability.  It is the readiness to be shown, which includes the readiness to lay down my fixed notions, my objections and “what ifs” or “but what abouts,” my certainties about the rightness of what I have always done or thought or said.  It is the child’s glad “Show me!  Is this the way?  Please help me.”  We won’t make it into the kingdom without that childlikeness, that simple willingness to be taught and corrected and helped.   We must walk (live) in the Spirit, not gratifying the desires of the sinful nature (for example, my desire to answer back, to offer excuses and accusations, my desire to show up the other's fault instead of to be shown my own).  We must “clothe” ourselves (Colossians 3:12) with meekness-put it on, like a garment.  This entails an explicit choice: I will be meek.  I will not sulk, will not retaliate, will not carry a chip.  A steadfast look at Jesus instead of at the injury makes a very great difference.  Seeking to see things in His light changes the aspect altogether.  The weapon of meekness counters all enmity, says author Dietrich Von Hildebrand, with the offer of an unshielded heart.  Isn’t this the simple explanation for our being so heavy-laden, so tired, so overburdened and confused and bitter?  We drag around such prodigious loads of resentment and self-assertion.  Shall we not rather accept at once the loving invitation: “Com to Me.  Take my yoke.  Learn of Me-I am gentle, meek, humble, lowly.  I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28-29 paraphrased).
~Elisabeth Elliot, Keep a Quiet Heart
~Brittany

Let us... put on the armour of light.

But put on the Lord Jesus Christ.—That I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.—The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.
He has covered me with the robe of righteousness.—With the mighty deeds of the Lord God I will come; I will remind them of your righteousness, yours alone.—At one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light…. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them…. But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible, for anything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says, “Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” Look carefully then how you walk.
  Rom. 13:12; Rom. 13:14; Phil. 3:8, 9; Rom. 3:22; Isa. 61:10; Ps. 71:16; Eph. 5:8, 11, 13-15
~Daily Light on the Daily Path, Day 156, Evening

~Brittany

"People around you desperately need living examples

of Christian love, and you can be that example.

Love is the first fruit the Holy Spirit wants to produce and grow in your life (Gal. 5:22).

Don't resist His gentle prodding;

respond in obedience to the Spirit's leading to love as Christ loved."

-- Alexander Strauch --

"But the fact remains that the place in which we find ourselves 

is the very place in which the Master desires us to live our life!

There is no haphazard in God's world.

God leads every one of His children by the right way.

He knows where and under what influences, each particular life will ripen best."

-- J.R. Miller --

"Fulfillment is not a goal to achieve,
but always a by-product of sacrifice."
-- Elisabeth Elliot --

~Brittany

His Will, His Grace

I know I posted this quote a while back, but I was so blessed by it that I put it with a picture.  I love this picture of Sarah.  Carefree, but diligently working away at pulling loose roots up from the yard.  She was so peaceful.  I thought the picture went well with the quote.  So... I had to post it again. :-)
~Brittany

God's Not Dead

For those of you that haven't seen it yet....

You REALLY need to!!!!

Excellent movie!!!  Our family was very blessed, challenged and inspired by it!  It provoked some good conversation afterwards.  There were a couple of things that we wished they would have done a little different, but overall we really appreciate it and were blessed by the message. 

I don't know how long it will stay on youtube, but for now...you can watch the entire movie on youtube by going to this link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfdM4JxE0Wc

We hope that you enjoy it as much as we did!

~Breanna