Here’s a list of a few of my recent reads, including a few favorite passages from each. I’d love to hear about what you are reading!
The True Vine, Andrew Murray
“Let us realize that we can only fulfill our calling to bear much fruit by praying much. In Christ are hidden all the treasures that the people around us need. In Him, all God’s children are blessed with all spiritual blessings. He is full of grace and truth. But, prayer, much prayer, strong believing prayer, is needed to bring about these blessings. And let us equally remember that we cannot appropriate the promise without first living a life given up for men. Many try to take the promise and then look around for what they can ask. This is not the way, but the very opposite. Get the heart burdened with the need of souls, and the command and power to save them will come to claim the promise.”
“You are the branch. — You need be nothing more. You need not for one single moment of the day take upon you the responsibility of the Vine. You need not leave the place of entire dependence and unbounded confidence.”
Present Over Perfect, Shauna Niequist
“So many of us twist ourselves up in knots trying desperately to be something else, some endless list of qualities and capabilities that we think will make us loved or safe or happy. That’s an exhausting way to live, and I know that because I’ve done it.”
“Your calling is not defined only by the fruit it provides to the kingdom. Another way to say it: your family and your very self are included in the kingdom you wish to serve, and if they are not thriving, the whole of your ministry is not thriving.”
“Present over perfect — it’s about rejecting the myth that every day is a new opportunity to prove our worth, and about the truth that our worth is inherent, given by God, not earned by our hustling. It’s about learning to show up and let ourselves be seen just as we are, massively imperfect and weak and wild and flawed in a thousand ways, but still worth loving. It’s about realizing what makes our lives meaningful is not what we accomplish, but how deeply and honestly we connect with the people in our lives, how wholly we give ourselves to the making of a better world, through kindness and courage.”
I Come Quietly To Meet You, Amy Carmichael
“Those of us who are God’s emissaries are to treat the world (not just its corruptions, but its legitimate joys, its privileges and blessings also), as a thing to be touched at a distance. We must be aware at all times that, if we are caught by its spirit, or fed by its meat, we will lose our sensitivity to the very breath of the Highest and will no longer receive the manna that falls from heaven to feed our souls. It is not that He forbids us this or that indulgence or comfort; not that He is stern, calling us to a life of harsh asceticism, as if that would make Him more pleased with us.
No, it is that we who love our Lord, and we whose affections are set on the things that are heaven for us today, will voluntarily and gladly lay aside things that charm the world, so that we may be charmed and ravished with the things of heaven. Then our whole being may be poured forth in constant and unreserved devotion in serving our Lord, who died to save us.
Therefore, we may bind ourselves to God with the kind of vow that commits us to this: to look upon the world, in all its delights and attractions, suspecting that traps are set there for us, reserving ourselves for a higher way. The world is not for us. We are called to live daily in a higher Kingdom, where we are touched and our souls drink from the Spirit of God.”
Sugar Free, Sonoma Press
A Wife After God’s Own Heart, Elizabeth George
“God desires that we develop spiritual muscle so we are strong enough to be His kind of wife.”
I’m the biggest Shauna Niequist fan. I just finished her book- Cold Tangerines and I just loved it. At the moment I’m reading the book Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson. Have you heard of it? It made me laugh out loud on the bus and get strange looks from my fellow passengers haha
Haha! I give authors plenty of props who can make me laugh out loud. I’ve never heard of that book, but upon your recommendation I’ll check it out!