"God gave us part of our reward in hand now that He might enable us to work for more. He gives eternal gifts for temporal services, and gives us whatsoever we want for asking, and commands us to ask, and threatens us if we will not ask, and punishes us for refusing to ask. 

  He comforts the poor, and He brings down the rich, that they may be safe in their humility and sorrow. His mercy is His glory, and His glory is the light of heaven. He is 'ready to forgive'. We have but a small opinion of the divine mercy if we dare not believe concerning it that it is desirous, and able, and watchful, and passionate, to keep us or rescue us. 

He preserves those that endeavor to obey, though they do it but in weakness; that weep truly for their sins, though but with a small shower no bigger than the drops of pity; and those that wait for His coming with a holy and pure flame, though their lamps are no brighter than a poor mans candle, though their strengths are no greater than a contrite reed or a strained arm, and their fires have no more warmth than the smoke of kindling flax. 

If our faith is pure, and our love unfeigned; if the degree of it be great, God will accept it into glory, but if it is little, He will accept it into grace and make it bigger." Jeremy Taylor.  

  "It may be said with perfect truth that the measure of a man is, not what he can do, but what he believes in. In every case the spiritual belief of a man outruns his actual capacity. 

  We often point with sadness to the amount of hypocrisy that exists in the world. We hear men in their books and conversation speaking about the most spiritual and edifying sentiments, but when we meet them face to face we experience a shock of contradiction. 

Yet there is no reason to suppose that the contradiction has it's root in hypocrisy. In a large amount of cases it would be more correct to say that these people are "justified by faith." They have the sight of an ideal; they see before them an image of what they would like to be. They have faith in it, that is to say, they believe it to be the only object worth following, and the only object which it will reward them to follow. They have sight of the ideal, but their foot-steps lag behind their sight. 

It springs from the fact that the nature of man does not advance simultaneously to perfection, that there are powers of the human soul which seem to outrun the others and arrive more quickly at their destined goal. It arises from that law of moral growth by which, while it is yet winter in the world of action, the aspirations are bursting into the buds of spring, and while the limbs are yet paralyzed with cold the heart is made aware that the time for the singing of birds is come.  

We may consider it certain that the imitative acts of the child are of less value than the principle of imitation which prompted them." 

George Matheson.  

  I asked a friend of mine, Ann Stewart Porter, in her sixties, who is a survivor of rape; three to be exact, if she would write her story of healing so I could share it with others. And all of these perpetrators were within the church. How do we ever go back to church after that?  Here's her story ---  

  "First it was a church youth leader, a man in his 30’s and me, all of fifteen. He talked dirty and I didn’t understand. 

Then it was our church organist’s brother, but I kicked him where it hurts, and threw his shoe on the roof, and escaped. But then it was a Deacon’s son, who asked to counsel with me, but took me to the dark countryside after Sunday night church, to rape me. To this day, I don’t do cars alone with men.

Then it was a Preacher’s son who lived nearby. He was so nice to pick me up from work, and then drive me to an apartment with my drunk manager, and they did what they wanted to do. I don’t even remember how I got home.

Then I went to a Christian College. My boss raped me. I had been his children’s babysitter. His wife said he’d done it before. He came up to me as I was vacuuming the President’s office. To this day, I don’t have a vacuum cleaner.

I changed schools and met this incredible human being who I ended up marrying, but never told him I had been raped, not once but three times. But he figured it out one day, and we really did get great counsel. God did an incredible work of healing me, mind and spirit.

The sexual abuse was compounded by emotional abuse of people who didn’t understand. Or didn’t want to know. This was 45 years ago, so it was always the girl’s fault. This was the church where men were allowed to control a woman. Abuse is still rampant in and out of the church. Abuse is still rampant in Christian homes. Rape and incest are still alive and harming girls and boys every single day.

I took my anger out on God and begged to understand. At 16, I stood behind our church and wailed on God. It was quiet. But… One day I was listening to a dear friend of mine, a gifted worship leader who had, for the second time, been fired from a church. His teen daughter was so furious. But he was quick to remind her people aren’t God. People can be really stupid and make absurd choices, even in the name of God. But that doesn’t mean God has to take responsibility for their free will or their choice to sin. We let go of the people, not God. In a remarkable turn of events, I was able to be very sexually compatible with my husband, although he learned quickly, he couldn’t lovingly hold me down, or scare me unexpectedly. God faithfully gave us a passion few I know have in their marriage. We are very emotionally connected as well. Have been for over 45 years. I became a Teacher, Counselor, Writer, and rape recovery is one of the things I do, because it’s important. Many people suffer at the hands of so called godly people, and it’s not always easy to separate the two at all. But at some point, you either choose love or you choose pain. You let go and you let in. You give or you take. You rise or you fall. You win or you lose. You get better or you get bitter. You cannot store hate inside a heart of love. You cannot. You can think you do, but the joke is on you. God didn’t design our hearts to carry what people do to us in their pain. He designed us to forgive, live in genuine freedom, choose joy and help another who might feel trapped in the grief of it all. I chose what I wanted because it’s good for me. I needed the strength to overcome more things that would come my way. I didn’t want anybody who had harmed me, to hold power over me, to keep me from being healthy and wise and happy.

My Mama used to say people expect God's people to be good and the church to do right, but if you were the Devil, where would you go first? The Church. So, I decided as hard as it was to forgive and grow up, it’s harder still to not forgive and live in pain. I love that I could and did choose my healing. I love that God uses me despite all. I love that I choose love over all, because I found God was faithful and His peace remains a gift I find joy in over and over. I went on to lose 4 of my five children and to face even more pain, but I found out because my strength has roots down deep in God, I can withstand and be there for others. It’s become a gloriously satisfying life. And my perpetrators will not experience that, choosing their pain. But I have loved learning hope springs eternal in the Eternal One. There are two roads that do diverge, and yep, I took the one less traveled, and that makes all the difference. I hope it makes a difference for you."

Ann Stewart Porter

I've been just itching to share this picture! This little girl goes out with her parents and friends to minister to the homeless and oppressed in their city. Now set aside for a minute the wonderful example of true Christian child training, and what a tender heart this little gal has, and just imagine how the Holy Spirit will come with rushing power on this fella being prayed for by a child!!!!!!! 

 I'll never forget a simple conversation I had with a ten year old girl years ago! And I was just listening to her talk about life and her precocious views about a host of things. Now to imagine myself at my bottom and having a bright and loving child show love to me......... world changing!!!!!

 Congratulations Malala, may you have many years of world changing!!!!!!

 

   
"When a man said, I believe in Christ, he really said, and meant to say, I believe in the beauty of goodness, in the desirableness of purity, in the right of righteousness to be ultimately triumphant. He declared that Christ was his ideal of perfection, that to that ideal he was in thought at least, loyal and true, and that he longed for the time to come when the actions of his life would be conformable to the thought of his soul." George Matheson. 

 

  God's grace and divine mercy will often hinder us from pursuing our lusts. Here Jeremy Taylor explains all the little subtle ways He may do that. 

  "When a man's desires are winged with sails and a lusty wind of passion, and pass on into a smooth channel of opportunity, God oftentimes hinders the lust and the impatient desire from passing on to its port and entering into action, by a sudden thought, or by a little remembrance of a word, or by a fancy, or by a sudden disability, by unreasonable and unlikely fears, by the sudden intervention of company, or by the very weariness of the passion, or by curiosity, by lack of health, by the too great violence of the desire, bursting itself with its fullness into dissolution and a remiss or easiness, or by a sentence of scripture, by the reverence of a good man, or else by the proper interventions of the Spirit of grace, chastising the crime, and representing its appendant mischiefs and its constituent disorder and irregularity; and after all this the very anguish and trouble of being defeated in the purpose hath rolled itself into so much uneasiness and unquiet reflections that the man is grown ashamed, and vexed into more sober counsels." 

  In the preceding verses he explained this by way of an illustration using the flame on a coal reaching out for tinder, but hindered by many things ---

 "For so I have seen a busy flame sitting upon a sullen coal, turn its point to all the angles and portions of its neighborhood, and reach at a heap of prepared straw, which like a bold temptation called it to a restless motion and activity; but either it was at too big a distance, or a gentle breath from haven diverted the sphere and the ray of the fire to the other side, and so prevented the violence of the burning; till the flame expired in a weak consumption, and died, turning into smoke and the coolness of death, and the harmlessness of a cinder."