With a Heart Full of Courage

To them who by patient continuance in well-doing, seek for glory and honor and immortality, eternal life. ~ Romans 2:7

Let us run with patience the race that is set before us.
~ Hebrews 12:1

Thus would I press on to the glory,
A knight in the army of God,
Whose march will be onward and forward,
Because of the foes on the road.
Before me the guerdon Thou givest,
My glorious eternal reward,
And with me Thy peace and Thy wisdom,
Because of the Cross of the Lord.
~ Henry Suso

If He calls you to a kind of service which is according to His will but not according to your taste, you must not go to it with less, rather with more courage and energy than if your taste coincided with His will. The less of self and self-will there is in anything we do, the better. You must not amuse yourself with going from side to side, when duty calls you straight on; nor make difficulties, when the real thing is to get over them. Let your heart be full of courage, and then say, "I shall succeed. Not I, but the grace of God which is with me."
~ Francis De Sales

The Pure in Heart

I am thanking God that unto us a Child was born. I am thanking Him also that there was a pure-hearted woman prepared to receive that Child with all that motherhood would mean of daily trust, daily dependence, daily obedience. I thank Him for her silence. That spirit is not in me at all, not naturally. I want to learn what she had learned so early: the deep guarding in her heart of each event, mulling over its meaning from God, waiting in silence for His word to her.

I want to learn, too, that it is not an extraordinary spirituality that makes one refuse to do ordinary work, but a wish to prove that one is not ordinary--which is a dead giveaway of spiritual conceit. I want to respond in unhesitating obedience as she did: Anything You say, Lord.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

~Elisabeth Eliot

Made for Thyself!

Made for Thyself, O God!

Made for Thy love, Thy service, Thy delight;

Made to show forth Thy wisdom, grace, and might;

Made for Thy praise, whom veiled archangels laud;

O strange and glorious thought, that we may be

A joy to Thee.

F.R. Havergal