What are My Motives?

True faithfulness knows no bounds between
great and small duties....From God's point
of view, nothing is great, nothing small, as
we measure it. The worth and quality of an
action depend on its motive and origin only.
Have I obeyed God in doing it? If it is done
by the Spirit, in faith, it pleases God. If it is
your own will, it is terrible.

You and I have a soul that will live forever,
and I can pour my immortal being into every
deed that I do. Nothing is small that
is born of the Spirit of God within me.

Faithfulness measures our actions as God
measures them. It is not the visible result that
matters but faithfulness. Faithfulness
is faithfulness on whatsoever scale it is set
forth: big or small holy obedience comes from
the same place.

So keep yourself free from the world. Walk
through your day with a perfect heart. Be honest
over the pence as well as the pound. Don't let
anger rise up even for a minute as it will
set you back hours! Do small duties rightly unto
 God. This is a true test of your conversion.


New Helps to a Holy Lent (abridged and adapted)
by Bishop Huntington. 1876, 1882

Looking to Jesus

" We all, with open face beholding as
in a glass, the glory of the Lord, are
changed into the same image, from
glory to glory as by the Spirit of the Lord."...


Let us run with patience the race that is set
before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and
 finisher of our faith."

"Looking to Jesus" is the only way we can completely
deny ourself. All other surrender than that which
is based upon love to Him, and faith in Him, is but
surface work and drives our sinful disease deeper
 into our bones.

The man that tries to wash off the external dirt,
or give up a bad habit, to hammar and tinker himself
into what he thinks a "perfect" man might look like,
 is doomed to fail miserably.

What will he have made of himself? A "whited
sepulchure" outside adorned and handsome
but inside--full of rottenness and dead man's
bones! That which has been whipped into shape
on the outside slinks deeper into the citadel of
the heart, there to fortify its venomous position.

The only answer is to look to Jesus. Put everything
on the altar and tell Him "All is lost without You!
Bring Him what is dark and maimed and broken
and He will give back to you that which is whole
and blessed and beautiful from the inside out.

The hand that is cut off, the eye that is plucked out,
the possessions that are given up, the idols that
are abandoned....from the graveyard of these tainted
offerings a new man emerges, a person made new
in Christ! We cannot change ourselves through
willpower or hope, all we can do is "look to Jesus."

Renew us in our inner parts, O God!
We look to You!

from:
New Hopes for a Holy Lent (abridged and adapted)

The best rule of friendship is to keep your heart a little softer than your head. ~Author Unknown


photo taken in Abergavenny, Wales

The soul which has come into intimate
contact with God in the silence of the
prayer chamber is never out of
conscious touch with the Father;
the heart is always going out to Him in
loving communion, and the moment
the mind is released from the task upon
which it is engaged, it returns as naturally to
God as the bird does to its nest. What a beautiful
conception of prayer we get if we regard it in this light.

- E. M Bounds


photo taken near Abergavenny, Wales