Stepping Heavenward: One Woman’s Journey to Godliness by Elizabeth Prentiss

ebook, Scribd

I first heard about this book on The World and Everything In It and then it was part of the Risen Motherhood book club but I didn’t pick it up either time. I finally put it on my reading list for the year and read it in one day this month. It’s a moralistic fictional story but I still found it encouraging, especially because the main character struggles with some of the same faults that I do. One quote I highlighted:

“Katy, all that you say may be true. I dare say it is. But God loves you. He loves you.” 

“He loves me,” I repeated to myself. “He loves me! Oh, Dr. Cabot, if I could believe that! If I could believe that, after all the promises I have broken, all the foolish, wrong things I have done and shall always be doing, God perhaps still loves me!” 

“You may be sure of it,” he said, solemnly. “I, minister, bring the gospel to you Today. Go home and say over and over to yourself, ‘I am a wayward, foolish child. But He loves me! I have disobeyed and grieved Him ten thousand times. But He loves me! I have lost faith in some of my dearest friends and am very desolate. But He loves me! I do not love Him, I am even angry with Him! But He loves me! ‘” 

I came away, and all the way home I fought this battle with myself, saying, “He loves me!” I knelt down to pray, and all my wasted, childish, wicked life came and stared me in the face. I looked at it, and said with tears of joy, “But He loves me!” Never in my life did I feel so rested, so quieted, so sorrowful, and yet so satisfied.

I also just learned when looking the book up that the author also wrote the hymn “More Love to Thee, O Christ.” And, from reading a Wikipedia article about her it seems the book is somewhat autobiographical.

Anne of Avonlea by Lucy Maud Montgomery

audio, Scribd

I listened to this one with the kids. They love Anne and I thinking we will come back to the series. A refreshing and fun listen.

Give Me This Mountain by Dr. Helen Roseveare

paperback, owned (ish)

I did own this book when I read it but I bought it as a gift for our niece’s birthday. I had to pre-read it first to make sure it was going to be a good fit. This is the first in a series of autobiographical books by Dr Roseveare. I enjoyed hearing about her missionary journey and how God was faithful to use her despite her flaws. I would like to read the other books she’s written.

Another clear truth that has come out so forcibly into the sunlight through the last few chapters is that God has no second-best. This is very often a contradiction of terms. If I am in God’s will for me, it is His very best for me. God is eternal present tense. If I step out of His will, then I deliberately choose my own path and I have nothing of His best. When I confess my error, seek His loving forgiveness, and return to His will, then at once He restores me. It is always present to Him, so at the moment of restoration I am in His present will for me. Once repentance is real, and forgiveness sought, the past is past, and has no longer an interpretation in the present. The present may well be different from the ‘might-have-been’, it may well be affected by the consequences of previous disobedience and sin which can leave their mark on both character and circumstance, but nevertheless, it is the best in the immediate now. I have found this to be a most liberating and glorious truth. If it were not so, who among us would not live his life in an atmosphere of continual regret?

Christians often seem to have the impression that ‘becoming a missionary’ is some form of metamorphosis by which a radical change of nature is achieved…

Nothing can be further from the truth! I believe that, at its simplest, a missionary is one sent by God to live a Christian life, usually amongst people other than his own. It is living which counts. This may include formal preaching, but it will certainly include personal relationships, and these often have to be worked out under most trying conditions. … Yet in all this, one is called upon to reveal Christ, to live a Christ-like life, to be a ‘missionary’.

The Language of Heaven: Crucial Questions About Speaking in Tongues by Sam Storms

audio, Audible

I thought this to be a well reasoned, Scripturally sound argument for the continuation of the gift of tongues today, most often as a personal prayer language. The book is structured as 30 questions and corresponding answers so when you listen all the way through there is, of course, some repetition. I appreciated the author’s emphasis, frequently repeated, that Scripture is clear that tongues are to be interpreted in the public gathering of the church and the Holy Spirit does not overpower a person such that they have no choice but to speak in tongues, or prophesy, or exercise whatever their spiritual gift is. I started out in agreement with the author’s views on this particular spiritual gift so no real change there. I was challenged by this book (and some of my own pastor’s recent teaching- although he wouldn’t agree with the main premise of this book) to more earnestly desire spiritual gifts and to grow in the gifts God has already given me.

The Hunt for Fang (Tree Street Kids #2) by Amanda Cleary Eastep

audio, Scribd

I’ve really come to enjoy this series with the kids. Less personal overlap with this one but that was OK!

Keeping Place: Reflections on the Meaning of Home by Jen Pollock Michel

audio, Audible, 10%

I’ve been looking forward to this book and I accidentally subscribed to Audible for an extra month so I was happy it’s part of the Audible Premium collection or whatever it’s called and I could listen to it while painting.