Elizabeth Prentiss left behind a legacy of ministry to countless suffering women, devotion to her husband and children, many stories and books that helped others grow in Christ, and the hymn “More Love to Thee.” She did all this despite frequent waves of grief and sorrow, sickness and poor health. Though well-known as a published author, most of her life was spent in the ordinary, and many of her days were filled with her painful medical issues, the grief of the deaths of multiple children, and frequent brushes with death in her immediate and extended family. 

Elizabeth Prentiss was born in Portland, Maine, in 1818. Her father, Edward Payson, was a widely known and greatly respected pastor. He died of tuberculosis just before her ninth birthday, and Elizabeth felt this loss deeply. It is recorded that “her constitution was feeble . . . Severe pain in the side, fainting turns, the sick headache, and other ailments troubled her, more or less, from infancy.”1 Despite her physical issues, she was intelligent, vivacious, and well loved by those who knew her. Her writing talent emerged at a young age, and some of her works were published in The Youth’s Companion, an American children’s magazine.
Though Elizabeth made a profession of faith at age twelve, she experienced a season of doubting her salvation when she was twenty-one. During this time:
her sense of sin, and of her own unworthiness in the sight of God, grew more and more intense and oppressive. At times she abandoned all hope, accused herself of having played the hypocrite, and fancied she was given over to hardness of heart.2
After months of intense spiritual distress, a sermon on Christ’s ability to save to the uttermost brought rest to her weary soul and marked a watershed moment in her faith in Christ as she rested fully in His work on her behalf.
In 1840, she took a teaching position in Richmond, Virginia. Though she was an excellent teacher beloved by her students, the summer heat greatly affected her frail health. Letters written to friends during this time reveal ongoing struggles with (among other things) depression, headaches, angina, body pains, exhaustion, and strange neurological symptoms that no doctor could help her with.
At age twenty-seven, Elizabeth married the Rev. George Prentiss, pastor of South Trinitarian Church in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Elizabeth had always loved babies, and their first child, Annie, was born a year and a half later. Twenty-one months later, their second child, Edward, was born. Baby Eddy had health issues as well, and the sleep deprivation that Elizabeth experienced because of this left a permanent imprint on her health, creating relentless insomnia that she would suffer from for the rest of her life. Though Eddy’s health eventually improved, Elizabeth’s did not. She spent about three days a week in bed with a headache, and the other days she was filled with exhaustion and frailty. But her faith in God’s providence is clear when she writes:
It seems to me I can never recover my spirits and be as I have been in my best days, but what I lose in one way perhaps I shall gain in another. Just think how my ambition has been crushed at every point by my ill-health, and even the ambition to be useful and a comfort to those around me is trampled underfoot, to teach me what I could not have learned in any other school!3
The Prentiss family moved to New York, where George became the pastor of Mercer Street Presbyterian Church. When Elizabeth was six months pregnant with their third child, tragedy struck when Eddy died at the age of four. Elizabeth had not yet recovered when Bessie was born three months later.
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We may not think of ourselves as theologians, but the truth is, anytime we think about a teaching of Scripture and seek to understand it, we are engaging in theology, which refers to the study of God. In this book, Dr. Sproul surveys the basic truths of the Christian faith, explaining what God is like and what He has done for His people. This introduction to systematic theology includes sections on the doctrines of Christology (Christ), pneumatology (the Holy Spirit), soteriology (salvation), ecclesiology (the church), and eschatology (last things).

No event in our lives could be more significant than our conversion to Christ. But what happens next, after we become Christians? What do we need to know, and how do we grow in grace? The following resources, curated by the Ligonier editorial team, can assist new Christians in learning the Bible and Christian doctrine so that they might live a life of love for God and others.
Essential Truths of the Christian Faith by R.C. Sproul
In this book, Dr. Sproul explains more than one hundred major Christian doctrines, providing an accessible yet thorough understanding of the Christian faith as revealed in Scripture. Topics covered include divine revelation, the attributes of God, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, salvation, the church, end times, and much more. Analogies and illustrations from everyday life make this an interesting and informative tool for those who are new to the Bible or theology.
The Basics of the Christian Life by Sinclair Ferguson
What is a Christian? What does it mean to belong to a church? And how can we grow in grace?
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Let us not read God’s Word for self-promotion, self-justification, or self-improvement. Rather, may we approach Scripture as those who love God and desire to know Him more, as those who desire transformation into the image of Christ, and as those who know that the Holy Spirit uses the Word to strengthen His people to endure to the end.

As a newly saved college student, I stumbled across Jeremiah 15:16 in my Bible reading:
Your words were found, and I ate them,and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart, for I am called by your name, O LORD, God of hosts.
This vivid depiction of the happiness that springs up in the heart from taking in God’s Word deeply resonated with my newfound faith and my newfound delight in reading the Bible.
God’s Word is precious to believers. Yet because of the indwelling sin that remains in us, we can be tempted to do good things for the wrong reasons. What then, should be our motives and goals when we come to God’s Word? I’d like to suggest three. As Jeremiah ate the words of the Lord, so too can we as we approach Scripture for the purposes of awe, transformation, and endurance.
1. Awe
An encounter with the God of the universe can’t help but produce awe and wonder in those to whom He reveals Himself. He is glorious and majestic, unlike anyone or anything else:
The LORD reigns; he is robed in majesty . . .  Mightier than the thunders of many waters, mightier than the waves of the sea, the LORD on high is mighty!” (Ps. 93:1, 4)
His greatness is unsearchable, and He is glorious, splendid, and majestic (see Ps. 145:3, 5). Holy Scripture is how we come to better know the God who has called us to Himself.
To be sure, our Bible reading won’t always evoke the degree of awe from us that is due Him. But through the work of the Holy Spirit, God can and does draw us into a deeper knowledge of Himself that results in true worship and greater love for Him. We marvel at His power and His wisdom (see Ps. 62:11; Rom. 16:27). We are comforted by His love and His sovereignty (see 1 John 3:1; Eph. 1:11). Therefore, one proper motivation for reading the Bible is to be drawn into a deeper knowledge of—and therefore deeper awe, appreciation, love, and gratitude for—its Author.
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Confessing the Faith: A Reader’s Guide to the Westminster Confession of Faith by Chad Van Dixhoorn. Historical and practical in its focus, this book provides a guide to the confession, considers its original proof-texts, and seeks to deepen the reader’s understanding of the Westminster Confession. Both advanced and general audiences can benefit from this book and have their hearts and minds challenged.

In a consumer-driven society, we can be tempted to think that newer is always better or that older is irrelevant. The world tells us that diverging from biblical instruction is evidence of enlightenment and progress. Yet believers know the truth: Our God is unchanging in His character, His purposes, and His will. And because of that, we find comfort in His enduring Word and look back in history to learn from summations of biblical truth penned by faithful saints.
The following resources, curated by the Ligonier editorial team, can help today’s Christian learn about the Westminster Confession of Faith, which is one of the most well-written and enduring confessions of the Reformed tradition.
Truths We Confess: A Systematic Exposition of the Westminster Confession of Faith by R.C. Sproul
In this book, Dr. R.C. Sproul walks through the Westminster Confession of Faith line by line, explaining what it means and applying it to modern life. Through this study, readers can deepen their knowledge of God’s Word and be better equipped to answer the question, “What do you believe?”
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When we lose sight of the fact that common grace is grace and not our due, we become like travelers who bemoan poor overnight travel accommodations and forget the paradise that is our final destination. 

Few people would disagree that a sense of entitlement permeates our culture. But as the Preacher said, “There is nothing new under the sun” (Eccl. 1:9). While shifts in worldview over the past few decades may have poured gasoline on the fire, a sinful sense of entitlement was sparked for the first time in the garden of Eden, and since that day, this tendency to sinful entitlement has been embedded in our fallen DNA.
Entitlement can be defined as the belief that one is deserving of certain privileges. The belief itself may be true or false. People might believe that they have a certain right when they do in fact possess an actual right, or people can believe that they have a certain right when no such right exists. Thus, there are times when entitlement is not, strictly speaking, a sin but rather a legal right in a well-ordered society. For example, if I purchase a car, it is legally my property. I hold the legal title to the vehicle. I believe that I possess the right to that car, and my belief is in line with reality.
However, this legitimate entitlement can turn into a sinful expression of an entitlement mentality if my five-year-old niece spills a drink in the back seat and ruins the interior, or if I am the victim of a parking lot hit-and-run. It’s at those points of pressure that my sinful response to God’s providence can expose a more insidious entitlement mentality in which I think I am owed pristine automobile upholstery or a risk-free parking lot.
In the Reformed world, we (hopefully) embrace wholeheartedly the belief that we are by nature children of wrath, dead in our trespasses, unable to save ourselves, and completely dependent on the righteous life and substitutionary death of Jesus Christ to be reconciled to God and made His children. We extol the grace of God in salvation and would never say that we are owed the right to become children of God or that we are entitled to His saving grace. Therefore, the problem with our sinful entitlement mentality usually lies not in our understanding of special grace but rather in our understanding of common grace.
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