So… I wrote a book.

Some of you have been faithful followers of my blog for a couple of years now, and you may have noticed that my posts have become a bit less frequent over the last year.

It’s because I was writing a book.

It has been my absolute privilege to have co-authored the book PURE LOVE – Pursuing Purity in a Sex-Obsessed World with my senior pastor, Timon Bengtson.

We are so excited to be able to present the Christian community with this resource that takes an honest, biblical look at many aspects of our sexuality and that calls Christians to a radical standard of purity.

As a high school teacher I am so passionate about helping to inspire and equip the next generations to live out their calling to not only glorify God with their bodies, but also to be freed from the enslavement of sexual sin to discover the joy-filled life that God has for them.

If you live in Australia and would like me to personally post you a (signed or unsigned) copy of the book, I can do so for AU$20.30.

If you live overseas and would like a copy, you can purchase it on Amazon or Book Depository or download it from Kindle.

Would love to hear from any of you who would like to read it or have already read it!

God bless you as you seek to exalt Him in all areas of your lives.

Love Sarah

I could have rescued one more

Last night, I sat in church, listening to the story of a man who had been saved from poverty after years on the brink of starvation. His name was Richmond Wandera and he was a Compassion child. Today he has a bachelor’s degree in accounting, and travels the world as an advocate for those children who are still in his home community in Uganda. He speaks of how they play, as he did, on sewer-flooded streets, hoping daily to escape the threat of malaria as the beast of hunger lurks, ever in the shadows.

 Now he sponsors a child, and works tirelessly to find sponsors for those who still remain, trapped, with a lid on their potential, until someone moves to release them. He challenged us to live simply, so that others may simply live.

 I thought of my sponsor child in India, and I felt the battle in my heart: Surely I’m doing enough? But in the back of my mind was a gnawing quote from Oskar Schindler: “I could have gotten one more person… and I didn’t!”

 I do not want to get to the end of my life, and lament that I could have freed one more. It is a temporary sacrifice, for an eternal impact.

 I’m no hero. So far from it! I choose myself over others far more often than not, but I pray that God will continually convict my selfish heart and give me the means and the strength for ‘one more.’

This post is for my new ‘sponsor son’ Cristian. I do not know him, but I pray that God will unleash his potential, and use him mightily in the Kingdom.
If you would like to help free a child from poverty in Jesus name, please visit http://www.compassion.com

Ducks Don’t Need Satellites

There’s a song I really like by Kate Miller-Heidke called ‘Ducks Don’t Need Satellites.’ Weird name for a song I know, and the lyrics don’t do much to redeem it from obscurity, but despite that, or maybe because of it, it really resonates with me.

She croons that ‘ducks don’t need satellites… they probably don’t know they’re up there… they most likely think the sky ends blue.’

When I need to pray about something that is really weighing on me, I take a walk down by the river near my house. I sit on a footbridge and look out at the water and the trees and the ever-present ducks.

While my life is in turmoil, theirs never is. They are not bored, or lazy; they’re busy but it’s a calm rhythmic type of busy. I look at them, and I wonder if, somewhere in the simplicity of their minds, they believe in God

Matthew 6 says  to ‘look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.’

I feel a sense of calm as I look at the ducks, who are provided for daily by a God they likely have no capacity to conceive of. I see the trees which stand tall and strong, roots deep in the earth, nourished by a system set up by their creator… and it makes me wonder if we might be better off if we didn’t need satellites either.

Life Begins at … Singleness

Cinderella, Snow White, Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty: Life is pretty tough until you grow up and meet your prince charming and live happily ever after.

With a steady diet of classic fantasies, is it any wonder that countless girls grow up believing that life begins with the meeting of that perfect man?

While the Disney princesses may not have been forefront in my mind, it’s certainly the attitude I tended to have during my teen years. Romance, love and marriage were going to be a given for me. If I’d known I was going to be 28 and still single, I’d have died (in a teenage drama type way.)

I lead a fabulously rich single life, and I wouldn’t take any of it back, but isn’t it a shame that it took me until my mid 20s to decide (and yes, it largely had to be a decision) that life didn’t start at marriage?

Before that, my mind was far too consumed with how and where and when I was going to meet that perfect person. I felt like I couldn’t possibly know where my life was headed until I met them. I felt a bit like I was in a holding pattern.

Eventually I woke up to the reality that life begins at singleness. I wasn’t supposed to be hanging around waiting; God had a plan for me.

His plan means my life is going somewhere whether there’s a man involved or not. And it’s a great life.

We’re Free to Abuse our Political Leaders (but we’re also free not to)

I live in an amazing country in which our freedom of speech extends so far as to enable us to publicly slander, poke fun at, or disrespect our political leaders. This is a right I would not be without.

Unfortunately, however, there seems to be a general consensus that not only should we have this right, but that we should exercise it.

Leading up to our recent election, social media was rife with slander and abuse; people pushing their own agendas, and openly condemning those who didn’t agree. As I drove to work each day, I saw campaign posters; the faces of those running for the right to represent our communities, disfigured by graffitists.

On election day, as the votes were counted, I waited for the inevitable. As soon as it was called, the abuse started. I saw the new leader of our country being called names that I would not allow my high school students to call each other. I saw people threatening to leave the country as if the world were coming to an end. Have some global perspective!

Maybe it’s time to grow up Australia. You have a voice. But you also have a choice in how to use it. Use your voice to vote; use it to campaign; make your opinions heard, but don’t be the high school bully. Let’s show our leaders some respect, whoever they are, because we didn’t achieve one of the best standards of living in the world by ourselves.