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We must allow God to do what he wants to do. And if you are thinking that you know the will of God for your life and you are anxious to do that, you are probably in for a very rude awakening because nobody knows the will of God for his entire life.
Sooner or later, God’s guidance,
will also bring us out of light into darkness. It is part of the way of the cross.
Our God is a God who not merely restores, but takes up our mistakes and follies into his plan for us and brings good out of them.
Guidance, like all God’s acts of blessing under the covenant of grace, is a sovereign act.
he wills also to guide us in the more fundamental sense of ensuring that, whatever happens, whatever mistakes
we may make, we shall come s...
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Slippings and strayings there will be, no doubt, but the everlasting arms are beneath us; we shall be caught, rescued, restored. This is ...
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the right context for discussing guidance is one of confidence in the God who will not let us ruin
our souls.
Our concern, therefore, in this discussion should be more for his glory than for our security—for t...
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certain type of ministry of the gospel is cruel. It does not mean to be, but it is. It means to magnify grace, but what it does is rather the opposite. It scales down the problem of sin
The effect is twofold: first, to depict the work of grace as less than it really is; second, to leave people with a gospel that is not big enough to cover the whole area of their need.
What kind of ministry is this?
The first thing to say is that, sad as it may seem, it is an evangelical ministry.
Its errors are not the errors of those whose ministry strays from the central evangelical message. They are errors to which only an evangelical ministry could ever be exposed.
But if it is a doctrinally sound evangelical ministry, whatever can go wrong with it?
a ministry which is wholly concerned with gospel truths can still go
wrong by giving those truths an inaccurate application.
The type of ministry that is here in mind starts by stressing, in an evangelistic context,
the difference that becoming a Christian will make.
Not only will it bring us forgiveness of sins, peace of conscience an...
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it will also mean that, through the power of the indwelling Spirit, we will be able to overcome the sins that previously mastered us, and the light and lead...
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find a way through problems of guidance, self-fulfillment, per...
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which had hitherto defeated us...
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it is possible so to stress them, and so to play down the rougher
side of the Christian life—the daily chastening, the endless war with sin and Satan, the periodic walk in darkness—as to give the impression that normal Christian living is a perfect bed of roses,
This is to suggest that the world, the flesh and the devil will give us no serious trouble once we are Christians;
Such suggestions are mischievous,
however, because they are false.
an equally lopsided impression can be given the other way. You can so stress the rough side of the Christian life, and so play down the bright side, as to give the impression that Christian ...
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it must be said that of these two extremes of error, the first is the worse,
false hopes are a greater evil than false fears.
the type of ministry we are examining allows itself to promise at this point more than God
has undertaken to perform in this world.
the cruelty is not that of malice. It is prompted rather by irresponsible kindness.
the absence of a bad motive and the presence of a good one do not in any way reduce the damage which his exaggerations do.
There is nothing unnatural, therefore, in an increase of temptations, conflicts and pressures as the Christian goes on with God—indeed, something would be wrong if it did not happen.
The second cruel feature of the ministry we have in mind appears at this point. Having created bondage—for
by leading young Christians to regard all experiences of frustration and perplexity as signs of substandard Christianity, it now induces further bondage by the straitjacket of a remedy by which it proposes to dispel these experiences.
It insists on diagnosing the “struggle,” which it equates with “defeat,” as a relapse caused by failure to main...
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The remedy, therefore, is for him to find, and confess, and forsake, his defection; to reconsecrate himself to Christ and maintain his consecration daily;
Unregenerate apostates are often cheerful souls, but backsliding Christians are always miserable.
what does it do? It sentences devoted Christians to a treadmill life of hunting each day for nonexistent failures in consecration, in the belief that
if only they could find some such failures to confess and forsake they could recover an experience of spiritual infancy which God means them now to leave behind. Thus it not only produces spiritual regression and unreality; it sets them at cross-purposes with their God,
The least effect of accepting the proposed remedy will be arrested spiritual development—the
The worst effects, among sincere and honest believers, will be morbid introspection, hysteria, mental breakdown and
loss of faith, at any rate in its eva...
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What, basically, is wrong with this teaching?
It fails to grasp New Testament teaching on sanctification
