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You get used to things and you get sophisticated. Spiritual sophistication lacks freshness and warmth; God is far away, and there is little communion and little joy in the Lord. To have a cold heart with little pity, little fire, little love and little worship is spiritual lethargy.
Christian ought to be, above all other things, a good man. If he is not basically a good man, I cannot see how he can be a Christian. Now, he is not good by nature.
“An alien by birth and a sinner by choice.
Finney insisted that basically a man ought to put on his beautiful garments if he is going to serve the Lord Jesus, and not use the Lord Jesus simply as a means of getting something.
“The modern religious revival leaves me cold for this reason. Men are trying to use God in place of offering themselves to God to be used by Him.
man has a right to ask God for peace of mind unless it’s founded on righteousness.
If God never answered another prayer for me as long as I live, I still want God to know that I want to serve Him until I die.
People tend to follow what is easy and what goes the natural way.
we mostly do what we like to do or what is natural to us.
serving Jesus Christ is contrary to the human nature. By nature, we do not persevere. The fickleness of the human heart turns a person away, and he backslides.
Backsliding always begins with the heart.
At the point when the world finds out a man or woman has backslidden and gone back on his faith, the church knew it before the world, and the individual knew it before the church; but God knew it before the man or woman found it out. Backsliding always begins in the human heart.
To begin with, he is losing interest in the things of God and gradually going back to the old ways or to more refined sins than the ones he used to do. He is losing interest toward God. His heart is not as hot as it was a few weeks or months or a year before, and his love toward God is cooling off.
Then, he is losing interest in communion with God.
Backsliding is the losing of our individual communion with God.
We have so much these days that crowds our time for communion with God—so many things that distract us from being quiet before Him.
If a glowing, earnest Christian bores you a little; if when you are in a little group drinking coffee or soda, and it bores you a little or embarrasses you when somebody brings up the thought of God, you had better look to your own heart. Whenever talk of God and His Word and His work in the world bores us, be sure that we are wrong inside.
a critical spirit toward other preachers.
He is asked to pray and he tries to be devout, but his heart has long ago broken fellowship. He is like an instrument ready to be plugged in where there is no power.
Many people have a reputation for being good Christians in churches; then they secretly break with God and there is a lack of communion. The fires burn low and they hardly feel any sense of God at all; and yet they have to keep it up, so they may even allow themselves to get elected to boards and to young people’s groups, to choirs and all the rest.
“Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love
they were losing their affection but would not admit it. Not
Then, there is the matter of giving; God’s warm-hearted people give spontaneously. They love it. They give joyously, because it is a pleasure to give.
I wonder if the tender Jesus will not look at you—just look, that is all. How will you respond?
Everything has a consequence.
Everything is an effect of something else.
Not only is everything a consequence of something else, but it also has consequ...
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Everything you are, say, do or think is a result of some choice you made in the past and will result in some future saying, doing, being or thinking.
For what we are will determine our destiny.
No man lives unto himself. Either directly or indirectly, you are deeply influencing somebody else. If
Everything we are is a result of choices we have made. What we are today is a result of choices we made yesterday; everything we will be tomorrow will be the result of choices we make today.
Holiness is moral freedom of choice resulting in a right choice of holiness and righteousness.
I want to influence you, if you are living a casual Christian life, to consider your ways and start living a Christian life that will shame the devil and please God and start you on the way to victorious living and fruitful service and holy character. You must make the choice. That choice will result in deeds, and those deeds will result in destiny. God has bestowed this honor upon you that you can choose. Have you chosen the one who gives life?
we need spiritual discernment.
the world through which we journey, the god of this world and our unmortified flesh
Human society’s sin, unbelief, diversions, ambitions, however skillfully disguised, are a threat to the Christian soul.
“How far can I go and still not go over? Tell me what I can do and still not be lost? Just how far can I go?” One of these days the person who does this is going to get caught in the world with no viable exit strategy.
The best thing to do is to keep your eyes on Jesus and let Him take care of the devil.
Wherever you find the work of God going on, you will find the devil there, counterpunching, hitting back.
As Satan, he is the accuser of the brethren and tries to destroy his reputation before God and before men.
The flesh is with us always, and unless conquered on a daily basis, it will bring nothing but trouble.
The only way to deal with this is to crucify it—bring it to the cross of Jesus—a radical act on our
part.
Let me point out that the victorious Christian life is not a life absent of any problems or difficulties or failures. Actually, the opposite is true. The victorious Christian life is a day-today or even moment-by-moment victory over enemies and situations that we confront in the way.
That is why the man of God said, “For a just man falleth seven times.
Arrogance is the sin that follows in the wake of success.
He will never let you have a condescending attitude toward anybody else if you are a Christian. If you are a Christian, the Lord loves you too much to let you get away with that. Arrogance comes on the heels of victory.
It is always a temptation to let your victories get blown all out of proportion and give you a wrong concept of who you really are. Watch out for a reputation that is lauded. It is too easy to believe what people are saying about you.
He knew the direction He was going and kept to that with all haste.
have gone into churches where it was obvious that nobody expected anything to happen, and the result, of course, is what you would expect
