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April 5 - December 16, 2024
how deep is our need to be heard. I wonder how much wrath in human life is a result of not being heard.
for Christian evangelism is not getting people to talk, but to silence those who through their continuous chatter reveal a loveless heart devoid of confidence in God.
Fasting confirms our utter dependence upon God by finding in him a source of sustenance beyond food.
Fasting unto our Lord is therefore feasting—feasting on him and on doing his will.
In fasting, we learn how to suffer happily as we feast on God. And it is a good lesson, because in our lives we will suffer, no matter what else happens to us. Thomas a Kempis remarks: “Whosoever knows best how to suffer will keep the greatest peace. That man is conqueror of himself, and lord of the world, the friend of Christ, and heir of Heaven.”
only the person who is well habituated to systematic fasting as a discipline can use it effectively as a part of direct service to God, as in special times of prayer or other service.
It is an injury to society as well as an offence against God when men pamper their bodies with rich and dainty foods and seriously diminish their physical and mental powers by excessive use of intoxicants…. Luxury in every form is economically bad, it is provocative to the poor who see it flaunted before them, and it is morally degrading to those who indulge in it. The Christian who has the ability to live luxuriously, but fasts from all extravagance, and practices simplicity in his dress, his home, and his whole manner of life, is, therefore, rendering good service to society.
If we see needs met because we have ask God alone, our faith in God’s presence and care will be greatly increased. But if we always tell others of the need, we will have little faith in God, and our entire spiritual life will suffer because of it.
this sound like a scholarly pursuit? Actually, study isn’t necessarily that at all. It does, however, involve giving much time on a regular basis to meditation upon those parts of the Bible that are most meaningful for our spiritual life, together with constant reading of the Bible as a whole. We should also make every effort to sit regularly under the ministry of gifted teachers who can lead us deeply into the Word and make us increasingly capable of fruitful study on our own. Beyond this, we should read well the lives of disciples from all ages and cultures of the church, building a small
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When we worship, we fill our minds and hearts with wonder at him—the detailed actions and words of his earthly life, his trial and death on the cross, his resurrection reality, and his work as ascended intercessor. Here, in the words of Albertus Magnus (died 1280), we “find God through God Himself; that is, we pass by the Manhood into the Godhood, by the wounds of humanity into the depths of His divinity.”25 There is so much to do in this worship that we will never finish. And as we worship in this way our lives are filled with his goodness, which is also God’s.
We engage in celebration when we enjoy ourselves, our life, our world, in conjunction with our faith and confidence in God’s greatness, beauty, and goodness. We concentrate on our life and world as God’s work and as God’s gift to us.
“Then I realized that it is good and proper for a man to eat and drink, and to find satisfaction in his toilsome labor under the sun during the few days of life God has given him—for this is his lot. Moreover, when God gives any man wealth and possessions, and enables him to enjoy them, to accept his lot and be happy in his work—this is a gift of God. He seldom reflects on the days of his life, because God keeps him occupied with gladness of heart” (5:18–20, NIV; see also 2:24 and 3:12–23).
The man who truly and disinterestedly enjoys any one thing in the world, for its own sake, and without caring twopence what other people say about it, is by that very fact forearmed against some of our subtlest modes of attack. You should always try to make the patient abandon the people or food or books he really likes in favor of the “best” people, the “right” food, the “important” books.
God has yet to bless anyone except where they are.
Those who would live this pattern must attain it through the discipline of service in the power of God, for that alone will train them to exercise great power without corrupting their souls.
We must accept the fact that unconfessed sin is a special kind of burden or obstruction in the psychological as well as the physical realities of the believer’s life. The discipline of confession and absolution removes that burden.
Nothing is more supportive of right behavior than open truth.
So to assume the responsibility for the right use and guidance of possessions through ownership is far more of a discipline of the spirit than poverty itself. Our possessions vastly extend the range over which God rules through our faith. Thus they make possible activities in God’s power that are impossible without them. We must not allow our quite justifiable revulsion at the debauchery of those who happen to be rich to blind us to this crucial fact. Poverty as a general practice cannot solve humankind’s bondage to wealth.
adequately prepared, godly men and women who will assume the responsibility, under God and by his power, of owning and directing the world’s wealth and goods. Such people must rise up and, in union with Christ and his people everywhere, guide social, economic, and political processes so that the conditions that cause the need for charity are lessened to a point where that need can be met. Such men and women are the only ones who can effectively lead humankind to fulfill its ancient charge of supervision over the earth.
“This one thing I do” (Phil. 3:13), or who truly “seeks first the kingdom of God and His righteousness” (Matt. 6:33), is a person who has entered into simplicity. They easily put all demands that come to them in “their place” and deal harmoniously, peacefully, and confidently with complexities of life that seem incomprehensible to others, for they know what they are doing.
part of their responsibility to control the world’s possessions in a way that ministers to all. The poor are much more to be benefited by the godly controlling the goods of this world than by their performing a pious handwashing that only abandons those goods to the servants of “mammon.”
There truly is no division between sacred and secular except what we have created. And that is why the division of the legitimate roles and functions of human life into the sacred and the secular does incalculable damage to our individual lives and to the cause of Christ. Holy people must stop going into “church work” as their natural course of action and take up holy orders in farming, industry, law, education, banking, and journalism with the same zeal previously given to evangelism or to pastoral and missionary work.
Few people understand that they need help to prosper, for they have not yet cleared their hearts and minds of the world’s perspective on well-being.
But this is one of the most serious omissions that can be made in the spiritual life and shows how unwise we are. Once we understand this, we see why “the prosperity of fools destroys them” (Prov. 1:32). We see why the gospel is for the up-and-in as well as the down-and-out, equally so and equally essential.
get all you can; save all you can; freely use all you can within a properly disciplined spiritual life; and control all you can for the good of humankind and God’s glory. Giving all you can would then naturally be a part of an overall wise stewardship.
for the life of disciplined grace, such nonpossession is not a condition well suited to making provision for others who are destitute. In fact, to make it the especially holy calling is to destroy all possibility of Christ’s people guiding the world for the best of all people, which requires that the godly substantially own and otherwise control the wealth of the earth.
our Christian ministers and teachers should shape a people who can form the foundation and framework of a world that is the unique dwelling place of The Immortal God.
This modern outlook sharply criticizes The Way of Christ as impractical in relation to the ideals of justice, peace, and prosperity.
More often than not, faith has failed, sadly enough, to transform the human character of the masses, because it is usually unaccompanied by discipleship and by an overall discipline of life such as Christ himself practiced. As a result, when faced with the real issues of justice, peace, and prosperity, what is called faith in Christ has often proved of little help other than the comfort of a personal hope for what lies beyond this life.
evils universally deplored lies in the simple readiness of “decent” individuals to harm others or allow harm to come to others when the conditions are “right.” That readiness comes into play whenever it will help us realize our goals of security, ego gratification, or satisfaction of bodily desires. This systematic readiness that pervades the personality of normal, decent human beings is fallen human nature. To understand this is the first level of understanding the “why” of the evil people do.
It is of far greater importance that people should be clean and sober in their habits, and thrifty in their use of time and money, and that all the relationships of the members of a community should be inspired by love rather than controlled by principles of legal justice and economic equality: and these things are most surely promoted by the presence of earnest Christians living ascetically in the midst of society under various types of organization.3
Psychological counselors frequently find little difference between the basic attitudes, actions, and afflictions of their unbelieving clients and those of the believers with which they deal. Some recent studies suggest that depression, anxiety, personal and marital maladjustment are epidemic in church members across all denominational lines.4 Of all professional groups, the clergy was second highest in divorce rate during 1987.
The real presence of Christ as a world-governing force will come solely as his called out people occupy their stations in the holiness and power characteristic of him, as they demonstrate to the world the way to live that is best in every respect.
There is a way of life that, if generally adopted, would eliminate all of the social and political problems from which we suffer. This way of life comes to whole-hearted disciples of Christ who live in the disciplines of the spiritual life and allow grace to bring their bodies into alignment with their redeemed spirits.
it will make sense when janitors and storekeepers, carpenters and secretaries, businessmen and university professors, bankers and government officials brim with the degree of holiness and power formerly thought appropriate only to apostles and martyrs. Its truth will illumine the earth when disciplined discipleship to Jesus is recognized as a condition of professional competence in all the areas of life, since from that alone comes strength to live and work as we ought.
There is a human instrumentality involved, which is why God waits for a fullness of time determined by our capacities to receive what he would give. He calls us to be a part of his efforts. Our part is to understand the way God works with humanity to extend his Kingdom in the affairs of humankind, and to act on the basis of that understanding.
The Christian leader has something much more important to do than pursue the godless. The leader’s task is to equip saints until they are like Christ (Eph. 4:12), and history and the God of history waits for him to do this job. It is so easy for the leader today to get caught up in illusory goals, pursuing the marks of success which come from our training as Christian leaders or which are simply imposed by the world. It is big, Big, always BIG, and BIGGER STILL! That is the contemporary imperative. Thus we fail to take seriously the nurture and training of those, however few, who stand
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Your plan will also be the cross on which you die to your old self and meet him in his life beyond death.
He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lakeside, He came to those men who knew Him not. He speaks to us the same word: “Follow thou me!” and sets us to the tasks which He has to fulfil for our time. He commands. And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal Himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who He is.
