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April 11 - April 27, 2020
But now we need to address a smaller company who are not far from the kingdom but have come right up to the wicket gate which stands at the head of the way of life. One would think that they would hurry to enter, for a free and open invitation is placed over the entrance, and the porter waits to welcome them; this is the only way to eternal life. He that is most burdened seems the most likely to pass through and begin the heavenward journey; but what ails the other men? This is what I want to find out. Poor fellows, they have come a long way already to get where they are, and the King’s
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I have prepared this little book in the earnest hope that he may use it to lead seekers to an immediate, simple trust in the Lord Jesus.
Many people have no concern about eternal things. They care more about their cats and dogs than about their souls. It is a great act of kindness to be made to think about ourselves and our standing with God and the eternal world. This is often a sign that salvation is coming to us. By nature we do not like the anxiety that spiritual concern causes us, and like sluggards we try to ignore it and sleep again. This is great foolishness, for it is to our peril that we procrastinate when death is so near and judgment is so sure.
Even people who believe they are saved. Isn't celestial dreaming more preferable than television?
Many people have no concern about eternal things. They care more about their cats and dogs than about their souls. It is a great act of kindness to be made to think about ourselves and our standing with God and the eternal world. This is often a sign that salvation is coming to us. By nature we do not like the anxiety that spiritual concern causes us, and like sluggards we try to ignore it and sleep again. This is great foolishness, for it is to our peril that we procrastinate when death is so near and judgment is so sure.
This is not a sign we have already been saved, because (1) the Bible says no such thing, and (2) such presumptive assurance would quench the very fear that is driving this one toward salvation.
pray that our anxiety about our souls may never end until we are really and truly saved.
Whoa, dare to pray that.
I will not be comforted Till Jesus comfort me.
"What is our only comfort in life and death?" says the catechism. I suppose this means I need to stop comforting myself with ice cream, peanut butter, etc.
I notice that those who overcome their convictions and continue in their sins are not as easily moved the next time. Every awakening which is thrown away leaves the soul drowsier than before and less likely to be stirred again to holy feeling. Therefore, our heart should be greatly troubled at the thought of getting rid of its trouble in any other than the right way.
Warning!!!
To be cured of distress of mind by a false hope would be a terrible treatment; the remedy would be worse than the disease.
Test the spirits.
Better by far if our tenderness of conscience should cause us long years of anguish than if we should lose it and perish in the hardness of our hearts.
*Buckles seatbelt*
Remember, awakening is not salvation.
Again
another trick is to insinuate that the sinner might not be able to trust Christ unless he can bring a certain measure of despair to add to the Savior’s finished work.
Isn't despair part of repentance? Isn't it a gift produced in us by God, rather than a personal meritorious work?
Some seem to have fallen in love with their doubts and fears and distresses. You cannot get them away from their terrors – they seem wedded to them.
But CHS just said we should pray we don't get assured until we have Christ. So I guess we should narrow our ability to be assured, but not eliminate it?
One person who had been in prison a long time was not willing to come out. The door was open, but he pleaded even with tears to be allowed to stay where he was. Fond of prison!
Shawshank
You do not know how near salvation is to you.
True. In my heart, I wrongly doubt the kingdom is at hand. I know in my head it's at hand, because the Jesus says so in the Bible, and the Bible is truly his word. I want to believe I have access to Christ, but I have a hard time believing after seven years of pursing him and not tasting his goodness.
We tell him that it must be a great consolation to him to be so precise about the extent of his loss. He does not seem to see the worth of our consolation. We assure him that he ought to be grateful that he has so clear a sense of his loss, for many people might have lost their pocketbooks and been quite unable to know the extent of their losses. Our friend is not, however, cheered in the least. “No,” says he, “to know my loss does not help me to recover it. Tell me where I can find my property, and you have done me real service, but merely to recognize my loss is no comfort whatever.”
I've been told it is a sign of spiritual life to desire Christ at all, that the unsaved are spiritually dead, and unable to desire salvation whatsoever.
Jesus is all sufficient to save us from guilt and the power of sin.
How do we turn to other things for salvation? No atheist would say his hobbies will rescue him from guilty feelings, or vices, or eternal destruction. But perhaps these troubles are medicated and numbed by those hobbies. That if we stopped enjoying ourselves, we would be plunged into depths of despair until rescued by a peppy song or meme.
If another way of deliverance had been possible, the cup of bitterness would have passed from him (Matthew 26:39).
Wow, I never thought about it that way!
I am utterly destitute. But if I had the fairest suit of good works that pride could imagine, I would tear it up so I could put on nothing but the garments of salvation, which are freely given by the Lord Jesus out of the heavenly wardrobe of his own merits.
The child in danger of the fire clings to the fireman and trusts him alone. She raises no question about the strength of his arms to carry her or the zeal of his heart to rescue her, but she clings. The heat is terrible, the smoke is blinding, but she clings; and her deliverer quickly carries her to safety. Cling to Jesus with that same childlike confidence; he can and will carry you from the danger of the flames of sin.
I thought I was clinging to him, but I haven't been saved from the power of sin. Perhaps a few sins have been purged (excess video games, trespassing, bicycle worship), but the worst ones (lust, greed, idolatry) remain.
When a man trusts, there is a point of union between him and God, and that union guarantees blessing. Faith saves us because it causes us to identify with Christ Jesus, and he is one with God and thus brings us into connection with God.
So "union with Christ" is essential to salvation?
But faith, though it may seem like a slender cord, is in the hand of the great God on the shore side; infinite power pulls in the connecting line and draws the man from destruction. Oh, the blessedness of faith, because it unites us to God by the Savior whom he has appointed, even Jesus Christ!
In Mark 16:16 the Lord Jesus says, He who has believed and has been baptized shall be saved; but he who has disbelieved shall be condemned.
To believe is to trust or lean upon Christ Jesus – in other words, to give up self-reliance and to rely upon the Lord Jesus.
The great point is to believe in Jesus and confess your faith. Do you believe in Jesus? Then, dear friend, dismiss your fears; you shall be saved. Are you still an unbeliever? Then remember, there is but one door, and if you will not enter by it, you will perish in your sins.
You must obey the gospel; nothing can save you if you do not hear the voice of Jesus and do his bidding. Thinking and resolving will not accomplish the purpose; you must come to real business, for only as you actually believe will you truly live unto God.
“I am much obliged to you, but you cannot tell me much, for I have long known and admired the plan of salvation by the substitutionary sacrifice of Christ.”
This has been my response, as of late
So it is with salvation: it is not the plan of salvation that can save but the carrying out of that plan by the Lord Jesus in his death on our behalf and our acceptance of the same.
We come to the Lord Jesus by faith and say, “God has provided an atonement here, and I accept it. I believe in the fact accomplished on the cross; I am confident that sin was put away by Christ, and I rest on him.”
When the brazen serpent was lifted up in the wilderness, the people were not to look to Moses, nor to the tabernacle, nor to the pillar of cloud, but to the brazen serpent itself. Looking was not enough unless they looked on the right object, and the right object was not enough unless they looked. It was not enough for them to know about the serpent of brass; they each had to look at it for himself (Numbers 21:8-9).
Christ must not be a myth, a dream, or a phantom to us but a real man and truly God. Our reception of him must not be a forced and fictitious acceptance, but the hearty, happy assent and consent of the soul that he shall be the all-in-all of our salvation. Won’t we come to him at once and make him our sole trust?
It's hard to grasp the reality of him, that he walked this same earth, breathed this same air, and drank and ate with real people in the not-too-distant past. Like remembering my time in high school, I can look back at the life of Jesus as actual events. But I've already been doing that.
The whole body must be hidden in the rock.
It must put its whole self into the shelter and bury itself within its refuge, or its life will be forfeited to the destroyer.
It makes one’s heart quiver to think that someone who reads these lines may still be of the miserable company who will perish. May the Lord prevent it with his great grace!
Do the same with Christ; put your soul into his care; do it deliberately and without a doubt. Dare to quit all other hopes; venture all on Jesus. I say venture, though there is nothing really venturesome in it, for he is abundantly able to save.
Each one cried, “Teacher, I did not know you meant it, but I thought . . . .” No one took the gift, but everyone thought. Each one had his theory, except the simpleminded boy who believed what he was told, and he got the watch.
Don't think too hard?
Out with your hand, man, and take him at once.
I was encouraged by their kind thanks but felt anxious that a more effective work could be accomplished in them; therefore, I asked them, “Have you completely believed in the Lord Jesus Christ? Are you saved?” One of them replied, “I have been trying hard to believe.” I have often heard this statement, but I will never let it go unchallenged. “No,” I said, “that will not do. Did you ever tell your father that you tried to believe him?” After I had dwelt a while upon the matter, they admitted that such language would have been an insult to their father. I then set the gospel very plainly before
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She most tenderly said, “Oh sir, I have been looking to my feelings, and this has been my mistake! Now I trust my soul with Jesus, and I am saved.” She found immediate peace through believing. There is no other way. God has been pleased to make the necessities of life very simple matters. We must eat, and even a blind man can find the way to his mouth. We must drink, and even the tiniest babe knows how to do this without instruction.
Yes, it will be secured at once by trusting in the word of him who cannot lie. Trust Christ, and by that trust you can grasp salvation and eternal life. Do not philosophize. Do not sit down and bother your poor brain. Just believe Jesus as you would believe your father. Trust him as you trust your money with a banker or your health with a doctor.
Faith is trusting – totally trusting the person, work, merit, and power of the Son of God. Some think this trusting is a romantic business, but indeed it is the simplest thing that can possibly be. To some of us, truths that were once hard to believe are now matters of fact that we would find hard to doubt.
Yet these things are believed by us without effort, because experience has made us familiar with them.
This breaks my heart. I believed yet my experience only makes it harder to believe.
Chapter 5
Come back and read this again
It looks like humility and tries to pass itself off as the very soul of modesty,
as I say, "I don't have the authority to say that," in response to "do you believe Jesus died for YOUR sins?"
in every way it is a deceitful way to refuse to honor the Lord’s faithfulness and truth.
How unprofitable is the diligence that busies itself in discovering reasons why our faith is not saving faith!
Not if it's true
we search for arguments why we should perish if we did believe.
I search for arguments because I clearly have not believed. I have not enjoyed the promises God has for his children in this age.
If anyone gave me an estate, I certainly would not start raising questions about the title.
I would if someone else was living there, and they had a title, and I didn't.
But you fear that you may not be one of those for whom the promise is intended.
Yes!
If you hold on to Jesus by the hem of his garment, virtue will flow from him to you as surely as if he had called you out by name and asked you to trust him.
And yet it has not.
Did you suggest that it would be a horrible thing if you were to trust in Jesus but still perish?
It would be horrible if I thought I trusted in Jesus when I hadn't.
