Status Updates From Dynamics of Spiritual Life:...

"Moving toward the advent of Constantine, however, the church began to be schizoid in its missionary consciousness. Gradually the great mass of the laity and the regular clergy attending them became a system concerned not so much to advance the kingdom of God as to decorate the occasions of ordinary human existence with religious meaning."

Is this happening again?

"Demonic agents italicize the defects of Christians and the churches in the minds of unbelievers and cause true Christianity to be branded with the image of its own worst exemplars."

I am becoming more persuaded that this is the game being played out on social media with exvangelicals and the like. There simply cannot be that many bad churches to blame. We've been generalized.

"We are not to set the estimates of our power to conquer sin according to past experiences of our will power, but are to fix our attention on Christ and the power of his risen life in which we participate: for we have died, and our life is hidden with Christ in God."

"Modern man is not immune to the impact of traditional Christian terminology; he is simply inert in the presence of answers to questions he has not yet been induced to ask."

"Men and women cannot know themselves until they know the reality of the God who made them, and once they know the holy God, their own sin appears so gracious that they cannot rest until they have fully appropriated Christ."

Super helpful

I'm really beginning to understand church dynamics in America today through the history captured in this opening chapter. It's immensely helpful!