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Lord Jesus, receive my spirit, and put an end at Thy good pleasure to this my miserable life; for justice and truth are not to be found among the sons of men…Be merciful unto me, O Lord…Now after many battles, I find nothing in me but vanity and corruption. For in quietness I am negligent, in trouble impatient, tending to desperation…pride and ambition assault me on the one part, covetousness and malice trouble me on the other, briefly, Oh Lord, the affections of the flesh do almost suppress the operation of Thy Spirit…In none of the aforesaid I do delight; but I am troubled, and that sore against the desire of my inward man which sobs for my corruption, and would repose in Thy mercy alone; to which I claim, and that in the promise that Thou hast made to all penitent sinners of whose number I profess myself to be one.
“Answer to a Letter of James Lurie, a Scottish Jesuit,” in John Knox—A Great Intercessor, by Bessie G. Olson, Hall of Fame Series, Des Moines: Walfred, 1956, pp. 45-46, quoted in Mark Bubeck, The Adversary, Moody Press, pg. 33.
There is tremendous relief in knowing that His love to me is utterly realistic, based at every point on prior knowledge of the worst about me, so that no discovery can disillusion Him about me, in the way I am so often disillusioned about myself, and quench His determination to bless me. There is, certainly, great cause for humility in the thought that He sees all the twisted things about me that my fellow-men do not see (and I am glad!), and that He sees more corruption in me than that which I see in myself (which, in all conscience, is enough). There is, however, equally great incentive to worship and love God in the thought that, for some unfathomable reason, He wants me as His friend, and desires to be my friend, and has given His Son to die for me in order to realize this purpose.
J.I. Packer, Knowing God, p. 37
In his spiritual autobiography, William Barclay, the venerable Scottish scholar, tells the tragedy of losing his 21-year-old daughter and her fiance who were drowned in a boating accident. He writes, "God did not stop that accident at sea, but he did still the storm in my own heart so that somehow my wife and I came through that terrible time still on our own two feet."
Barclay also tells of receiving an anonymous letter about his daughter’s death. It said, "I know why God killed your daughter. It was to save her from corruption by your heresies." Barclay says, "If I had known the writer’s address, I would have written back in pity, not anger, saying, as John Wesley once said, ’Your God is my devil.’"
Listen to this news clipping. “Gambling, robbery, sexual immorality, and violence is prevalent. Half of all children are born out of wedlock; purity and fidelity to the marriage vow are sneered out of fashion. Corruption in politics is rampant. The world is broken.” This clipping is from 1694.
It was in this time that John Wesley began preaching to the poor, a message of new life through the free grace of Christ. His message was one of assurance and the power of the Spirit. He taught that while sin remained it could not reign. In addition to a great preacher Wesley was an organizer, and those who accepted Jesus as Lord where put into bands. In these bands people strived to put scripture into practice and they called it holiness. Wesley had a great deal of observers, but his goal was to bring them to obedience of Christ<...
A Thanks Offering For Heaven
Philippians 3:20 says, "But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables Him to bring everything under His control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like His glorious body."
C.S. Lewis said, "If you read history you will find that the Christians who did the most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next."
There are many things about heaven that Christians can thank the Lord about. While living on this earth they have to suffer the consequences of sin just as Job came to know the sufferings of this world. He lost children, possessions and knew bad health. Knowing that at the end of his life something wonderful would take place, he said, "I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end He will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see Him with my own eyes... How my heart yearns within me!"(Job 19:25-27)
The children of God may very well be afflicted with disease, or loss of property. They may be forsaken by their friends as Job was. However, there is going to be a day when their body will be resurrected and they will have a physical body that is healthy, not subjected to sickness, pain or death or overcome by sin. Christians can praise God, for in heaven there is going to be a perfect city where there is no crime, no homeless, no unemployment, no pollution, no corruption in city councils or government. Heaven is victorious with no civil unrest, no terrorism and no more wars. There will be fairness, truth and goodness, and God's holiness will reign. Everyone will be upright and honest.
John Newton wrote, "When I get to heaven, I shall see three wonders there: The first wonder will be to see many people there whom I did not expect to see; the second wonder will be to miss many people whom I did expect to see; the third and greatest of all will be to find myself there"
Choose Christ, Choose Heaven!
"It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible." --George Washington
"It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ. For this reason peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity and freedom of worship here." --Patrick Henry
"We have staked the future of all our political institutions upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God." --James Madison
"There is a striking parallel between the condition of the country and the church. As the Constitution means little to Americans today, so too the Bible means little to the average church member. Church members generally are as ignorant of the Bible as are Americans of the Constitution. Too many people within our borders are Americans in name but un-American in their hearts and anti-American in their conduct. The church has a corresponding ailment, Christians in name, but in reality are only once -born children of Adam. The American spirit is sadly eroded today by distrust, by corruption in high places, by moral decay. It won’t be restored merely by flag-wavings and drum-beatings and Fourth of July speeches. It may not be possible to raise a new crop of patriots in such shallow soil. It may take disaster to make us realize what we had. There is also a Christian spirit in the church that has that need. When in the nation and in the church we humble ourselves, pray, seek God’s face, and turn from our wicked ways, then God will hear from heaven, forgive our sin, and heal our land." --Vance Havner
Jerry Bridges again states that the two words negligence and corruption help us by contrast to understand what it means to live faithful lives today: He says – Corrupt is the opposite of being honest or ethical. Being negligent is the opposite of careful, thoughtful and considerate. (Source: Practice of Godliness)
IMMORTAL HORRORS OR EVERLASTING SPLENDOURS
C. S. Lewis wrote in the Weight of Glory,
There are no ordinary people.
It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.
All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics.
There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mer...
Michael McCartney
CHARLES STANLEY ON FORGIVENESS
Charles Stanley, in his book The Gift of Forgiveness, states, "A person who has an unforgiving spirit is always the real loser, much more so than the one against whom the grudge is held." He adds, "Un-forgiveness, by its very nature, prevents individuals from following through on many specifics of the Christian life and practically necessitates that they walk by the flesh rather than by the spirit"(17, 18).
He also expounds in his book on how un-forgiveness devastates the one who refuses to forgive. When we choose to not forgive in one relationship we discover that it spills into other relationships and it destroys them. When the unforgiving person stands around and waits for the other to make restitution he loses out on life because they never make any progress in their game. That sad fact is as they are standing around waiting they form fleshly patterns of behavior and incorrect thought processes. Stanley states, "Regardless of how wrong the other person may have been, refusing to forgive means reaping the corruption in life. And that corruption begins in one relationship including the relationship with God, and works its way into all the rest" (25,26).
THE ADAM AND EVE VIRUS
The Genesis narrative (chapter 3) tells us how God gave Adam and Eve His wisdom as well as His authority, and then how they pursued a counterfeit authority and an alien wisdom—actually satanic wisdom. The moment they introduced that dark wisdom into their lives a radical corruption took hold of their nature. Think of it like a computer worm virus (malware – malicious software) that is cleverly introduced into one company computer, and that computer communicates it to another, until before you know it every computer in the company is corrupted and headed toward collapsing the whole operating system.
The radical change that took place in Adam and Eve was sort of like that and it has been replicated and passed down the human genome operating system from that day to this. We are all born corrupted by sin and spiritually disconnected from the author of life. We have lost the image of His authority, and death comes to all men. Paul put it like this, 1 Corinthians 15:22 ...in Adam all die.
