"Christians don't tell lies they just go to church and sing them."
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“Oh, so you have been overlooked? They have placed someone else before you? They have whispered that you are pretty small stuff after all? And now you feel hurt because the world is saying about you the very things you have been saying about yourself? Only yesterday you were telling God that you were nothing, a mere worm of the dust. Where is your consistency? Come on, humble yourself, and cease to care what men think?”
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I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Finally, there is laid up for me the
crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give to me on that Day, and not to me only
but also to all who have loved His appearing. --2 Timothy 4:7-8
For years I have made a practice of writing many of my earnest prayers to God in a little book--a book now well
worn. I still turn often to the petitions I recorded in that book. I remind God often of what my prayers have been.
One prayer in the book--and God knows it well by this time, for I pray it often--goes like this:
Oh God, Let me die rather than to go on day by day living wrong. I do not want to become a careless, fleshly old
man. I want to be right so that I can die right. Lord, I do not want my life to be extended if it would mean that I
should cease to live right and fail in my mission to glorify You all of my days!...
As you will recall from Second Kings 20, the Lord gave Hezekiah a 15-year extension of life. Restored to health
and vigor, Hezekiah disgraced himself and dishonored God before he died and was buried.
I would not want an extra 15 years in which to backslide and dishonor my Lord. I would rather go home right
now than to live on--if living on was to be a waste of God's time and my own! Jesus Is Victor! pp. 141-142
"Please, Father, help me to finish well. Amen."
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The mystery of man's free will is far too great for us! God said to Adam and Eve: "Thou shalt not eat from this
tree." Here was a divine requirement calling for obedience on the part of those who had the power of choice and
will. When they disobeyed they usurped the right that was not theirs! The poet Tennyson must have thought
about this for he wrote in his In Memoriam: "our wills are ours, we know not how; our wills are ours to make
them Thine!" "We know not how;" then Tennyson girds himself and continues, "Yes, our wills are ours to make
them Thine." As created beings, that is our only right-to make our wills the will of God, to make the will of God
our will! God is sovereign, and we are the creatures. He is the Creator and therefore His is the right to command
us with the obligation that we should obey. It is a happy obligation, I might say, for "His yoke is easy and His
burden is light!" It is important to agree that true salvation restores the right of a Creator-creature relationship,
acknowledging God's right to our fellowship and communion!
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What is God trying to do with His believing people?-the Bible calls us a remnant according to grace, believers
taken out of the great, teeming swarm of so-called religious people in today's world. I am inclined to join others
in wondering if the Lord is postponing His coming because He is trying to get His Bride ready? For years it has
been the popular idea in evangelical Christianity that the whole body of believers in Christ would rise like a
flock of frightened birds when the Lord comes. But A.B. Simpson and William MacArthur and others in the past
generation said, "Oh no! The Lord will take with Him those who are prepared and ready for His coming!" I do
not presume to give an answer satisfying to everyone in our churches. But I know that many Christians are too
smug about this, saying in effect: "I am converted to Christ through grace, so I can live as I please!" Of some
things we cannot be dogmatic; but we know this for sure-God has no halfway house between heaven and hell
where He takes us to fumigate us!
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What is the worst enemy the church faces today? This is where a lot of unreality and unconscious hyprocrisy
enters. Many are ready to say, "The liberals are our worst enemy." But the simple fact is that the average
evangelical church does not have too much trouble with liberalism. Nobody gets up in our churches and claims
that the first five books of Moses are just myths. Nobody says that the story of creation is simply religious
mythology. Nobody denies that Christ walked on the water or that He rose from the grave. Nobody gets up in
our churches and claims that Jesus Christ is not the Son of God or that He isn't coming back again. Nobody
denies the validity of the Scriptures. We just cannot hide behind liberalism and say that it is our worst enemy.
We believe that evangelical Christians are trying to hold on to the truth given to us, the faith of our fathers, so
the liberals are not our worst enemy. Neither do we have a problem with the government. People in our country
can do just about whatever they please and the government pays no attention. We can hold prayer meetings all
night if we want, and the government would never bother us or question us. There is no secret police breathing
down our backs watching our every move. We live in a free land, and we ought to thank God every day for that
privilege. The treacherous enemy facing the church of Jesus Christ today is the dictatorship of the routine,
when the routine becomes "lord" in the life of the church. Programs are organized and the prevailing conditions
are accepted as normal. Anyone can predict next Sunday's service and what will happen. This seems to be the
most deadly threat in the church today. When we come to the place where everything can be predicted and
nobody expects anything unusual from God, we are in a rut. The routine dictates, and we can tell not only what
will happen next Sunday, but what will occur next month and, if things do not improve, what will take place next
year. Then we have reached the place where what has been determines what is, and what is determines what
will be.
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