Monday, May 30, 2011
May | 30 Faith – The Old Battle Ground & The Muzzling of The Lion
Amos 1:2
"The Lord roars from Zion, and utters His voice from Jerusalem; The pastures of the shepherds mourn, and the top of Carmel withers." NKJV
Faith – The Old Battle Ground & The Muzzling of The Lion
Today in 2008, Former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, was introduced by former President of the U.S.A., Bill Clinton, to the waiting press and gathered multi-faith communities in New York, where he announced his new ‘Tony Blair Faith Foundation.’ In Cliff Richard style, he declared that extremists from all religions should not sing all the good tunes and so went on to say that, ‘Faith is the New Battleground.’
In 2008, Blair’s New Faith Foundation advisory board, consisted of the dynamic duo of Evangelicalism in the form of Rick Warren and Nicky Gumble, who together in turn, extolled both the man and the initiative with superlative garlands such as ‘staggering, unique, necessary and prepared.’ Lining the way and also extolling this new interfaith initiative, alongside these notable Evangelicals of the early 21st century, were equally notable Anglicans, Buddhists, Muslims, Jews and Hindus, acclaimed academics all. Indeed, former Prime-Minister Blair, became one of the New Teachers of a Yale University course in ‘Faith and Globalization,’ and in addition to this, Blair’s new Faith Foundation through the academic guidance of Cambridge university, also supported ‘The Coexist Foundation’ in the setting up a world-class centre for education about Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Abraham house, in central London became a place where members of the three Abrahamic faiths, ‘met on equal terms, to encounter their traditions, explore their roots, discover what they shared and tackle their differences.’
There is no question that we should do all we can to work together with other people of like humanitarian mind to alleviate the sufferings of the poor, even working together in the wholesale genocide of the Mosquito. Amen and let it be so, yes let it be done. However, under the blanket of such a screaming and vast humanitarian necessity, we would be blind and moronic not to understand that faith is not in fact the new battleground but is in fact the old one, indeed, the only one! For the message of the Gospel is both totally inclusive to all men who hear and believe it and absolutely exclusive to all who do not. The message of Jesus to all men then, be they Gentiles, Jews, Muslims, Pagans, Hindu, Buddhist or otherwise is this: “Continue to be dammed or, believe in Jesus and be saved.” Do you see the implications of this?
So, whilst thanking God for every shard of goodness found in anyone and anything, yes, whilst wanting to encourage that and amplify the same, wherever it is found, and to do so for the benefit of all people, never the less, this ‘One Way, Only Way’ Christian message shall be classed as nothing else but an extremist one, for this message can do nothing else but condemn all other faith’s core belief systems, as being deceptive and dastardly destructive to the ultimate and eternal good of humanity.
Remember, that though we proclaimers of this message of ‘The Way’ do not deliver God’s Gospel down the barrel of an ArmaLite, nor pack it in a bomb vest of destruction, yes, even though we do not fly this message on the wings of a rocket, nor preach it from the sides of a trundling tank, never the less, the very proclamation of this message will be seen as disrespectful, destructive and extremist, and such extremism will be bundled with the murders and the terrorists, and treated just the same.
I wonder if today in 2008, the foundation for a world faith religion was further strengthened and that in reality, the old faith battle had actually just been stepped up a gear?
So called love, tolerance and respect that stifles and kills the peaceful proclamation of the Gospel, is simply a muzzling of the Lion that roars the withering truth from the terrified tops of Carmel, across the pastures and the shepherds of all religions that presently surround Jerusalem.
Listen: - "Come, I'll show you the judgment of the great Whore who sits enthroned over many waters, the Whore with whom the kings of the earth have gone whoring, show you the judgment on earth dwellers drunk on her whorish lust." In the Spirit he carried me out in the desert. I saw a woman mounted on a Scarlet Beast. Stuffed with blasphemies, the Beast had seven heads and ten horns. The woman was dressed in purple and scarlet, festooned with gold and gems and pearls. She held a gold chalice in her hand, brimming with defiling obscenities, her foul fornications. A riddle-name was branded on her forehead: Great Babylon, Mother Of Whores And Abominations Of The Earth. I could see that the woman was drunk, drunk on the blood of God's holy people, drunk on the blood of the martyrs of Jesus.( Revelation 17:1-6 - from THE MESSAGE)
Pray:- Lord, clothe us with peace, discernment, grace, clarity, certainty, strength, truth and courage, in Jesus name we pray, amen.
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Wednesday, May 25, 2011
May | 26 | The Problem of Promethius and The Preparation For Death
Ecclesiastes 7:2
Better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for that is the end of all men; and the living will take it to heart. NKJV
The Problem of Promethius and The Preparation For Death
Pastors who imitate the preaching and the moral action of the prophets without also imitating the prophets’ deep praying and worship so evident in the Psalms are an embarrassment to the faith and an encumbrance to the church. (Eugene Peterson – Working The Angles: The Shape of Pastoral Integrity)
I neither want to be an embarrassment nor an encumbrance, but I am afraid, that my natural tendency is to be so, for I have seen what Promethean fire and its resultant adrenalin-led activity can do in raising the dancing blue flames of man-made hope, both seen flickering and realised in books like “Your best life now”. Yes, I’ve seen what those flames of soulish prophetic doing can achieve, what they can get done and boy do we need to get things done! For when I look around, oh friends, when I look around, there is so much to be done, and frankly so much that we can do now and yet, yes and yet, there is oh so very little time to do it in.
You know, the needs are so great and our ability to meet those needs are now so possible, that I just want to get on down and go buy that excavator, yeah! Stoke that fire and lay hold of that yellow hot, JCB, earth-moving machine and flip that mountain on its back; build that tunnel, ford that stream, make a way through that mighty river, ‘cause I’ve got, “high in the sky, apple pie.... hopes” that we can move that rubber tree plant! Yes sirree, move it wherever we so well please. We can do it! Let’s shake that thing, yes, let’s shape this thing called our destinies, this thing called our possibilities, yes, let’s get up, let’s get down, let’s get with it and let’s just do it baby, cause we are preparing people for life! Preparing people for change, preparing people to better themselves, to better society and to better the nations of the world! Hallelujah and chaaaaaaaaarge! Have you not heard “We can do it!”
Peterson (in the book I mentioned previously) points out how the present generation of church (I believe the Laodicean Church) has bought into the Promethean myth in such a way that “We have let ourselves be co-opted in the struggle against limits, committed to raising the standard of living: bigger machines, cheaper chicken...uncritically using the means offered by the world...so uncritically applauded and so readily at hand.......we have joined in the struggle to make life better for everyone with any available means.....the problem is that Prometheus does not pray, there is too much to do and there is little time to do it.”
Do remember that in the legend, Promethius redeemed humanity from the tyranny of mortality, by causing mortals to cease foreseeing their personal doom, by placing in them blind hopes and lastly, by stealing fire from the gods and giving it to humanity, for their pleasure, for their profit and for their continual and technological advancement.
Peterson is right in his statement about proclaiming prophets and their lack of prayer, for if there are two things that characterises both the present pastorate and the postmodern community of the saints, it is first, a distinct lack of prayer and secondly, a lack of preparation for a good death. In less than a century, over 6 billion people will die on this planet. Surely this is something we should prepare for and in the so doing, that preparation for death should turn our so short lives into journeys that are baptised in the warm and wet, ever running river of prayer? This is not miserable thinking but it is Biblical thinking! There is so much to do and so little time to do it in that we really must pray and that much, much more. Yet the doing, yes, all the blind man made doing, has squeezed out all our praying.
Tell me, do you have a Promethean fire in your own personal boiler tonight? After all, just where are you getting your central heating from? What is raising the power of your personal steam, your church’s steam, your mission’s steam? Have you numbered your days? Have you and do you consider your mortality and is your life, lived in its ever lengthening shadow? If you find the thought of that last question maybe to be defeatist, or even repugnant, then I can virtually guarantee pastor, brother, sister, friend and mate, that you’ve got some strange Promethean fire in your boiler, and I tell you, it needs putting out! For if you don’t put it out, it sure as hell will burn you out! Mark my words here. Mark my words.
Yes the two best things and most Biblical things you can do is pray and prepare for your ultimate demise. Think about that tonight.
Listen: - And Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took either of them his censer, and put fire therein, and put incense thereon, and offered strange fire before the Lord, which he commanded them not. And there went out fire from the Lord, and devoured them, and they died before the Lord. Leviticus 10:1-2 KJV.
Pray:- Lord teach me to pray. Lord teach me to number my days. For Lord, I love this strange Promethean power. I just love it Lord! You know that I do not wish to be a Luddite Lord, but I do ask You to put the false fire out and then my Lord, send the Holy fire from Your throne, in Jesus name I ask it, amen.
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May | 26 | Sissies or Soldiers?
Title:- Sissies or Soldiers?
Psalm 58:6-8 TLB
O God, break off their fangs. Tear out the teeth of these young lions, Lord. Let them disappear like water into thirsty ground. Make their weapons useless in their hands. Let them be as snails that dissolve into slime and as those who die at birth, who never see the sun..
In America I am sure that my Southern friends will forgive me this morning for referring to the birth today of a most famous daughter of America in 1819, Mrs Julia Ward Howe.
Anti-slavery activist, suffragette, and Unitarian, I might not agree with all of her theology or her politics but the poem she penned on visiting the Union Army of the Potomac is inspiring. To the tune of ‘John Browns Body’, the ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’ became the marching song of the Union army and an inspiration to countless millions. Though the first three stanzas are marvelous, the last two stanzas surpass them all when they say:
He is sifting out the hearts of men
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him!
Our God is marching on.
In the beauty of the lilies
With a glory in His bosom
As He died to make men holy,
While God is marching on.
I have been witness in my lifetime to some of the greatest new worship songs I have ever heard. They move me from earth to heaven in prostrate adoration and so they should, for He is worthy. However friends, amongst all this glorious worship, the church militant seems to have laid down its weapons, seems to have retired from the field before the final battle, seems to have failed to finish off the enemy, cut the head from Goliath and stamp the serpent thoroughly under its feet. Friends, look you. In all our ‘New Worship Experience,’ where are the war songs of the mighty men of God the All-mighty? Where are the fierce ‘Lion Like Men’ of the greater David? Where are the great hearts of this day? Who will break the enemy ranks and draw water from the well of Bethlehem for King Jesus today? Are all we have in our ranks today, simply sissies with a dream? History maker fakers? Surely not? What about you? Are you a song singer or a real history maker? Faker of maker? What are you today?
Stop singing like a Sissie man! Enough of this hold me, stroke me, feel me, touch my hair and tell me that you love me rubbish! For God’s sake! for His kingdoms sake! Grow up man, get up, and go up to some mountain and take it for Jesus, take it with Jesus, take it because of Jesus. Stop the singing ans start the soldiering, maybe then you’ll have something to sing about. In the meantime I wonder if God is simply saying, “Just shut up!”
“Rise up O Men of God, have done with lesser things give heart and soul and mind to God to serve the King of Kings!”
Listen:- For You have armed me with strength for the battle; You have subdued under me those who rose up against me. You have also given me the necks of my enemies, So that I destroyed those who hated me. Psalm 18:39-40
Pray:- Teach my hands to make war, make my arms strong to bend the bow of bronze, grant me the shield of Your salvation, and Your right hand to uphold me. By Your gentleness, make me great. Enlarge my path beneath my feet that I might not slip up in the pursuance of my enemies, until each one is overtaken and thoroughly destroyed by both Thee and me! Amen.
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May | 26 | Set The Juice----Loose! Serve it Like Sushi
Mark 12:37b
And the common people heard Him gladly. NKJV
Set The Juice----Loose! Serve it Like Sushi
I remember performing some poetry for a about forty very rough, 'rough sleeping' homeless folks in the city of Brighton. It was surprisingly well received. Afterward, a very well spoken, silver-faced, Einstein-like figure came over to me and said, “I just wanted to say how much I appreciated your poetry and especially your delivery. You know of course, that you are following in the footsteps of the great Englishman, Chaucer, who also communicated so well in the vernacular of his day.” I was really pleased with this. Sure he was raving tooting bonkers, but I was really pleased with his comments. So, when I arrived home I immediately shared my grand comparison with the proud bubble burster of my home, my wife, who simply said, “Hmmm, yes, Chaucer. He was crude as well.” Typical. What does she know anyways?
Unfortunately we have upwardly diminished the power of the Bible in making it palace worthy rather than pavement worthy, making it a book for the studious instead of a book for the sidewalk. The common people heard Jesus gladly and I can guarantee you, He wasn’t received in the majestic language of the King James Version. The common people. They heard Him. They received Him. Gladly! I am not talking about dumbing down here either, but rather about tooling up with the words of the day.
We need to regain some street credibility in the delivery of the Scriptures. Before that happens however, we need to let loose the so long now muzzled, powerful jaws of the lion and allow it to roar once more. I wonder if the hidden and diluted Word of God which we are peddling from our pulpits now, which over the years we have also so tightly dressed up like a gay and mincing, little white and pink padded poodle-ette, is quite frankly too embarrassed to be taken out doors? It's embarrasing, for our misuse of it in this way, and that is what the diluting of the Word of God is, a gross misuse, has robbed it of its awesome power and thoroughly embarrassed it. God help us please! For this Word in its undiluted form is the very life giving juice dripped from the leaves of the squeezed out tree of life! So, yes indeed, we need to let the juice loose even if it does cause so many letters to be written by ‘disgusted of Tunbridge Wells!’ I say again, Let the juice loose!
However, before we can let thus juice loose once more, I wonder if we need to let loose most of the Christians who read the juicy book and especially those frightened little folk we have sent to seminary dentistry, where they have had their teeth removed and the rough and ready garments of the prophet replaced by a smart and casual respectability. Lord God! (and that’s a calling prayer) I hate respectability. With a vengeance! You see, I reckon that nice speaking polite little Christians have done more damage to the Kingdom of God than the devil could ever do.
I have two things to leave with you tonight.
First an equation and frankly, maybe it’s just me, but I do find that in my life, that the more righteous I experientially and practically become, the less outwardly, pretentiously respectable I both appear and act. How’s your life adding then up in terms of middle class, middle England respectability tonight? Are you above all things, nice?
Secondly, that when a clawed and sharp beaked, sharp eyed hawk even gently glides past the settled nests of the starling colonies, the little birds attack it. Prophet. Jesus street preacher. Watch out for the darling, little starlings for they are not as sweet as you might think and I tell you, they do not want their nice little nest much ruffled, especially if their religion gets in a state. If you are not nice, they will peck you to death.
Even so then and never the less, do remember to drink the Bible in its undiluted form, yes remember to simply let the juice loose and always preacher, I mean always serve it like sushi. Raw!
Pray:- Deliver us O God, from all the darling, darting starlings and all the ‘Disgusted’s of Tunbridge Wells’, yes deliver us from all the pale pulpit pansies planted in graveyard flower pots and placed neatly in old varnished pulpits, who hate to be disturbed and loathe to disturb others. Don’t give us gold fillings O Lord! No, You can keep all that useless rubbish Lord, but rather, please grow us a new set of sharp canines and grant us that deep and guttural, testosterone filled roar of the prophets of old. Lord set the juice loose and give us some “street cred” once again, in Jesus name we ask it, amen!
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Thursday, May 5, 2011
May-05-Coaching Columbus
Title:- Coaching Columbus
1 Peter 3:5,6
For in this manner, in former times, the holy women who trusted in God also adorned themselves, being submissive to their own husbands, as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord,
So she says “Hey! We should have taken a left back there!” He doesn’t reply but inside he’s thinking “Christopher Columbus didn’t need directions and neither do I!” Such are the thoughts of everyman in the driving seat when any woman, wife or otherwise, attempts to give him some dimensional direction. Call it chauvinism, call it childishness, call it instability, call it even God’s design; yes, call it lack of security, or call it what you want but accept this fact and make peace with it, “Men are just like that!” I mean, what can women tell them about finding directions?
Unfortunately, this male attitude does not translate well when the opposite sex also tries to give any ‘non-dimensional’ direction to them. Men will rarely sit peaceably under the authority and teaching of a woman. On the odd occasion, they might listen to and follow a Royal Queen, a Boudicca, a Deborah, an Elizabeth or maybe even a Margaret! However, it’s rare friends, it's so very rare. Women have to be seen to have wisdom, age, respect, maybe even a kind of motherhood but preferably a grandparent-hood about them, before men will even countenance some good advice from their lips. You will forgive my lack of political correctness here I hope, because my New years resolution was to ‘Stop putting square pegs into round holes’ and just face some plain old facts, even if they are contrary to popular politically correct opinion! My statements reflect nothing on the abilities of women but on everything to do with being a man. Yes, don’t get me wrong, for every wise husband learns that he should listen to his wife. After all, she’s usually correct!
May I suggest the failure of women to communicate and instruct men is not so much in the content of what is said but in the delivery. Not so much in the rightness but in the approach. The male ego is a fragile commodity remember, and needs treating with honor and respect. If you don’t, then women, you will not be received. End of story.
The benefits of honorable communication from women to men are however, far reaching, even reaching into the future. Ask any mother and they will tell you that there comes a point when their loving son will not listen to a word they say! Never the less, ask any man, and they shall tell you that when sensibility eventually came upon them, they remembered and cherished every word spoken from the loving lips of mothers and grandmothers. Yes, every passionate plea and every overheard heard prayer became to them a means of re-instruction, a treasure of remembered love that repeated itself in their more mature days. Such honorable instruction as this ,will be respectfully received, recovered, and regurgitated. Men are just like that and you dear sisters would do well to take note.
Listen: - when I call to remembrance the genuine faith that is in you, which dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice, and I am persuaded is in you also. 2 Tim 1:4-5
Pray: - Thank you Lord Jesus, for the great and honorable and courageous women in the Kingdom of God. What would we do without them Lord? Make them wise tward men. Now O Lord, help the men of the Kingdom glory in their manhood, in Jesus anme we pray, amen.
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Monday, May 2, 2011
May-03-Simple Yet Sumptuous!
Title:- Simple Yet Sumptuous!
Matthew 11:29
Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”
Everyone knows that when Henry Ford first mass-produced his Model T Ford, you could have it any color you wanted provided it was black! Today of course, Mr. 'Monotone' Ford would not have been able to compete in this vast market place of color choice.
Whenever I go down to the local supermarket it is not long before I become overwhelmed with the array of choice that is set before me. For me to be found perplexed in the aisle of most any shop nowadays is not unusual, as on average, each store has some 50,000 separate items to choose from! From the vast array of competing service providers and all their sumptuous socks in sizzling and saucy colours that the marketting mantra of the century is indeed found to be , ‘Competition afforded by choice.’
Churches both large and small have spotted this seeming need to provide ‘choice’ to seekers of spiritual truth and have unwittingly engaged themselves in that self same competition afforded by the lust for choice! So, on most weekends you will find churches offering services on Saturday and Sunday, Monday morning, various afternoons and most evenings, contemporary and traditional, long and short, dressed up, dressed down, smells bells and hope on a rope. I’m not knocking it; after all it is getting in the punters! After all, people expect choice and are coming to worship and to participate in the style of their choice on the day of their choice at the time of their choice. Indeed, it’s so needful now in Christendom to present such ‘spiritual’ choice, such ‘spiritual’ options that today, this ‘service choice’ has been re-presented to us as the ‘Christian Norm,’ even the cutting edge of postmodern evangelism! After all, look at all the choice in the availability of the multitude of protestant denominations, and hey, didn’t Paul say that he would become all things to all men if by any means he could win some, and by the way haven’t we got four different gospels with one message, you know four different flavors with a different emphasis for at least four different sets of audiences? Good grief isn’t it obvious, God is into choice!
Laying aside the honorable and dutiful question of which day of the week to gather as a body to adore God together and to minister to one another; laying aside the exceptionally cheap ‘mile wide and inch deep’ quality of such a present day presentation of spiritual ‘choice’; laying aside the market place competition set by postmodern day consumer Christianity; laying aside the subsequent ‘Wal-Marting’ of Christendom, we still come to another massive problem for the sheep of His pasture and that is, that although the postmodern spiritual punter may easily quench his natural curiosity, may easily sign up for his shopping reward card and get the nice little spiritual discount his truly unrepentant soul requires, the real sheep are left rotting on the hills and wasting away for lack of good nutrition. Such choosing, such foul presentation of choice, such pandering to the flesh, for that is what it is, has left in it’s wake an emaciated Christianity that now teeters and totters pathetically through the land. The spiritual punters have touched and tasted and are some are even satisfied with the tasteless drivel, as after all, it would appear that being a Christian is not as demanding as they thought it might be. However, the people of His pasture, are left both hungry and even starving.
Sheep you see, don’t want choice; they just want feeding the food that is fitted for their needs! True sheep just want to eat! Crispy or grilled, they just don’t care! They don’t want fries, and they don’t want coke with it and no, they apparently don’t want honey mustard either! Good grief they just want a burger in a bun! They just want food from a shepherd who is sprinkled with the anointing from on high and glows with the manifest presence of the Saviour. I tell you what: sheep will travel a thousand miles for such simple and sumptuous fare and you know what, they may even do it on a Sunday mate. Imagine that!
Listen:- “Stand in the ways and see, And ask for the old paths, where the good way is, And walk in it; Then you will find rest for your souls. Jeremiah 6:16
Pray:- Grant me O good Shepherd, a simplicity of life, a focus on the fundamentals and thenO my God, come quench my thirsty soul and feed me with the food allotted to me. Amen!
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May-03- Building On A Math’s Lesson For Moles With Memory Problems
2 Peter 1:10
Therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to make your call and election sure, for if you do these things you will never stumble; NKJV.
Building On A Math’s Lesson For Moles With Memory Problems
We Protestants against spiritual abuse, against doctrinal deviousness, yes, we reformers of a previous and terrible travesty of pure religion, now hang our certain and hopeful hats on five giant pegs, those being,
1 Sola Scriptura (“by Scripture alone”)
2 Sola Fide (“by Faith alone”)
3 Sola Gratia (“by Grace alone”)
4 Solus Christus (“Christ alone”)
5 Soli Deo Gloria (“Glory to God alone”)
How wonderful.
It is therefore a real shame that the outworking of these five central pillars of Protestantism, of Biblical Christianity, have on the whole led to an ever emergent and “lazy ass” Christian. We have become far too much at ease with the once wonderfully simple marriage of faith and grace, which seem nowadays to have given up producing vigorous, respectful, thankful and sacrificial offspring and have somehow been left with a nasty nest of twittering cuckoos, all over-fat children, who in their subsequent and sedentary post-modern growth, display little relation to the revelation of Scripture, which that marriage of faith and grace once so wonderfully proclaimed, and so subsequently, they have no heart or inclination, no stomach and no staying power, to either know what they should look like, desire to become nor be determined to die for. This must be rectified. We Protestants have gone soft.
Our text for tonight, is built on a ‘Therefore.’ So, looking at the previous verses in the opening of 2nd Peter, we see they speak of a multiplication of a Divine grace and peace, which in turn results in a super abundance of faithful and fruity action! 2 Peter 1: 5-9, is in fact a math’s lesson for blind moles with memory problems and is rooted in the superabundance of the promises of God and therefore prefixed with a very demanding and all encompassing action phrase, translated as, ‘Giving all diligence!’ Phew, I am tired already! Yup, this maths lesson for moles with memory problems demands ACTION. Indeed, the word diligence here, is from which we derive our English word, SPEED. Peter says in effect, “Give all eagerness, all earnestness, all business, all forwardness, haste ,despatch, diligence, yes, give all SPEED, to add my previously stated seven ‘active ingredients’ to your Christian life. Why? Well because if you do not, you will turn into a smelly blind mole which burrows in pig swill and bathes in dog vomit.” Simple!
So, now in our text for tonight, Peter goes on to say, “Be EVEN MORE diligent.” Peter uses the verb SPOUDAZO here, so in other words he says, “Hey, move faster still folks, for when it comes to being SURE of your calling and election, I want you to PUT YOUR SPEEDOS ON!” Oh, yes indeed! We might paraphrase Peter then by saying, “Oi! If your knowledge and testimony, if your service and story of present salvation and future happiness is as real as you say it is; if it is truly through God’s grace, by faith alone in Christ alone, resting in the Scriptures alone and all for the glory of God alone, then show me the active goods! No, more than that, forget assuring me so much of your salvation, rather, ASSURE YOURSELF! Yes, make your calling and election forcefully firm to your own heart. Make it steadfast, make it sure and certain to yourself! Do this all the time. Yes, let your action reveal your faith, first of all to yourself .”
Friends, the outcome of such a speedy and consistent effort which is rooted in those five Scriptural pillars, is that you shall run so confidently, that you shall never run and ruin yourselves in the bumbling and blind blundering of ignorant little moles. Now that’s magnificent!
Listen: - But do you want to know, O foolish man, that faith without works is dead? Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered Isaac his son on the altar? Do you see that faith was working together with his works, and by works faith was made perfect? And the Scripture was fulfilled which says, "Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness." And he was called the friend of God. You see then that a man is justified by works, and not by faith only. James 2:20-24 NKJV
Pray:- Lord, deliver me from the bondage of works but help me always to righty and continually, make both my calling and election sure. In Jesus name I ask it, amen.
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