Readings
We chose for you
The Absoluteness of Jesus Christ
The pietistic movements of to-day have none of the rugged reality of the New Testament about them; there is nothing about them that needs the Death of Jesus Christ, all that is required is a pious atmosphere, and prayer and devotion. This type of experience is not supernatural nor miraculous, it did not cost the passion of God, it is not dyed in the blood of the Lamb, not stamped with the hall-mark of the Holy Ghost. It has not that mark on it which makes men say, as they look with awe and wonder – “That is the work of God Almighty.” That and nothing else is what the New Testament talks about.
The type of Christian experience in the New Testament is that of personal passionate devotion to the Person of Jesus Christ. Every other type of Christian experience, so called, is detached from the Person of Jesus. There is no regeneration, no being born again into the Kingdom in which Christ lives, but only the idea that He is our Pattern. In the New Testament Jesus Christ is Saviour long before He is Pattern. To-day He is being despatched as the Figurehead of a Religion, a mere Example. He is that, but He is infinitely more; He is salvation itself. He is the Gospel of God.
Jesus said, “When He, the Spirit of truth, is come,…He shall glorify Me.” When I commit myself to the revelation made in the New Testament, I receive from God the gift of the Holy Spirit Who begins to interpret to me what Jesus did and does in me subjectively all that Jesus Christ did for me objectively.
Oswald Chambers – My Utmost for His Highest
The Truth and the True
Ultimately, nothing can kill the truth. Our society lives with the fallacy that truth is an illusion and has put truth on the scaffold.
But that scaffold inexorably sways the future, and in the day we all stand before God, all illusions will collapse, leaving only truth standing alive and strong. If life is to be lived with wonder, even in the face of threat, then truth must be the indispensable component as living corresponds with God’s design.
Fantasy and fraud die in the face of the fantastic and the true, in the person of Jesus Christ.
Just as gratitude requires someone to whom we can be grateful, truth requires someone because of whom truth is possible. In both instances personhood, it is indispensable to wonder!
Ravi Zacharias – Recapture the Wonder
Do we hate enough?
I hate all evil ways, the writer of Psalm 119 said in verse 104, and in verse 128 All false ways I utterly abhor.
Do we truly hate every false way? Or are we covering up something which will one day come out to our shame before God and His holy angels? There is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known (Matthew 10:26).
Do we hate mushy friendships?
Do we hate all weakening things, or are we sliding along in an easy kind of tolerance that is far removed from the “hate” of such verses as this?
Do we hate laziness and slackness and all kinds of selfishness?
See that you love all that God loves, but see that you hate all that He hates. If we don’t know how to hate, we don’t know how to love.