Many do not recognize the fact as they ought, that Satan has got men fast asleep in sin and that it is his great device to keep them so. He does not care what we do if he can do that. We may sing songs about the sweet by and by, preach sermons and say prayers until doomsday, and he will never concern himself about us, if we don't wake anybody up. But if we awake the sleeping sinner he will gnash on us with his teeth. This is our work - to wake people up.
We need to rely on the resurrection life of Jesus on a much deeper level than we do now. We should get in the habit of continually seeking His counsel on everything, instead of making our own commonsense decisions and then asking Him to bless them. He cannot bless them; it is not in His realm to do so, and those decisions are severed from reality. If we do something simply out of a sense of duty, we are trying to live up to a standard that competes with Jesus Christ. We become a prideful, arrogant person, thinking we know what to do in every situation. We have put our sense of duty on the throne of our life, instead of enthroning the resurrection life of Jesus.
He is a Christian who follows Christ, who measures all things by the standard of His approbation, who would not willingly say a word which he would not like to have Christ hear, nor do an act which he would not like to have Christ see. He is a Christian who tries to be the kind of neighbour Christ would be, and the kind of citizen Christ would be, and who asks himself in all the alternatives of his business life, and his social life, and his personal life, what would the Master do in this case? The best Christian is he who most reminds the people with whom he lives of the Lord Jesus Christ. He who never reminds anybody of the Lord Jesus Christ is not a Christian at all.
If you come to worship for any reason other that the joy and pleasure and satisfaction that are to be found in God, you dishonour Him. To put it in other words, worship is first and foremost a feasting on all that God is for us in Jesus. This is because God is most glorified in you when you are most satisfied in Him. Or again, you are His pleasure when He is your treasure. Which is to say that God's greatest delight is your delight in Him.
The Bible is like a telescope. If a man looks through his telescope, then he sees worlds beyond; but if he looks at his telescope, then he does not see anything but that. The Bible is a thing to be looked through, to see that which is beyond.
God is often disappointed that we are so busy doing things for Him, that we have no time to talk to Him... I have to guard against being so busy for God that I have no time for God Himself; and God created man for His glory...What is the ideal of human life? That he may enter into the secrets of God, and be the friend of God; and if God's friends never visit Him, never talk to Him, even though they are busily occupied in His work, they are robbing Him.
Slowly, slowly, if we plug ourselves into the socket of God's way, God's truth and God's life, we will begin to see God's plan for our lives and for the world. If we are attentive to God, and make ourselves present to Him, we will begin to know what to pray for in our intercessory prayer. As we begin to plug ourselves into God, we will start to ask for the right things, and our prayers will start to be answered. As Jesus says in the Gospel, "Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it, that the Father may be glorified in the Son; if you ask anything in my name, I will do it." But to ask for anything in Jesus' name means we must first be plugged into God's way, His truth and His life.
We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people.
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.
When we really are living close to God we know the reality of the Spirit's guiding. When our spiritual life grows dim we do not appreciate His guidance so much. It is not, I think, that He ceases to guide. Rather we cease to be in a condition to apprehend His guidance. But the guidance is very real. There is the alternative danger of interpreting our own feelings and opinions as the Spirit's guidance. Our best defense against this temptation is a real humility joined with a genuine readiness to hear and obey the Spirit.
When I have learnt to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest better than I do now.
If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world... Probably earthly pleasures were never made to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others do the same.
Do you remember that scene in Peter Pan when the children wished to fly with Peter Pan but couldn’t no matter how hard they tried? And Peter Pan told them the solution, “You just think lovely, wonderful thoughts and they lift you up in the air."
Likewise, as God’s children we are to think on things that are true, honourable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, of excellence or worthy of praise so that we can break free from sin—anxiety, bitterness, covetousness, hatred, lust, pride, etc.
What are our thoughts about lately? What is hindering us from claiming His promise of true peace?
Both for perplexity and for dulled conscience the remedy is the same; sincere and spiritual worship. For worship is the submission of all our nature to God. It is the quickening of conscience by His holiness; the nourishment of mind with His truth; the purifying of imagination by His beauty; the opening of the heart to His love; the surrender of will to His purpose - and all of this gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable and therefore the chief remedy for that self-centeredness which is our original sin and the source of all actual sin. Yes - worship in spirit and truth is the way to the solution of perplexity and to the liberation from sin.
