Food for Thought 4

You have lived a selfish life, tainted with some religiousness.  Sin permeates your entire being, saturates your thoughts, corrupts your motives, and makes you offensive in the sight of God.  Sin is a moral disorder that every man alive is plagued with.  Sin numbs and paralyzes the conscience.  Do not throw away your soul by indulging in your sinful propensities and tendencies. You have indulged in your sinful ways and abused God's mercy and longsuffering for years now.

There is no peace between a Christless soul and God, neither can there be. The spirit of disobedience that is in you is selfish, and it lusts to envy to man and enmity to God.  The unsaved worldling is filled with hating, slandering, struggling, competing, bickering, and wounding.  Sin connects you with the devil, so flee from sin.  Do not laugh and mock at sin, do not trifle with sin, all sins are dangerous and deadly.

You must be a servant to somebody, there is no getting through this world without serving someone, and if you are a servant to your sinful self, your bondage is terrible and miserable, and the very worst of degradation.  When men worship a false god, they will always find money and time and energy to sacrifice to that god.  *Isaiah 46:6* Men say that cannot afford to give anything to the cause of Christ, but for their sinful pleasures, they can waste their time, energy and substance. No sacrifice is too expensive for a man's lusts.  He will do anything to live a merry life, a life which consists of blatant disregard and rebellion against God.

The Gospel gives renewal and rest to the sinful soul, purity and pardon, sanctity and safety. Only Christ can subdue your sins.  Seek after real holiness; real holiness dwells with humility.  Holiness means wholeness; wholeness is a thing without a crack, or flaw, or break; complete, entire, uninjured, whole. The character of God is perfectly Holy, in Him nothing is lacking, nothing is redundant. The inner meaning of "Holy" is complete or whole.  The presence of the Holy Spirit fills the believer with the fear of the Lord and self-abhorrence.

Abhor that which is evil; there must be a hatred and loathing of sin, and a turning from sin.  By the operations of the Spirit of grace, we are made weary of sin, we loathe both sin and its imaginary pleasures.  Repent of your sins which the Lord condemns.  Turn from sinful ways which God abhors, we must loathe the vice which God forbids, and seek after the virtue which He commands. The more certain you are about your relationship with Christ and His forgiveness, the more you will hate your sins, which caused the Savior to bleed and die. God is good, loving, tender, and gracious, full of long-suffering and mercy and faithfulness to us poor sinners.

Come to Christ now, self-trust must go first, the love of sin must follow, then worldliness, pride, and self-seeking must be cast aside. The devil works hard to lead one person into licentiousness, another into drunkenness, a third into dishonesty, another into self-righteous religion, and others into worldliness and vanity.  Man is boastful of his own wisdom and intellect, puffed up by his education and worldly possessions, and then humbled by failing health.  Grace will lead you to mourn over a failure in character.  The prayer of faith, forsakes self, looks only to Christ, and makes everything of Christ.  The prayer of faith leans on the arm of God who is the master of every situation.

Beware of a religion of show and pretense. Beware of a religion which you can put on Sunday, and put off on Monday.  It is an awful thing to make a profession of sanctity and still live on in the indulgence of secret vice.  Modern thought leads to disillusionment and damnation.  Envy leads you to think harshly and to indulge in suspicions that are groundless.

Human ability is puffed up inability.  Are you a works-truster or a Christ-truster?  Work-trusters never have any rest and are never prepared to die. Self-righteousness always gives unrest, fear, and dread. Stay conscious of your own incompetence and inability to do anything that is good and right.  He who does things without Christ will end up doing nothing.  The man who tries to preach without the divine aid of the Holy Spirit cannot preach at all.  A person who tries to teach a Sunday School class without prayer cannot teach Jesus to a Sunday School class.

The man who thinks he can serve God apart from His continual divine Help is miserably deluded. Self-sufficiency is inefficiency.  The fulness of self is double emptiness. Any man who God truly uses will be so emptied out by the Holy Spirit, that he will wonder how God could ever use him in the least degree.  He will be ready to hide his head, and long to get out of public notice, because he will feel himself to be utterly unworthy of the favor which God has manifested towards him.  Human ability without the grace of God is puffed up inability.  The natural man is concerned about money, good health, and self-preservation.

The lust of the flesh is the indulgence of carnal appetites.  The lust of the eye is desiring more for yourself and envying those that have more. The pride of life is making a name for yourself, thirsting to be thought respectable and successful, emulation of others, struggling after worldly reputation, title, success, honor, and praise. The pride of life is the pride of possessions, accomplishment, and talent.  Human honor and flattery is the sharpest of all tests.

Only be a truster in God, a believer in Jesus, and a waiter upon the Holy Spirit.  Ask the Holy Spirit to draw you away from sinful companions and pleasures.  Calm resignation and submission comes through physical pain, mental depression, disappointments in family and business, and bereavements.  Submission and sweet delight in God's will, walking circumspectly, tenderly, submissively, and quietly.  Cheerful submission to heavenly discipline.  Never misjudge, insult, or slander others.  Bear ill-treatment, ridicule, slander, and injury without resentment, revenge or retaliation.  Always consider Jesus, keep Him in your thoughts, words, and actions. Regret your past sins, long to overcome sin, sigh for deliverance from inward corruption. desire after purity, trust in Christ, hope in His mercy.

Put your soul into Jesus' care, or you will lose it.  Believe God's words, trust to His Son.  Do nothing of your own to save yourself, but trust Jesus to do it all.  Repentance or wretchedness, it's your choice.  Lord Jesus, give me a new heart within, renew my nature, help me to give up my sins.  Seek from God that your works may done from pure motives, with more simple faith in Christ.  Put those dark doubts away.  Drop all ideas of becoming better through your own strength.  Sinners can only be beggars and receivers.  Rest more on the Holy Spirit's power.

To live to Christ, you must first die to yourself.  Do nothing, be nothing, cease from yourself, begin with Christ at the Cross.  Leave off now to do, to be, to feel, and trust in Jesus who did, and was, and felt for you.  If you rest on Christ and self, you are doomed.  Never mingle your works with Christ's works, human merit with Christ's merits.  Fix your faith on the Atonement of the Lamb of God. Trust Jesus and you are saved, trust self and you are lost.  Beg the Holy Spirit to draw you nigh to Jesus. The Gospel is easy terms - trust Jesus, forsake yourself.

Poor, miserable sinners look to Christ for help.  Look now to Jesus' agony, sweat, tears, cross, thorns, nails, passion, blood, death, burial, resurrection, ascension, intercession, and coming.  Salvation is what Christ has done, He must do everything for you, and all He asks of you is to simply stand in the place of the unjust. Human nature is too good and too proud to be saved by the free Gospel.  Your guilt is your warrant to come to Christ's Hospital of Mercy.

One of two things, either you must be saved without deserving to be saved, saved by the works of Another, or else you must keep the whole Law, and earn Heaven by your own righteousness, and that is impossible for you are a sinner. God never accepts sinners because of anything they do, but only because of what Jesus has done.  Whosoever you may be, you are welcome now to come to the Cross for full and free forgiveness of your sins. No preparation on your part is required.

Humbly stoop and drink the water of life freely.  God will keep His promise, and perform His words.  The Robe of Righteousness has been completed by Jesus, you cannot add a stitch to it.  Place your confidence in the blood of Jesus Christ. To believe is to trust, as a little child confidently trusts to his mother's arms.  Believing means to trust upon what Christ has done for sinners; Simply depending upon Jesus for everything.

The atheist minds earthly things, lives for himself, seeks his own pleasure, hates all that oppose him, and glories in his shame.  The object of modern atheism is to undermine the Scriptures, ignore Christ's Atonement, forget God, and lose their soul.  The atheist is up in arms against God and His truth, and all that is pure and good.  Atheistic thoughtlessness and carelessness always leads to sinning.  The atheist is in such a degraded condition of mind that he can do evil without check of conscience and no longer blush.  The atheist is so puffed up that his own imagination is his inspiration.