Tell-Tell Signs of Worldliness {L.E. Maxwell}

• The unwarranted time we can spend over some trifling hobby instead of ‘redeeming the time’ [Ephesians 5:16]. We call it relaxation, but there may be much worldliness in it.
• The ease with which we can sit in slippered feet noting the world’s news when we might be giving the ‘good news’ to lost men. We refuse to endure hardness as good soldiers of Jesus Christ [2Timothy 2:3]. Our soft little ‘world’ has us.
• The prevalent lust for late night lunching and vainglorious witticisms—cheating ourselves of the time needed for God’s fellowship in the Word and prayer next morning. Then we go out ungirt and stripped of our armor to meet the world at large—all because of our own secret inner worldliness.
• The great place we give to likes, dislikes, and personal choices.
• How much we are regulated by public opinion, perhaps religious opinion, rather than scriptural principle.
• How easily we are content to allow this or that thing, be it ever so innocent or lovely, to becloud the world to come.
• How little we count it a privilege to suffer shame for His name.
• What expectations we have of great contentment and satisfaction from certain earthly comforts. How fond we are of nice things and luxuries, and how unwilling to forego them for the sake of sending the gospel to the heathen.

~ http://www.learnthebible.org/thoughts-meditations/tell-tell-signs-of-worldliness.html

The Lips of the Righteous

The lips of the righteous

know what is acceptable:

but the mouth of the wicked

speaketh frowardness.

Proverbs 10:32

Death Defeated {Bishop Taylor}

Death, the old serpent’s son,

Thou hadst a sting once, like thy sire,

That carried hell and ever burning fire;

But those black days are done;

Thy foolish spite buried thy sting

In the profound and wide

Wound of our Saviour’s side;

And now thou art become a tame and harmless thing;

A thing we dare not fear,

Since we hear

That our triumphant God, to punish thee

For the affront thou didst Him on the tree,

Hath snatched the keys of hell out of thy hand,

And made thee stand

A porter at the gate of life, thy mortal enemy.

Comforting Chastisement {C.H. Spurgeon}

“O Lord of hosts, how long wilt thou not have mercy upon Jerusalem? . . . And the Lord answered the angel . . . with good words and comfortable words.”
–Zechariah 1:12,13

What a sweet answer to an anxious enquiry! This night let us rejoice in it. O Zion, there are good things in store for thee; thy time of travail shall soon be over; thy children shall be brought forth; thy captivity shall end. Bear patiently the rod for a season, and under the darkness still trust in God, for His love burneth towards thee. God loves the church with a love too deep for human imagination: He loves her with all His infinite heart. Therefore let her sons be of good courage; she cannot be far from prosperity to whom God speaketh “good words and comfortable words.” What these comfortable words are the prophet goes on to tell us: “I am jealous for Jerusalem and for Zion with a great jealousy.” The Lord loves His church so much that He cannot bear that she should go astray to others; and when she has done so, He cannot endure that she should suffer too much or too heavily. He will not have his enemies afflict her: He is displeased with them because they increase her misery. When God seems most to leave His church, His heart is warm towards her. History shows that whenever God uses a rod to chasten His servants, He always breaks it afterwards, as if He loathed the rod which gave his children pain. “Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him.” God hath not forgotten us because He smites–His blows are no evidences of want of love. If this is true of His church collectively, it is of necessity true also of each individual member. You may fear that the Lord has passed you by, but it is not so: He who counts the stars, and calls them by their names, is in no danger of forgetting His own children. He knows your case as thoroughly as if you were the only creature He ever made, or the only saint He ever loved. Approach Him and be at peace.

Fire {Oswald J. Smith}

        But it is not very long, if God’s people have been set on fire, before the children of satan will gather around the fire.  Nothing attracts like fire.  So it is with revival.  When the church is truly aflame, the world will see it and be attracted by it.  The Psalmist cried, “wilt thou not revive us again.” 

        ~ Passion for Souls

Our Every-Day Life {J.R. Miller}

“He answereth and saith unto them.”

Luke. 3:11

In John’s several answers to the different inquiries made of him we see that religion is not something entirely apart from our every-day life. He did not tell these men to fast for a week, or to leave their business and retire to a monastery, or to enter upon a long course of devotions. Nothing of the kind. They were to begin an once to live according to Gos’s commandments in their own particular calling, to do their every-day work religiously. The “people” were to begin to practise the law of love, thus giving up their greed and selfishness. The “publicans” were to cease to practise extortion, and begin to deal honestly and justly with all men. The “soldiers” were to refrain from all acts of violence. He did not tell them to give up their calling, but to do their duty as good and true men in their calling, to carry the principles of true religion into all their actions.

It is well for us to catch this lesson. A good many people think that being a Christian is to pray a few moments morning and evening, to read a daily chapter or two in the Bible, and to attend church on the Sabath. These duties are important as means of grace, but they are not religion. Religion is living out the principles of Christianity in one’s ordinary week-day life. It is getting the Bible and the prayers and the services into thought and act and character. We must not cut our lives in two and call one part secular, governing it by one set of principles, and regarding the other part as sacred, to be controlled by another set of rules. All life is to be made religious in the sense that everything is to be done in such a way as to please God, under the direction of His counsel. We have just as much religion as we get into our week-day life, and not a whit more. Whatever we do, even to eating and drinking, we should do in the name of the Lord Jesus.

Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do,do all to the glory of God.

What Church Is

Church is:  

 

• Where God meets with His family – Matthew 18:20
• Where we worship and praise God – Psalms 100:4,
• Where the way of salvation is thought – 2Corinthians 4:5
• Where we find comfort and strength in time of need – Philippians 4:19
• Where we learn how to live – Psalm 119:104
• Where we meet those who care about us – I Corinthians 12:26
• Where God’s word is opened IITimothy 3:16
• Where we get helping guide in our children – Proverbs 22:6
• Where we can give for the support of God’s words throughout the world – Proverbs 3:9
• Where we support the pastor and church leaders – I Thessalonians 5:12-13
• Where there’s time for meditation and prayer and song – Psalm 19:14
• Where God gives us blessings – Psalm 84:4