GOD FORBID that I should...
These are things as a follower of Jesus Christ, I cannot and must not do!
-preach a salvation without COMPLETE repentance from ALL sin!
-preach a justification without TOTAL surrender to the Lordship of Christ!
-preach a Jesus that tolerates any sin!
-preach a forgiveness of sins without telling of the awful price paid to free us from it!
-preach or live a Christianity without separation from the world, in ALL areas of life!
-preach a message of truth that is not hated by the world and its "Christians"!
-claim to be a Christian and love the world!
-seek to please or entertain myself!
-seek joy and fulfillment outside of Christ!
-love pleasure more than God!
-live a Christianity free of Christ's love for ALL men!
-seek to save alive my fleshly desires, loves, plans and pleasures!
-live a life without a burden for the lost!
-give my life for ANY cause other than the cause of Christ and His kingdom!
-be ANYTHING but horrified and broken about sin!
-do ANYTHING that would dull my conscience!
-do ANYTHING that would dull my sensitivity to the horrors of sin and the holiness of God!
-seek to do ANYTHING that would not glorify God!
-harbor ANY sin of ANY form in my heart!
-tolerate ANY sin in ME, THEM and YOU!
-love ANYTHING or ANYONE more than Christ!
-do ANYTHING doubtful! (whatever is not of faith is sin)
-trust in anything other than the grace and love of Jesus to see me through!
.....
This may not mean much to those who read it, (and is not comprehensive, to say the least) but I felt a little stirred up tonight and had a burning desire to let it out. If nothing else, it really helps me to write this out.
God has been showing me that I need to take Scripture more seriously. I must read it...and believe, and if I really believe it I will act upon it because I love Jesus.
Just as a side note, here are a few good quotes I found:
"People do not drift toward Holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated." --D.A. Carson
"Whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, or takes off the relish for spiritual things then it is sin for you, however, innocent it may be in itself." --Suzanna Wesley
"It is perilously easy to have amazing sympathy with God's truth and remain in sin."-- Oswald Chambers
