Worth Repeating
"The chief danger of the 20th Century (and the 21st Century!) will be religion without the Holy Ghost, Christianity without Christ, forgiveness without repentance, salvation without regeneration, politics without God, and Heaven without Hell." William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army
Lord JESUS, we see the 'signs of the times' all around us. We see what appears to us as evidence of Your soon return. Part of what we see includes the fulfillment of these prophetic words spoken by Your servant.
We do see religiosity without the power of Your Holy Spirit. We see
Christian works being done without You being glorified. We see the
cheap grace of which Bonhoeffer spoke that does not require repentance.
We see people accepting the notion of salvation without the necessity of being born again, people whose attitude seems to be that since God forgives sin, there is no harm in sin. They are content to live the unregenerate life under the umbrella of Your Church without the new birth You require in order that they may see God.
We grieve for politicians who have exchanged principle for personal gain. We grieve for ourselves because we think we earn Heaven by our works, forgetting that apart from Your finished work on the cross, we perish.
May we ponder afresh the words of Booth. May we let them jolt us from our apathy and bring us to our knees before our HOLY GOD, where HE may revive us, renew us, and restore us to the place we have lost through our focus on the world that has blurred our vision of our SAVIOR.
We see people accepting the notion of salvation without the necessity of being born again, people whose attitude seems to be that since God forgives sin, there is no harm in sin. They are content to live the unregenerate life under the umbrella of Your Church without the new birth You require in order that they may see God.
We grieve for politicians who have exchanged principle for personal gain. We grieve for ourselves because we think we earn Heaven by our works, forgetting that apart from Your finished work on the cross, we perish.
May we ponder afresh the words of Booth. May we let them jolt us from our apathy and bring us to our knees before our HOLY GOD, where HE may revive us, renew us, and restore us to the place we have lost through our focus on the world that has blurred our vision of our SAVIOR.
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