OUR FUTURE REWARD

By Ken Silva pastor-teacher on Nov 18, 2012 in Devotions

Like the hireling we must fulfill our day, then at evening we shall have our penny. Too many Christians look for a reward for their labors, and if they meet with success, they begin doting upon it as though they had received their recompense.

Like the disciples who returned saying, “Lord, even the devils are subject unto us” (Luke 10:17), they rejoice too exclusively in present prosperity; whereas the Master bade them not to look upon miraculous success as being their reward, since that might not always be the case.

“Notwithstanding,” said he, “in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven” (Luke 10:20). Success in the ministry is not the Christian minister’s true reward: it is an earnest, but the wages still wait.

The approbation of your fellow men you must not look upon as being the reward of excellence, for often you will meet with the reverse; you will find your best actions misconstrued and your motives ill interpreted. To be despised and rejected of men is the Christian’s lot.

Among his fellow Christians he will not always stand in good repute. It is not unmitigated kindness nor unmingled love that we receive even from the saints. I tell you if you look for your reward to Christ’s bride herself, you will miss it.
“When the King shall come in his glory,” then is your time of recompense; but not today, nor tomorrow, nor at any time in this world.1

Charles Spurgeon

THE NEW EVANGELICAL CHRISTIAN CREED

By Rob

I am a Christian
I’m just not obliged to acknowledge the founder

I love Jesus
But not enough to obey his teachings

His ways are not my ways
My ways are my ways

I believe in being salt of the earth
as long as that means “making the world a better place”

I believe in the Bible
but it isn’t factual

I believe God spoke to us in His Word
but personal revelation can trump his Word at any time

The Bible speaks words of truth to me
but those words can mean whatever I want

I believe in Heaven and Hell
but what kind of God would condemn you to hell?

Jesus said I will be outcast, set apart and persecuted
but I believe we should ignore our differences and unite by our similarities

I believe in equal rights for all people of all faiths, lifestyles and preferences
Just not for Bible-believing Christians who are the ones keeping the church from growing

God’s Son Jesus was beat, tortured, starved, stabbed, whipped and abused
but God has a wonderful plan for me to prosper and not harm me

I believe we have to be tolerant of everyone
except those who don’t believe what I believe

What I believe is what the church has always believed
at least that is what the emergents tell me

I’m Orthodox to the bone
but lack the spine to support it

Satire or fact? You decide.

http://www.lifeinthechurch.com/

The Mothers of Men

Walking With God by Costen J. Harrell (1928)

“Her candle goeth not out by night…. Her children rise up and call her blessed.” Proverbs 31:18, 28

“Let me tell you the most pathetic story I ever heard,” a prominent citizen of my native State one day said to me. He continued: “Some years ago in eastern North Carolina a notorious character was shot down in a drunken brawl. As he lay dying he begged that some one standing by pray for him. They stood as dumb as stones. None of them, his companions in sin, knew how to pray. Then, as his life ebbed away, he began to pray. They stooped beside him to hear what he was saying. He was praying the prayer of his babyhood:

“Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray thee, Lord my soul to keep.”

Faintly whispering these words, he died. In the hour he needed most to pray – stained by sin and facing death – this was the only prayer he knew.”
A pathetic story indeed! It is tragic that one in such extremity should know how to pray nothing more than a baby’s prayer. But it is a beautiful story as well. A dying sinner remembered the prayer he had learned at his mother’s knee. Not all the blasts of iniquity had put out the flickering candle of faith which she had lighted in his baby heart. Hidden in the secret places of his soul, he had carried it through all the years of his prodigal life – the prayer he used to say in the sweet long ago. At the last he fell back on it. “Now I lay me down to sleep” – saying this, he lay down to sleep in death as in the other years he had laid down to sleep in his mother’s arms. “I pray thee, Lord, my soul to keep” – that petition suited the needs of the sleeping child. Simple – but having enough of real prayer in it to save a soul, if one can pray it with unction. Perhaps it saved his soul at last. In the dark night of sin the little candle of faith that his mother lighted still burned. He had by no means outlived the influence of those early years when at eventime his mother taught him his prayer, tucked him in his little bed, and with a “God bless you” kissed him goodnight.
The most priestly calling in the world is motherhood. Mother hands light the candles of faith on the high alters of the hearts of little children. She passes from generation to generation the light that shone in far Galilee many centuries ago. If she fails in this holiest privilege of motherhood, alas for her children, alas for the world! We have quite enough bonfires. Amid the display of many bonfires there is danger lest the candle of faith be not lighted in the hearts of our children. The mothers of each generation hold the future in their control. They are the candle lighters of the world. Bonfires soon go out, but candles shine in their places through the darkest night. A mother’s heart is the most potential influence upon the earth. “Her candle goeth not out by night….Her children rise up and call her blessed.” And God himself will crown her at last the fairest and noblest of all his creation.

How God Forgives

Walking With God by Costen J. Harrell (1928)

“Bring forth the best [first] robe and put it on him.” Luke 15: 22.

The prodigal son had taken his fling at the world and had returned to his father. “I am no more worthy to be called thy son,” sobbed the lad as his father embraced him and kissed him repeatedly. The boy had barely begun his confession when his father called his servants to bring a certain robe and put it on him. Our English Bible translates the command, “Bring forth a robe, the first,” and so it is translated by the excellent scholar, Dr. David Smith¹. Not a few interpreters of the Scriptures have understood this robe to be none other than the old coat which the prodigal had left behind when he left home for the far country. The father had lost his boy, but he had kept his boy’s coat. “It is the robe he wore before he ran his ramble,” says Matthew Henry. This throws a new light on the old parable.
There is a scene in Dickens’s “David Copperfield” which beautifully illustrates the meaning of the robe in our Lords parable. In Dickens’s great novel poor Dan’el Peggotty’s little Emily ran away from home. Every night he searched for her in the wicked haunts of the city. One day David went to Dan’el’s modest lodging, and there he witnessed the yearning love of poor Dan’el as he waited for the return of his prodigal Emily. “The room was very neat and orderly. I saw in a moment that it was always kept prepared for her reception, and that he never went out but that he thought it possible he might bring her home…. I saw how carefully he adjusted the little room, put a candle ready and the means of lighting it, arranged by the bed, and finally took out of her drawer one of her dresses (I remember to have seen her wear it) neatly folded with some other garments, and a bonnet, which he placed upon a chair…. There they had waited for her many and many a night, no doubt.” Dan’el was waiting to put on Emily the dress of her innocent girlhood and receive her again into her home!
“Here is the very picture which our Lord portrays in the parable,” says Dr. David Smith. “The prodigal had forgotten his father in the far country, but the father had never forgotten him. He had preserved his lost son’s old robe and laid it by as a precious memorial. ‘bring forth a robe,’ he cries; but not any robe, not the best robe in the house, but ‘the first,’ his old robe. And the servants would understand. Many a time they had seen their master take that old robe and unfold it tenderly with trembling hands and survey it wistfully with dim eyes. No other robe would serve. The past was forgiven, and the father would banish it forever from his remembrance as though it had never been. The sweet old days had returned, and his hungry heart was satisfied.”
By one little word in the story Jesus tells us how God receives us, when we, repentant, turn to him. He forgives – and more, he restores. Some human fathers forgive, but they do not forget. David forgave Absalom, but after that “Absalom dwelt two full years in Jerusalem and saw not the King’s face” (2 Sam. 14:28). When God forgives he restores us as well to all the privileges of sonship, as though we had never broken covenant with him. Wonderful grace is this.

“Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.”

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¹ “The Atonement in the Light of History and the Modern Spirit,” Smith, page 145ff.

Our Debt To Missions

Walking With God by Costen J. Harrell

"How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tiding!" Isaiah 52: 7.

A Christian layman, and a man of considerable ability, was the speaker, and the writer was a listener. "I do not believe in foreign missions," he said with manifest emphasis. "Every nation has its own religion, suited to its particular disposition and traditions, it is folly to try and convert foreigners to our faith. Confucianism is the religion of China, sprung out of Chinese soil and suited to the Chinese people. Christianity is the religion of the Anglo-Saxon and agreeable to our type of mind. Let us keep our religion and let other people keep theirs." Many another person who has not been so outspoken has persuaded himself that the Christian faith is our peculiar possession and that we are under no obligation to give it to the rest of the world.
But really, is Christianity an Anglo-Saxon religion? It did not begin with us, for Christ was neither an American nor an Englishman nor a European. He was born on the other side of the world, the son of a woman of alien blood. He lived amid scenes that are foreign to us and spoke a language that is unintelligible to us. He died for our sins on a hill many thousands of miles from American shores. Christianity is not an Anglo-Saxon religion: speaking after the manner of the flesh, it is an Asiatic religion. Our fathers were foreigners to Christ and his disciples, and they would never have heard the gospel of the Nazarene had not the missionaries of the Church crossed mountains and sea and brought to them the glad tidings of salvation.
When Christ lived in Galilee the Angles and Saxons and Britons-our fathers-were veriest heathen and among the most backward people on the earth. The first volume of Hume's history of England should prove an effective antidote to our racial pride. He says, "No idolatrous worship ever attained such ascendence over mankind as that practiced by the Gauls and Britons." Our Fathers worshiped Woden, the god of victory, and Thor the god of thunder. All the days of the week are named for heathen gods whom our fathers worshiped and should be a daily reminder of our heathen ancestry. With all our mania for family trees, no intelligent person finds any satisfaction in running his family tree back of the time when Christian missionaries came to our fathers with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Portraits of those half-naked, painted savages would be no adornment to our handsomely appointed living rooms and no matter of pride to us their children.
Things have been different with the Anglo-Saxon since the advent of missionaries. In the sixth century Augustine came to England, a foreign missionary to our fathers. He started a mission at Canterbury, which was the beginning of the Canterbury Cathedral. After a life of sacrificing toil, he was buried there, and over his tomb in the cathedral one may read to this day his epitaph, "Here lies the Lord Augustine, first Archbishop of Canterbury, who reduced this nation from the worship of idols to the faith of Christ." Boniface went to Germany, Columbia to Scotland, and Patrick to Ireland. The light of the gospel shone in the darkness of Britain and Germany, and we emerged. We have been out of heathenism for about forty generations only, and "a thousand years in Thy sight are but as yesterday when it passed and as a watch in the night."


"From depths of night to plains of light, O praise His name, he lifted us."

In so far as we are saved people, we are sinners and barbarians saved by grace. The greatest apologetic for Christian missions on earth is the Anglo-Saxon people. What Christ has done for us he can do for all men. It was a long and weary way from Jerusalem to Canterbury, and the foreign missionary was the connecting link between our ancestral home and the cross outside Jerusalem's gate. Not only for love of man and in response to our Lord's commission should we be a missionary people, but out of sheer gratitude and in recognition of our dept to missions.

Purity Is Dearer Than Life

Walking With God by Costen J. Harrell (1928)

“Keep thyself pure.” 1 Timothy 5: 22.

In the forests of northern Europe and Asia a little animal called the ermine lives. He is mostly known among us by his snow-white fur, a thing than which there is nothing more beautiful on the fur markets of the world. In some countries the state robes of judges are lined with it, the white being emblematic of purity and honor. The ermine has a peculiar pride in his white fur coat. At all hazards he protects it against anything that would spoil it.
It is said that the fur hunters take cruel advantage of the ermine’s care to keep his coat clean. They do not set a snare to catch him at some unwary moment, but instead find his home, a cleft in the rock or the hollow of a decaying tree, and daub the entrance and interior with filth. Then their dogs start the chase. Frightened, the ermine flees toward his home, his only place of refuge. He finds it daubed with uncleanness, and he will not soil his pure white coat. Rather than go into the unclean place, he faces the yelping dogs and preserves the purity of his fur at the cost of his life¹. It is better that he be stained by blood than spoiled by uncleanness.
Little beast of the forest, what a lesson you teach! Purity is dearer than life. If the judges who wear the ermine and the women who decorate themselves with your pure white coat knew your story, would they not be touched to the heart with pity, and would they not be moved to love purity as you? Your example condemns us all, for we have not been half so careful as you to keep clean that which God has entrusted to us. He has given you only a white coat and you give your life to keep it so. He has given us minds and immortal spirits, and we let every vile and unworthy thing to spoil them. Far from surrendering our lives to preserve our purity, we sacrifice character for unseemly pleasures, and dishonest gain, and selfish ambitions. We are not so careful where we go as you. We expose our souls to the stains of evil to get the thing we want.
The ermine is right – purity is dearer than life. It is dearer than aught else, because it is the soul of character. When it is lost, all is lost. Deeds so pure that we have nothing to hide, thoughts so pure that they may be spoken aloud, motives so pure that the world can see through them – when we live by these standards we have an ermine-white character. One must not besmirch it for any consideration. At all hazards “keep thyself pure.” “My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not.” If disaster threatens life, come what may. Purity overcomes at last and shines as the stars forever.

¹For this fact concerning the habits of the ermine the author is indebted to his old teacher, Dr. W.F. Tillett, of Vanderbilt University.

A Bridle For The Tongue

Walking With God by Costen J. Harrell (1928)

“I will take heed to my ways that I sin not with my tongue: I will keep my mouth with a bridle.” Psalm 39:1

The first verses of the thirty-ninth Psalm were no doubt very familiar to the apostle James, and it is very likely that he had them in mind when he wrote his classic passage on the tongue in his Epistle (James, chapter 3). Psalmist and apostle knew whereof they wrote when they spoke of the tongue as an instrument of evil. Through it the unruly passions of our hearts are turned loose in the world. Like a poisoned dagger, it stabs the reputation and happiness of others. Like a firebrand, it sets our minds on fire with hates and contentions. It sows discord and reviling and bitterness among men. No other member of the body is so difficult to control. Like an untamed horse, it gets beyond one’s control at an unexpected moment. Therefore psalmist and apostle agree that it must be held as with a bridle.
What bridle may be put on our unruly tongues? Let us at least stop long enough to ask ourselves three questions before we repeat any report or turn our tongues loose in an matter.
Is it true? We are too hasty to believe every evil report. Many as innocent person has been injured by a tale that was without foundation. It is a serious matter to do an injustice to a fellow man by a report that we spread. The first thing, the least thing that one can do before he passes on a story that has come to him, is to stop long enough to ask if it is true. One of the ten fundamental laws of character is, “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.”
Is it kind? It is not always kind to repeat what is true. The meanness which finds a secret pleasure in another’s fall or failure is a most despicable vice. Some one has called it “an innate vulgarity which loves to trample on fallen greatness.” To find such a thing in our hearts should bring us to our knees, for it is most unkind and un-Christly. We are not here to play the rôle of detectives, but rather are we to be brothers. There is nothing more unkind than gossip.
Is it necessary? In repeating an evil tale we should ask what is our motive in so doing. Is it that we hope to remedy the situation, or is it merely for the satisfaction of telling the thing/ If we repeat a story because it is necessary for the well-being of another, we are not gossipers, but helpers. If, however, it be for no good purpose, we should leave it untold. Under no conditions should we permit ourselves to be advertisers of another’s faults.
If we should leave unsaid the things that we are untrue and unkind and unnecessary, gossip would be at an end. Put that bridle on your tongue and buckle it tight. It will tame the tongue’s unruly disposition. “If any man thinketh himself to be religious, while he bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his heart, that man’s religion is vain.”