Saturday, November 16, 2019

This Is The True Grace of God # 2 (and others)

This Is The True Grace of God # 2 (and others)

The man that possesses the true grace of God, and is invariably living under its sacred influence mourns over his state as a sinner, longs for perfection as a believer, and cannot be perfectly happy until purged from all pollution. He loves God as His Father, cleaves to Jesus as His Friend, views himself as a temple of the Holy Spirit, hates, fears, flies from sin, loves, pants for, and follows after holiness, worships a sovereign Jehovah, obeys a reigning Redeemer, and ascribes all His salvation to free grace!

He depends on the Lord in his troubles, flies to Jesus from his foes, and pleads the free promises of his God.

Christ is his object, salvation his subject, and to glorify God is his aim!

He feels, mourns over, and prays for grace to keep down his corruptions.

He renounces self, abhors his own righteousness, and glories in the Cross of Christ.

He comes out of the world, is transformed in his mind, and finds suitable associates in sanctified believers.

He lives in communion with his God, feeds on the bread of life, and dies daily.

Reader, have you been made to partake of the true grace of God?

Opinions in the head, and grace in the heart - are very different things! Notions of grace - are not operations of grace. You may know the true grace of God by this - it brings salvation, and teaches to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts.

~James Smith~

(The End)
_______________________

Not Markedly Different

When I look into the New Testament, and read what a Christian should be, and then look into the church of God, and see what Christians are - I am painfully affected by observing the dissimilarity!

That worldly spirit to which our age of growing selfishness and luxury gives rise, is exceedingly adverse to Christianity, whose elements are faith, hope, love.

The church of Christ at present, is sadly mixed up with both the spirit of the world, and many of its customs. The great bulk of professing Christians are not markedly different from the followers of pleasure and the worshipers of Mammon!

~John Angell James~
_____________________

What A Heaven!

Heaven will  consist of the moral perfection of the soul, perfect knowledge, perfect holiness, perfect love, perfect likeness to Christ, perfection of the body in incorruptibility, immortality, glory, and spirituality; the presence of God in the full manifestation of His glory, the beatific vision of Christ, the fellowship of angels and all the redeemed, the joint worship of the heavenly multitudes, the perfect service of Christ, without interruption, imperfection, or cessation, complete freedom from pain, toil, hunger, thirst, anxiety, fear, sorrow, and death!

Such is the substance of heavenly felicity. Take any one of them by itself - and each is a heaven! Add them altogether - and - what a heaven!

How pure! How elevated! How felicitous!

~John Angell James~
________________________

If There Are But Two Real Christians In The World

There appears to me to be, at the present moment, a most criminal neglect, on the part of Christian parents, of the pious education of their children.

That Christian who would carry on a system of pious education with success, should enforce it with all the commanding influence of a holy example. Let your children see all the beauties of holiness" reflected from your character, and the grand outline of godly virtue filled up with all the delicate touches and varied coloring of the Christian graces.

Let your children have this conviction in their hearts, "If there are but two real Christians in the world, my father is one, and my mother is the other!"

It is dreadful - but not uncommon for children to employ themselves in contrasting the appearance which their parents make at the Lord's table - and at their own table; in the house of God - and at home!

~John Angell James~

No comments:

Post a Comment