Manchester Youth

Tell God all that is in your heart, as one unloads one’s heart, its
pleasures, and its pains, to a dear friend.

Tell Him your troubles, that He may comfort you; tell Him your joys, that He
may sober them; tell Him your longings, that He may purify them; tell Him
your dislikes, that He may help you coquer them; talk to Him of your
temptations, that He may shield you from them; show Him the wounds of your
heart, that He may heal them; lay bare your indifference to good, your
depraved tastes for evil, your instability. Tell Him how self-love makes you
unjust to others, how vanity tempts you to be insincere, how pride disguises
you to yourself and others.

If you thus pour out your weaknesses, needs, troubles, there will be no lack
of what to say. You will never exhaust the subject. It is continually being
renewed. People who have no secrets from each other never want for subject
of conversation. They do not weigh their words, for there is nothing to be
held back, neither do they seek for something to say. They talk out of the
abundance of their heart, without consideration they say just what they
think. Blessed are they who attain to such familiar, unreserved intercourse
with God.

-Francois Fenelon

“A live body is not one that never gets hurt, but one that can to some extent repair itself. In the same way a Christian is not a man who never goes wrong, but a man who is enabled to repent and pick himself up and begin over again after each stumble-because the Christ-life is inside him, repairing him all the time, enabling him to repeat (in some degree) the kind of voluntary death which Christ Himself carried out.” –C.S.Lewis

Как собственность Божия, мы состоим из целого ряда различных богатств, которые одновременно сосредоточены и наполнены в нас и которые еще ежедневно умножаются в нас. Таковые прямо или косвенно связаны с нашей жизнью. Некогда все они были взяты у законного их Господина и употребляемы для нас самих, наших страстей и похотей, или для наших близких, или для мира, греха и дьявола. Если же мы сами теперь приведены обратно к Господу, то и все сокровища наши должны быть также возвращены Ему.

Одно из этих сокровищ, например, есть наша жизнь. Если мы искуплены Господом, то Ему принадлежит и жизнь. Но посмотри, так ли это на деле? Радуешься ли ты каждому дыханию, потому что ты можешь отдать его Господу, от Которого оно пришло? Радует ли тебя биение твоего сердца, потому что оно бьется для Него? Отклоняешь ли ты все притязания на твою жизнь, откуда бы они не шли, даже если ты согласен с ними, чтобы удовлетворить одним Его притязаниям? О, знай, Он “за всех умер, чтобы живущие уже не для себя жили, но для Умершего за них и Воскресшего” (2Кор.5:15).”Уже не для себя” - как тебе нравиться это ограничение твоей жизни? Ни один день, ни один час, ни пол часа не должны принадлежать тебе, но Тому, Кто отдачей Своей жизни купил Себе в собственность тебя и твою жизнь. Сделай же Его цель твоей целью “ибо довольно, что вы в прошедшее время жизни поступали по воле языческой” (1Пет.4:3).

–Иван Каргель, “Христос - Освящение Наше”

Another possible objection is this. Why is God landing in this enemy-occupied world in disguise and starting a sort of secret society to undermine the devil? Why is He not landing in force, invading it? Is it that He is not strong enough? Well, Christians think He is going to land in force; we do not know when. But we can guess why He is delaying. He wants to give us the chance of joining His side freely. I do not suppose you and I would have thought much of a Frenchman who waited till the Allies were marching into Germany and then announced he was on our side. God will invade. But I wonder whether people who ask God to interfere openly and directly in our world quite realise what it will be like when He does. When that happens, it is the end of the world. When the author walks on to the stage the play is over. God is going to invade, all right: but what is the good of saying you are on His side then, when you see the whole natural universe melting away like a dream and something else–something it never entered your head to conceive — comes crashing in; something so beautiful to some of us and so terrible to others that none of us will have any choice left? For this time it will be God without disguise; something so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature. It will be too late then to choose your side. There is no use saying you choose to lie down when it has become impossible to stand up. That will not be the time for choosing: it will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realised it before or not. Now, today, this moment, is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It will not last for ever. We must take it or leave it.

–by C.S. Lewis from Mere Christianity (bold type added)

“Swami Shivananda, a famous swami in India used to tell his disciples: “Kill the mind and then, and then only, can you meditate.” The Christian position is, “Thou shalt love the Lord they God with all thy mind”—the intellectual nature; “with all thy heart”—the emotional nature; “with all thy soul”— the willing nature; and “with all thy strength”—the physical nature. The total person is to love him—mind, emotion, will, strength. But the “strength” might mean the strength of all three. Some love him with the strength of the mind and the weakness of the emotion —the intellectualist in religion; some love him with the strength of emotion and the weakness of the mind—the sentimentalist in religion; some love him with the strength of the will and the weakness of emotion—the man of iron who is not approachable. But loving God with the strength of the mind, the strength of the emotion, the strength of the will—that makes the truly Christian and the truly balanced and the truly strong character.” –E. Stanley Jones, Song of Ascents

Peter watched Jesus make his way toward him, washing the feet of other disciples.

It had already been a confusing Passover. Jesus had been unusually burdened, close to tears all day. The atmosphere during the meal was charged with ominous anticipation.

Peter had grown used to Jesus doing and saying unpredictable things. But what Jesus was doing now was wrong. He was the last person in the room who should be washing feet.

All of Peter’s life he had been taught that feet were dishonorable members of the body. They were usually dirty, frequently smelly, and among the most likely members to come in contact with things that the Law declared unclean.

Outside of immediate family, feet were washed by slaves and servants—ideally non-Jews so as not to subject any of the Covenant People to such humiliation.

And one never insulted an honored person by pointing one’s feet at them.

But here was the Messiah, Read on…

We must face our personal situation … by asking: Is there something in my life that is meriting the chastisement of God? Have I been what I ought to be? … The trouble is that we always look at the situation and the problem instead of trying to discover whether there is anything in our soul that leads God so to deal with us. The moment I become really concerned about the state of my soul, instead of my affliction, I am on the high road to God’s blessing. The Epistle to the Hebrews declares that chastisement is a proof that we are God’s children. ‘Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth.’ If we do not know what chastisement means we ought to be alarmed because, if we are children of God, He is concerned about us and is bringing us to perfection … When things are apparently going against us, the thing to do is … to look at ourselves and say, ‘What of my soul? What is God saying to me and doing to me? What is it in me that is meriting all this?’ After examining ourselves, and humbling ourselves, we should place ourselves in the hands of God and say, ‘Thy way, not mine, O Lord, however hard it be. My one concern is that my soul should be right. I ask only that in wrath Thou shouldest remember mercy [Habakkuk 3:2]. But, above all, go on with Thy work that my soul may be revived, and that I may become well-pleasing in Thy sight’.

–From Fear to Faith by Martyn Lloyd-Jones, pp. 66-7

“Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for His body’s sake.” Colossians 1:24

We take our own spiritual consecration and try to make it into a call of God, but when we get right with Him He brushes all this aside. Then He gives us a tremendous, riveting pain to fasten our attention on something that we never even dreamed could be His call for us. And for one radiant, flashing moment we see His purpose, and we say, “Here am I! Send me” (Isaiah 6:8).

This call has nothing to do with personal sanctification, but with being made broken bread and poured-out wine. Yet God can never make us into wine if we object to the fingers He chooses to use to crush us. We say, “If God would only use His own fingers, and make me broken bread and poured-out wine in a special way, then I wouldn’t object!” But when He uses someone we dislike, or some set of circumstances to which we said we would never submit, to crush us, then we object. Yet we must never try to choose the place of our own martyrdom. If we are ever going to be made into wine, we will have to be crushed— you cannot drink grapes. Grapes become wine only when they have been squeezed.

I wonder what finger and thumb God has been using to squeeze you? Have you been as hard as a marble and escaped? If you are not ripe yet, and if God had squeezed you anyway, the wine produced would have been remarkably bitter. To be a holy person means that the elements of our natural life experience the very presence of God as they are providentially broken in His service. We have to be placed into God and brought into agreement with Him before we can be broken bread in His hands. Stay right with God and let Him do as He likes, and you will find that He is producing the kind of bread and wine that will benefit His other children.

– Oswald Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, September 30th

Sometimes God has been gracious on a Sunday and I have been conscious of exceptional liberty, and I have been foolish enough to listen to the devil when he says, ‘Now, then, you wait until next Sunday, it is going to be marvellous, there will be even larger congregations.’ And I go into the pulpit the next Sunday and I see a smaller congregation. But then on another occasion I stand in this pulpit labouring, as it were left to myself, preaching badly and utterly weak, and the devil has come and said, ‘There will be nobody there at all next Sunday.’ But, thank God, I have found on the following Sunday a larger congregation. That is God’s method of accountancy. You never know. I enter the pulpit in weakness and I end with power. I enter with self-confidence and I am made to feel a fool. It is God’s accountancy … He is always giving us surprises. His book-keeping is the most romantic thing I know of in the whole world.

Our Lord spoke of it again in the third parable in the twenty-fifth chapter of the Gospel according to St Matthew. You remember His description of the people who will come at the end of the world expecting a reward but to whom He will give nothing, and then the others to whom He will say, ‘Come ye blessed of My Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you.’ And they will say, ‘We have done nothing. When have we seen you naked, when have we seen you hungry or thirsty and given you drink?’ And He will say, ‘Because you have done it unto the least of my brethren you have done it unto me’. What a surprise that will be. This life is full of romance. Our ledgers are out of date; they are of no value. We are in the Kingdom of God and it is God’s accountancy. It is all of grace.

–Martin Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression, pp. 131-132