Mott: incapable of evangelism

Saturday, February 6, 2010
Meditation:
    Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
    —Romans 12:2 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The invasion of the Church by the world is a menace to the extension of Christ’s Kingdom. In all ages conformity to the world by Christians has resulted in lack of spiritual life and a consequent lack of spiritual vision and enterprise. A secularized or self-centered Church can never evangelize the world.
    ... John R. Mott (1865-1955), The Evangelization of the World in this Generation, New York: Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions, 1905, p. 44 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, reverse the decline of the church by the power of Your Spirit. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
BDTC    search    script    mobile
sub    fb    twt

Denney: the obstacle of inspiration

Friday, February 5, 2010
    Commemoration of Martyrs of Japan, 1597
Meditation:
    [The LORD] said, “Go and tell this people: ‘Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving.’ Make the heart of this people calloused; make their ears dull and close their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.”
    —Isaiah 6:9-10 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The intelligence which has learned to be a law to itself, criticising, rejecting, appropriating, assimilating, cannot deny its nature and suspend its functions when it opens the New Testament. It cannot make itself the slave of men, not even though the men are Peter and Paul and John; no, not even though it were the Son of Man Himself. It resents dictation, not willfully nor wantonly, but because it must; and it resents it all the more when it claims to be inspired. If, therefore, the Atonement can only be received by those who are prepared from the threshold to acknowledge the inspiration and the consequent authority of Scripture, it can never be received by modern men at all.
    ... James Denney (1856-1917), The Atonement and the Modern Mind, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1903, p. 6 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Open the people’s ears, Lord, that they may receive Your word. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
BDTC    search    script    mobile
sub    fb    twt

Lewis: the danger of religion

Thursday, February 4, 2010
    Commemoration of Gilbert of Sempringham, Founder of the Gilbertine Order, 1189
Meditation:
    There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.”
    When the LORD saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!” And Moses said, “Here I am.”
    “Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.”
    —Exodus 3:2-5 (NIV)
Quotation:
    It is well to have specifically holy places, and things, and days, for, without these focal points or reminders, the belief that all is holy and “big with God” will soon dwindle into a mere sentiment. But if these holy places, things, and days cease to remind us, if they obliterate our awareness that all ground is holy and every bush (could we but perceive it) a Burning Bush, then the hallows begin to do harm. Hence both the necessity, and the perennial danger, of “religion.”
    ... C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, New York: Harcourt Brace and World, 1964, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2002, p. 75 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Your whole creation is a holy place to You, Lord. Grant that I may never despise it. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
BDTC    search    script    mobile
sub    fb    twt

Owen: profit in worship

Wednesday, February 3, 2010
    Feast of Anskar, Archbishop of Hamburg, Missionary to Denmark and Sweden, 865
Meditation:
    And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.
    —1 John 5:11 (NIV)
Quotation:
    No one uses instituted ways or forms of worship profitably, but such as find communion with God in them, or are seriously humbled because they do not.
    ... John Owen (1616-1683), Works of John Owen, v. IX, London: Johnson & Hunter, 1851, Sermons X-XIII, p. 170 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, bless my time in worship with Your presence. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
BDTC    search    script    mobile
sub    fb    twt

Tozer on worship

Tuesday, February 2, 2010
    THE PRESENTATION OF CHRIST IN THE TEMPLE
Meditation:
    But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.
    —1 John 1:7 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Has it ever occurred to you that one hundred pianos all tuned to the same fork are automatically tuned to each other? They are of one accord by being tuned, not to each other, but to another standard to which each one must individually bow. So one hundred worshippers meeting together, each one looking away to Christ, are in heart nearer to each other than they could possibly be were they to become ‘unity’ conscious and turn their eyes away from God to strive for closer fellowship. Social religion is perfected when private religion is purified. The body becomes stronger as its members become healthier. The whole church of God gains when the members that compose it begin to seek a better and a higher life.
    ... A. W. Tozer (1897-1963), The Pursuit of God [1948], Christian Publications, 1982, p. 90 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, perfect my heart, that I may know true fellowship. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
BDTC    search    script    mobile
sub    fb    twt

Gossip: God can be trusted

Monday, February 1, 2010
    Commemoration of Brigid, Abbess of Kildare, c.525
Meditation:
    It was the third hour when they crucified him. The written notice of the charge against him read: THE KING OF THE JEWS. They crucified two robbers with him, one on his right and one on his left.
    —Mark 15:25-27 (NIV)
Quotation:
    After Calvary, God has the right to be trusted; to be believed that He means what He says; and that His love is dependable.
    ... A. J. Gossip (1873-1954), In the Secret Place of the Most High, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1947 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You showed Your love first. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
BDTC    search    script    mobile
sub    fb    twt

Owen: the beginnings of apostasy

Sunday, January 31, 2010
    Commemoration of John Bosco, Priest, Founder of the Salesian Teaching Order, 1888
Meditation:
    All who sin apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law. For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God's sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous.
    —Romans 2:12-13 (NIV)
Quotation:
    “Secret sins,” such as are not known to be sins, it may be, to ourselves, make way for those that are “presumptuous.” Thus pride may seem to be nothing but a frame of mind belonging unto our wealth and dignity, or our ... abilities; sensuality may seem to be but a lawful participation of the good things of this life; passion and peevishness, but a due sense of the want of respect that we must suppose owing unto us; covetousness, a necessary care of ourselves and of our families. If the seeds of sin are covered with such pretences, they will in time spring up and bear bitter fruit in the minds and the lives of men. And the beginning of all apostasy, both in religion and in morality, lies in such pretences. Men plead that they can do so-and-so lawfully, until they can do things openly unlawful.
    ... John Owen (1616-1683), A Treatise of the Dominion of Sin and Grace [1688], in Works of John Owen, v. VII, London: Johnson & Hunter, 1852, p. 559 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, break my heart to Your rule. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
BDTC    search    script    mobile
sub    fb    twt