chibiforte

Lincoln said this in 1863:

"We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven, we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity, we have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown.  But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us."

Personal disavow; is there somebody like that this morning?  Where you have come to a point in your life, where sitting where you are, you say, "In the ruthless honesty of my heart, I really can't buy into this with my life.  Portions of it, maybe, but I cannot come to the point of deciding whether this God is really who he claimed to be."

The ministry has changed, today.  Centuries ago, when you think of people like Henry Martin, who was a Cambridge scholar, and went to India and Burma and Iran, died at the age of 31, but not before he translated the New Testament into Arabic, Persian, and Hindu, dragged across a desert in chains, gave up the girl he loved because she didn't want to go to the countries he was going to.  He gaved up the girl he loved in order to go.

I think of C.T. Studd, the cricketer who gave up that brilliant career in cricket, and was the captain of the Cambridge University team.  He was a very wealthy man.  C.T. Studd gave a part of his money to the starting of Moody Bible Institute.  He gave up all of that and went on to Africa.

But we've come a long way from that.  That's all I'm trying to say.  Today, when a young student graduates from seminary or Bible college, one of his first questions is the benefits he's going to get.  And it used to be in times gone by, where a minister would get in and demand first ask, "Do I have what it takes to make this kind of sacrifice?"

But things have changed.

I give you two thoughts, with which I end here:

King George VI inspired the nation of the common wealth with his famous Christmas Day address.  He closed his common wealth address to the nations that year not knowing himself that cancer had invaded his body and before long, he was going to die.  He didn't know it at that time.  But he made this comment looking at the dark landscape of history at that time and he said these words which inspired so many, with which he closed his address:

"I said to the man of the gate of the air, 'Give me a light, so that I may walk safely into the unknown'.  And he said to me, 'Put your hand into the hand of God, and it shall be to you better than the light, and safer than the known.'"

Charles Wesley wrote this, and it has become my own testimony of commitment in my life:

"O thou who camest from above
the fire celestial to impart,
kindle a flame of sacred love
on the mean altar of my heart.

There let it for thy glory burn
with inextinguishable blaze,
and trembling to its source return
in humble prayer and fervent praise.

Jesus, confirm my heart's desire
to work and speak and think for thee;
still let me guard the holy fire
and still stir up the gift in me.

Still let me prove thy perfect will,
my acts of faith and love repeat,
till death thy endless mercies seal,
and make the sacrifice complete."

-Ravi Zacharias, "Pride" (Relevant Revolution; Sermon Jams Vol. 5)

Tags: music, pride, ravi zacharias, relevant revolution, sermon, sermon jams

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