christian living

Salvation By Works Gives No Hope

/ Richard Bargas / Leave a comment

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“And next I think it will be admitted by all, that the way of salvation by good works would be self-evidently unsuitable to a considerable number. I will take a case. I am sent for in an emergency, and it is the dead of night. A man is dying, smitten suddenly by the death-blast. I go to his bedside, as requested. Consciousness remains, but he is evidently in mortal agony. He has lived an ungodly life—and he is about to die. I am asked by his wife and friends to speak to him a word that may bless him. Shall I tell him that he can only be saved by good works? Where is the time for works? Where is the possibility of them? While I am speaking, his life is struggling to escape him! He looks at me in the agony of his soul, and he stammers out, ‘What must I do to be saved?’ Shall I read to him the Moral Law? Shall I expound to him the Ten Commandments and tell him that he must keep all these? He would shake his head and say, ‘I have broken them all; I am condemned by them all!’ If salvation is of works, what more have I to say? I am of no use here. What can I say? The man is utterly lost! There is no remedy for him. How can I tell him the cruel dogma of ‘modern thought’ that his own personal character is everything? How can I tell him that there is no value in belief, no help for the soul in looking to Another—even to Jesus, the Substitute? There is no whisper of hope for a dying man in the hard and stony doctrine of salvation by works!”

—CH Spurgeon

Not Half as Good as a Dog!

/ Richard Bargas / 1 Comment

dog friends

“You all remember, therefore I need not tell you again, the story that we had about the doctor at one of our hospitals, a year or two ago. He healed a dog’s broken leg and the grateful animal brought other dogs to have their broken legs healed. That was a good dog. Some of you are not half as good as that dog! You believe that Christ is blessing you, yet you never try to bring others to Him to be saved! That must not be the case any longer. We must excel that dog in our love for our species and it must be our intense desire that if Christ has healed us, He should heal our wife, our children, our friends, our neighbors; and we should never rest until others are brought to Him!”

–Charles Spurgeon

Brothers and sisters, may it never be said of us that we are not half as good as that dog!

What Are the Reasons that You Don’t Evangelize?

/ Richard Bargas / 3 Comments

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According to a 2013 Barna report, 73% of Born Again Christians believe that they have a personal responsibility to share their faith with others, but only 52% of those polled said they had actually shared their faith with someone else in the past year. (Link)

Do you share Christ with others? What encouragement can you give to those who don’t?

If you are among those who rarely evangelize, why not? What is the biggest reason that you don’t share Christ?

Singing Praises in the Fires of Affliction

/ Richard Bargas / Leave a comment

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“At the close of a dark and gloomy day, I lay resting on my couch as the deeper night drew on; and though all was bright within my cosy room, some of the external darkness seemed to have entered my soul and obscured its spiritual vision. In sorrow of heart I asked, “Why does my Lord deal thus with his child? Why does he permit lingering weakness to hinder the sweet service I long to render to his poor servants?” For a while silence reigned in the little room, broken only by the crackling of the oak log burning in the fireplace. Suddenly I heard a sweet soft sound, a little clear musical note like the tender trill of a robin beneath my window. “What can it be? Surely no bird is singing out there at this time of the year and night.”
‘My friend exclaimed, “It comes from the log on the fire!”
‘The fire was letting loose the imprisoned music from the old oak’s inmost heart! Perchance he had garnered up this song in the days when all was well with him, when birds twittered merrily on his branches, and the soft sunlight flecked his tender leaves with gold. Ah, thought I, when the fire of affliction draws songs of praise from us then indeed we are purified and our God is glorified. As I mused, the fire burned and my soul found sweet comfort in the parable so strangely set forth before me. Singing in the fire! Yes, God helping us, if that is the only way to get harmony out of these hard apathetic hearts, let the furnace be heated seven times hotter than before.”

—C.H. Spurgeon

Our Enemy’s Great Deception

/ Richard Bargas / Leave a comment

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“We are told that men no longer believe in Satan; that for our generation the invisible house of bondage, with its fallen monarch, no longer exists! If this be so, a great deal more is or will be presently disbelieved in as well; but a Christian who submits to and accepts the teaching of the New Testament cannot but be struck with this fresh proof of the finished ingenuity of our great spiritual enemy. Like those masters of the art of earthly war who conquer less frequently by an ostentatious display of force on the battle field than by carefully concealed surprises which turn the position of an antagonist, so Satan, it seems, has persuaded a frivolous and shallow generation that he no longer exists but as a discredited phantom of the past, as an extinct terror, as a popular joke! Ah! he has not been at work upon the human heart for nothing during these many thousands of years; he knows how to lull us to sleep to the best advantage, that he may take our thoughts and affections, and, above all, our passions, well into his keeping.”

—H.P. Lidden