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Labor to Exhaustion

The whole temperament of the world is to get away from our bodies making any kind of sacrifice. Our goal is to make our bodies comfortable. The health and wealth syndrome is predominant in our world today. We want to take care of the body and make it last forever. While we are making the body comfortable, Paul tells us to make our body a living sacrifice. Do we know w...

Don't Waste Time Defendin...

Jesus didn’t try to write a theological treatise to defend his messiahship. He didn’t send John a list of all the fulfilled prophecies of the Old Testament to prove that he was the Messiah. He said to John’s delegation, “Go back and tell John that the blind can see, the deaf ear, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the dead are raised....

The Curse of the Church

God has not put us here just to enjoy the luxury and the wonder and the splendor of this town and this complex. We are here as his missionary people. We must get on with that mission. The Christian army is the only one that trains its justice chaplains and its band directors. The curse of the church is the eternal childhood of believers. Most pastors are little more t...

Limiting God

Israel’s problem was that it did not have believing faith. The end result was that they did not take the Promised Land but rather wandered in the wilderness for 40 years. They preferred the security of slavery to the risk of freedom. Consequently they tied the hands of God. He wanted to give them the land, but they did not believe enough to attempt to take it, s...

Two-Handed Religion

In his interesting little book on Christian fundamentals, This I Believe, Louis L. Austin writes: “The Lord gave us two hands. One to hold to him, the other to our fellow man.” Two-handed religion. Loving God with heart and mind and soul—loving your neighbor as yourself. They go together and you cannot separate the two. Love is not mere sentiment and...

No Retreat

During the Civil War, a 13-year-old boy was a bugler for a band of soldiers. They found themselves in the midst of a bloody battle and it seemed that they would all die. In the midst of the fighting, the commander yelled, “Tell the bugler to sound the retreat!” Nothing happened. Then in a few moments the orderly reported, “The bugler said he doesn&rs...

Hypocrisy in Missions

Years ago in a church I pastored, we had a faithful member. She was there every time the doors were opened. In a previous church she had been the president of the Women’s Missionary Union. As the leader of that ministry she had often led that church to pray for missions—for the conversion of the heathen and for the church to send missionaries to distant la...

Jesus Is for Everyone

Charles Drew was one of the great black American surgeons and scientists. He made a principal contribution to the American Red Cross blood program in learning and discovering that blood plasma, as opposed to whole blood, was not only acceptable but preferable in blood transfusions. Up until his time, if you wanted a blood transfusion, you could use only whole blood. W...

What You Owe Your Pastor

A little boy wrote a four-sentence essay on Socrates. “Socrates was a Greek. Socrates was a great man. Socrates told people how to live their lives. They poisoned Socrates.” Telling other people how to live is hazardous work. Yet this is precisely the task of every minister. The true pastor is a God-appointed man to proclaim a God-given message to the wor...

Today's Devotional

The Cement of Civilization

George E. Jones, former deputy editor of U.S. News, once raised the question, “Whatever became of belief in America?” He went on to point out that belief in America is being replaced by pessimism, distrust of leaders, and laxity in standards. The old certainties are passing away and skepticism and cynicism abound everywhere. Then he called belief “the energizer of progress” and the “cement of civilization.” Jones is right. People who believe nothing do nothing. Without belief people won’t take a stand for righteousness. They just don’t care enough. When a lack of belief is widespread enough, a nation can’t even muster up enough people to defend itself against the enemy. Belief is the cement of society. It holds the home, the school, the community, and the nation as well as the individual together. Without belief, convictions, and values they all fall apart.

The falling apart of society we are experiencing is in reality a crisis in belief. Easy divorce, crime, suicide, alcoholism, youth runaways, abortion, drugs, and the like are all expressions of the emptiness of our lives. We don’t believe anything and so nothing matters.

Carl Henry said we are approaching what he calls “the absolute autonomy of man.” Man thinks he does “not need God either to know the truth or to do good ... whether he wishes to walk on the moon, cure cancer, or bring peace on the earth.” That’s a joke. We might be able to walk safely on the moon without God—but we sure can’t walk safely on our own streets. We might eventually be able to cure cancer without God, but we can’t cure crime, depression, rebellion, or alcoholism.

Friends, let’s face it—we are as helpless to deal with our real problems as our forefathers were. That’s why we must get back to the faith of our forefathers. We must get back to the Bible.

Why not get yours out and dust it off today. If you don’t have one, buy one. Begin to read it, study it, and live it. Go to church and take your family with you. Humble yourselves before God. Believe him.

That’s our only hope.

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