Love Jesus with a Vehement Flame

I fear that the Christian church is far more likely to lose her integrity in these soft and silken days than in those rougher times. We must be awake now, for we traverse the enchanted ground, and are most likely to fall asleep to our own undoing, unless our faith in Jesus be a reality, and our love to Jesus a vehement flame. Many in these days of easy profession are likely to prove tares, and not wheat; hypocrites with fair masks on their faces, but not the true-born children of the living God. Christian, do not think that these are times in which you can dispense with watchfulness or with holy ardour; you need these things more than ever, and may God the eternal Spirit display his omnipotence in you, that you may be able to say, in all these softer things, as well as in the rougher, "We are more than conquerors through him that loved us." - C.H. Spurgeon

I was struck by the quote from Spurgeon above because he really nails the situation most of us find ourselves in. Some of us may be struggling. Some of us may be facing some external pressure regarding our faith. Some of us may be facing cancer, job loss or marital disintegration, bur most of us are not. Most of us start our prayers (rightly so) by thanking God for His super abundant grace in our lives. By and large, we are on the crest of the wave; life is good.

Spurgeon's warning and Scripture's warning is that we should take heed, lest we fall. What happened with the successful farmer who had more crops than barns to store it in? What was Jesus' assessment of the Pharisee to rightly acknowledged God's magnificent blessing in his life and then stopped? When was David most dependent and faithful to his Lord? What is the stinging indictment of the church at Laodicea?

My point is simply to reiterate what Spurgeon said so well. When life is easy, things are really the most dangerous. We must keep up our Bible study. We must keep up our prayer time. We must keep interacting and interdepending on other believers. We must always and continually rely on Christ, not just for a point in time salvation, but for a salvation that spans time, that purifies and sanctifies and strengthens. A salvation that ultimately glorifies and presents us holy and blameless before the Throne. All this we must embrace whether life is crashing in around us or we are living in "soft and silken days"

To God Alone be the Glory