Call to Worship – August 28 2016
“Let us take care that our own religion is real, genuine and true. The saddest symptom about many so-called Christians, is the utter absence of anything like conflict and fight in their Christianity. They eat, they drink, they dress, they work, they amuse themselves, they get money, they spend money, they go through a scanty round of formal religious services once or twice every week. But of the great spiritual warfare — its watchings and strugglings, its agonies and anxieties, its battles and contests — of all this they appear to know nothing at all. Let us take care that this case is not our own. The worst state of soul, is when the strong man armed keeps the house, and his goods are at peace, when he leads men and women captive at his will, and they make no resistance. The worst chains are those which are neither felt nor seen by the prisoner! (Luke 11:21; 2 Timothy 2:26) We may take comfort about our souls, if we know anything of an inward fight and conflict. It is the invariable companion of genuine Christian holiness. It is not everything, I am well aware — but it is something…Do we feel anything of the flesh warring against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh, so that we cannot do the things we would? (Galatians 5:17.)…Do we feel anything of war in our inward man? Well, let us thank God for it! It is a good sign. It is strongly probable evidence of the great work of sanctification.” (J.C. Ryle, Holiness, Charles Nolan Publishing, Moscow, ID, pg. 68-69.)