MikePaschall.com

Though it might be argued, theoretically, that a Christianity in which men know how to picket, but not how to pray, is bound to wither, theorizing is not required, because we can already observe the logic of events. The fact is that emphasis upon the life of our outer service, without a corresponding emphasis upon the life of devotion, has already led to obviously damaging results, one of which is calculated arrogance. How different it might be if the angry activists were to heed the words found in The Imitation of Christ, “Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.”

The essence of pietism, by contrast, is the limitation of primary interest to personal salvation. Even today, by the highways, we can see signs paid for by somebody, which urge us to “get right with God.” The evil of this well-intentioned effort lies not in what it says, but in what it so evidently omits. The assumption is that salvation is nothing more than a private transaction between the individual and God and that it can become an accomplished, dated event.

—From The New Man for Our Time by Elton Trueblood

The assumption is that salvation is nothing more than a private transaction between the individual and God and that it can become an accomplished, dated event.”

We might ask, “And what is the problem of an ‘accomplished, dated event’ in regard to salvation?” The event is the birth… the beginning… new life with a new direction… a wake-up to a new order of living free and fully alive. Although sanctification is a part of the regenerative package, it also takes an entire lifetime to live into the fullness of His likeness and bury our natural affinity for dead works or no works at all. A change of what you do with your Sunday mornings doesn’t really tell the tale does it? A person with an “accomplished, dated event” can remain spiritually infantile and unengaged in kingdom activity. We still have to follow.  We still have to deny self. We still have to invest a listening ear and attentive heart to what the Spirit has to say. Growth “spiritually” is the only fruit possible when one is fully aware of the massive love that God has for us. —MDP

 LIVE LOVE!