Our only hope is the gospel of Christ, which is a plan of forgiveness based on grace. Yet the grace is extended only to those who have enough love for the truth to acknowledge the damage they’ve done, without any attempt to soften the situation.
We need to accept whatever roles are ours to play, regardless of where these rank on any worldly scale of values. We should be glad for our part and grateful for the work God gives us. After all, God has set us in the body “just as He pleased.”
“Be still, and know that I am God.” We won’t revere God properly until we’ve gotten still, and stillness in God’s school may not be something we’re willing to accept. We may have to be forced to be still by the “preschool” of pain and suffering.
The spirit of worship is selfless wonder at God’s majesty — the smallness of ourselves in His presence. And for sinful beings, it involves repentance. Our hearts may be proud or they may be worshipful, but they can’t be both. Pride kills worship.
Our adversary specializes in confusion. He loves to prey upon minds that are torn and upset by multiple worries, and he often tempts us when we’re so beset by cares that we act on impulse, failing to consider the consequences of our actions.
God cannot be defeated, and this truth is attested by everything ever been known about Him. When, in the face of temporary opposition, we choose to believe the ultimate victory will be His, we adopt a faith the devil can do little to vanquish.
Those who will enjoy heaven are those who know how to be patient, and patience comes down to what the old-timers used to call “grit.” But mark it well: grit is not something some people are born with and others are not. It’s a matter of choice.
Only God can be a perfect source of confidence, and it’s sinful to try to make anyone else fill the role that He alone was meant to fill. He is infallibly trustworthy. We may “commit [our] souls to Him in doing good, as to a faithful Creator.”
Rejecting what we’ve come to know of God’s will is so foolish, none of us would ever do it if we weren’t deceived. But therein lies the power of sin. The devil is shrewd enough to make slavery seem, for the moment, like it’s better than what we have.
Crude words, and certainly irreverent ones, are almost always symptomatic of a heart that is turned away from God. So Jesus warned us, “By your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned” (Matthew 12:37).
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If we’ve obeyed the gospel, we are not any more alive physically, but we certainly possess a spiritual life we didn’t used to have. When we were baptized, God “raised ...
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