By whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the
     world.

     — Galatians 6:14

If I brood on the Cross of Christ, I do not become a subjective
pietist, interested in my own whiteness; I become dominantly
concentrated on Jesus Christ’s interests. Our Lord was not a recluse
nor an ascetic, He did not cut Himself off from society, but He was
inwardly disconnected all the time. He was not aloof, but He lived in
an other world. He was so much in the ordinary world that the
religious people of His day called Him a glutton and a wine-bibber.
Our Lord never allowed anything to interfere with His consecration of
spiritual energy.

The counterfeit of consecration is the conscious cutting off of
things with the idea of storing spiritual power for use later on, but
that is a hopeless mistake. The Spirit of God has spoiled the sin of
a great many, yet there is no emancipation, no fullness in their
lives. The kind of religious life we see abroad to-day is entirely
different from the robust holiness of the life of Jesus Christ. “I
pray not that Thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that
Thou shouldest keep them from the evil.” We are to be in the world
but not of it; to he disconnected fundamentally, not externally.

We must never allow anything to interfere with the consecration of
our spiritual energy. Consecration is our part, sanctification is
God’s part; and we have deliberately to determine to be interested
only in that in which God is interested. The way to solve perplexing
problems is to ask – Is this the kind of thing in which Jesus Christ
is interested, or the kind of thing in which the spirit that is the
antipodes of Jesus is interested?

On this day...

• Nehemiah 4 - 2023
• Nehemiah 3 - 2023
• Giving money is only one way of showing charity; to give time & toil is far better & (for most of us) harder - 2011
• If my heart is right with God, every human being is my neighbor. - 2011
• Our problem is that we go from toy to toy rather than from glory to glory. - 2011
• As the stones in an arch help to strengthen one another, one Christian by imparting his experience, heats and quickens another - 2011
• Psalm 80:5 (NIV) - 2011
• John Newton - From Disgrace to Amazing Grace - 2011
• Never support an experience which does not have God as its Source and faith in God as its result. - 2011
• if you really believe that Christ’s pov- erty has made you rich, what are those furrows doing on your brow? - 2011