People who are genuinely sorry for their sins are grateful for every opportunity to do an act of kindness for those whom they have a wronged. How much good would be done in our churches and in our nation if we lived in contrition and repentance! How many amends would be made that are pleasing to Jesus! Wounds and breaches would be healed, and in the end we would see that by the grace of God many a good thing has come from our sins and failures. If true contrition and repentance seeks and loves punishment, as Luther says, how much more will it seek to make amends! A penitent heart will seek to do all that lies within its power. Thus there is nothing that brings about so many good fruits in our life as a contrite, penitent heart.
And so repentance is the sole foundation upon which everything in the kingdom of God is to be built. Then our spiritual “house” will have a firm foundation and it will not be swept away when a storm comes. All our service in the kingdom of God that is not built upon contrition and repentance will not be of eternal duration. It will not bring true fruit. O that repentance would once more be a gift we would covet for ourselves personally and for our churches! It contains the greatest blessing and grace for us all.
—Basilea Schlink
Members of Wanbang Missionary Church in Shanghai China had to meet outdoors for worship on Sunday November 22nd after having been forcibly evicted from their church building earlier that month. On Thursday November 12th Chinese Public Security officials sealed off the doors and locked the church.
On the morning of November 22nd, three pastors of Wanbang church were summoned to a Shanghai police station for interrogation on suspicion of “engaging in illegal organisation and activities”. They were held until the afternoon. Despite intimidation from local authorities and the detention of the pastors, more than 500 dedicated church members gathered outdoors to continue the scheduled worship services.
Since the building’s closure, the authorities have been unsuccessful in preventing meetings of the church. On November 15th ten police officers attempted to obstruct Pastor Cui from attending church. Members also received threatening text messages defaming the church and saying that the service had been cancelled. In spite of this, over 700 people turned up to the outdoor prayer meeting that day.
In preparation for the mid-November visit of President Obama to China, the Shanghai authorities launched a city-wide search for members of Wanbang church, attempting to break up prayer and worship gatherings. All seven pastors were also issued with official notices to stop their “illegal religious activities”, which declared their pastoral status as “self-claimed illegal preachers”. On November 8th, the church website was forcibly shut down by the government’s censorship office to prevent negative reporting prior to Obama’s visit.
Howida Ali a Sudanese woman who fled to Egypt after converting from Islam to Christianity is living in secluded isolation as her angry family members try to track her down. Howida Ali’s Muslim brother and her ex-husband began searching for her in Cairo earlier this year after a relative there reported her whereabouts to them. “I’m afraid of my brother finding us,” said the 38-year-old Ali, who has moved to another area. “Their aim is to take us back to Sudan, and there they will force us to return to the Islamic faith or sentence us to death according to Islamic law.” Ali said she divorced her husband, Esam El deen Ali, because of his drug addiction in 2001, before she converted to Christianity. She was living with her parents in Khartoum when she began seeing visions of Christ. She sought out a Christian friend from southern Sudan, who told her about Jesus Christ and prayed with her. Fearing that relatives might discover she was a Christian, in 2007 she escaped with her then-8-year-old son.
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Let us thus think often that our only business in this life is to please GOD, that perhaps all besides is but folly and vanity. You and I have lived above forty years in religion [i.e., a monastic life]. Have we employed them in loving and serving GOD, who by His mercy has called us to this state and for that very end? I am filled with shame and confusion, when I reflect on the one hand upon the great favours which GOD has done, and incessantly continues to do, me; and on the other, upon the ill use I have made of them, and my small advancement in the way of perfection.
Since by His mercy He gives us still a little time, let us begin in earnest, let us repair the lost time, let us return with a full assurance to that FATHER of mercies, who is always ready to receive us affectionately. Let us renounce, let us generously renounce, for the love of Him, all that is not Himself; He deserves infinitely more. Let us think of Him perpetually. Let us put all our trust in Him: I doubt not but we shall soon find the effects of it, in receiving the abundance of His grace, with which we can do all things, and without which we can do nothing but sin.
–Brother Lawrence
THE FALL of man was utter and entire. Some things when they have become dilapidated may be repaired; but the old house of mankind is so thoroughly decayed that it must be pulled down even to its foundation, and a new house must be erected. To attempt mere improvement is to anticipate a certain failure. Manhood is like an old garment that is rent and rotten; he that would mend it with new cloth doth but make the rent worse. Old shoes and clouted might be good enough for Gibeonites; but we are so thoroughly outworn that we must be made new, or thrown upon the dunghill. It is a wonder of wonders that such a thing is possible. If a tree loses its branch, a new branch may spring out; if you cut into the bark and mark the letters of your name, in process of time the bark may heal its own wound, and the mark may be erased. But who could give a new heart to the tree? Who could put new sap into it? By what possibility could you change its inner structure? If the core were smitten with death, what power but the divine could ever restore it to life? If a man has injured his bones, the fractured parts soon send forth a healing liquid, and the bone is restored to its former strength, if a man has youth on his side. But if a man’s heart were rotten, how could that be cured? If the heart were a putrid ulcer, if the very vitals of the man were rotten, what human surgery, what marvelous medicine could touch a defect so radical as this?
But while such a thing would be impossible apart from God, it is certain that God can do it. Oh, how the Master delights to undertake impossibilities! To do what others can do were but like unto man; but to accomplish that which is impossible to the creature is a mighty and noble proof of the dignity of the Creator. He delights to undertake strange things; to bring light out of darkness; order out of confusion; to send life into the dead; to heal the leprosy; to work marvels of grace and mercy, and wisdom, and peace—these, I say, God delights to do; and so, while the thing is impossible to us, it is possible to him. And more, its impossibility to us commends it to him, and makes him the more willing to undertake it, that he may thus glorify His great name.
–Charles Spurgeon
On December 5 officials of Eritrea arrested 30 Christian women in Asmara, the capital city of the country. The mostly elderly women were praying together at a house when security forces rounded them up and hauled them off to police station one in Asmara. Most of the detainees are members of Faith Mission Church, an Evangelical Church with a Methodist background. The church has been carrying out evangelistic and development activities in Eritrea for over five decades and was forced to go underground in 2002 after Eritrean officials required all religious groups to register. Since 2002, officials of Eritrea have been cracking down on members of both registered and unregistered churches. They have imprisoned more than 3000 Christians keeping them in underground dungeons, metal shipping containers, and military barracks. Several Christians have died inside prisons due to torture and lack of medical attention.
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Brotherly love has its measure and rule in the love of Jesus. ‘This is my commandment, that ye love one another, as I have loved you.’ (Luke 22:26,27; John 13:14,15,34; Col. 2:13) The eternal life that works in us is the life of Jesus; it knows no other law than what we see in Him; it works with power in us what it wrought in Him. Jesus Himself lives in us and loves in and through us: we must believe in the power of this love in us, and in that faith love as He loved. O, do believe that this is true salvation, to love even as Jesus loves.
Brotherly love must be in deed and in truth. (Matt. 12:50; 25:40; Rom. 13:10; 1 Cor. 7:19; Gal. 5:6; Jas. 2:15,16; 1 John 3:16-18) It is not mere feeling: faith working by love is what has power in Christ. It manifests itself in all the dispositions that are enumerated in the word of God. Contemplate its glorious image in 1 Cor. 13:4-7. Mark all the glorious encouragements to gentleness, to longsuffering, to mercy. (Gal. 5:22; Eph. 4:2,32; Phil. 2:2,3; Col. 3:12; 2 Thess. 1:3) In all your conduct, let it be seen that the love of Christ dwells in you. Let your love be a helpful, self-sacrificing love, like that of Jesus. Hold all children of God, however sinful or perverse they may be, fervently dear. Let love to them teach you to love all men. (Luke 6:32,35; 1 Pet. 1:22; 2 Pet. 1:7) Let your household, and the Church, and the world, see in you one with whom ‘love is greatest;’ one in whom the love of God has a full dwelling, a free working.
Christian, God is love. Jesus is the gift of this love, to bring love to you, to transplant you into that life of godlike love. Live in that faith, and you shall not complain that you have no power to love: the love of the Spirit shall be your power and your life.
–Andrew Murray
