Month: April 2020

Our conduct, not our words!

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Grace Gems Whiteby Grace Gems

Robert L. Dabney

“Conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ.” Philippians 1:27

We profess a difference between ourselves and the unsaved, as radical as that between light and darkness, and almost as wide as that between Heaven and Hell.

But in all the visible and practical concerns which interest the unrenewed heart–we nearly resemble them.

Our words say that we believe riches to be vanity and emptiness.
Our acts seem to say that we love and seek them as intensely as those do who make them their all and their god.

We say in words that “here we have no continuing city,” but in act we are as eager to adorn our dwellings here as though they were our only home.

What is the result? The world believes our conduct, and not our words!

“What kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives.” 2 Peter 3:11

“So that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe!” Philippians 2:15

by Grace Gems

Grace Can Be Costly

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A.W. Tozerby A.W. Tozer

For it is a good thing that the heart be established with grace . . . grace be with you all. Amen. Hebrews 13:9, 25

Christians all around us are trying every shortcut they can think of, to get “something for nothing” in the Kingdom of God. Talk to them and they will predictably flare up: “Isn’t grace something for nothing?” That depends upon what kind of grace we are talking about. Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer gave his life as a martyr in Hitler’s Germany, but he left a book now known around the world: The Cost of Discipleship. He pointed out a sharp distinction between “cheap grace” and “costly grace.” Although God’s grace has been given freely to humans who do not deserve it, Bonhoeffer believed it rightly could be called “costly grace” because it cost our Lord Jesus Christ even the suffering of death. Some men and women have actually turned God’s grace into lasciviousness. They do not know what the word grace means—that God gives us out of His rich and full goodness although we are unworthy of it. When I preach about the grace of God and point out that Jesus commanded us to take up our cross and follow Him, those who do not know the meaning of grace respond: “Oh, Tozer is now preaching legalism.”

by A.W. Tozer