We search for the enemy out there in a certain group of people espousing certain evil deeds, or beliefs or idols. Yet, the whole time we rape and murder in our thoughts, we (as Derek Webb puts it) “have faith in the bank and money in our hearts,” and we worship approval or looking pious or knowledgeable. Perhaps the best way to combat evil deeds, wrong beliefs and idolatry is to confess our own evil deeds, wrong beliefs, and idolatry. Not as once I was like this one I wish to condemn, but as truly a confession of our own weakness. The sermon today at church ended with the pastor stating that God first judges His own people rather than a people out there His people don’t like. That “God saves sinners,” not the righteous, is the message for the church – to remind her that she is sinful. The last entry of Jim Elliot’s journal before he died reads as follows:
“I have been very low inside me struggling and casting myself hourly on Christ for help. Marriage is divorce from the privacy a man loves, but there is some privacy nothing can share. It is the knowledge of a sinful heart.”
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