Prone to Wander

 Prone to Wander

“It was a bright Sunday morning in 28th century London, but Robert Robinson’s mood was anything but sunny. All along the street there were people hurrying to church, but in the midst ofthe crowd Robinson was a lonely man. The sound of church bells reminded him of years past when his faith in God was strong and the church was an integral part of his life. It had been years since he set foot in a church—years of wandering, disillusionment, and gradual defection from the God he once loved. That love for God—once fiery and passionate—had slowly burned out within him, leaving him dark and cold inside.

 

Robinson heard the clip-clop, clip-clop of a horse-drawn cab approaching behind him. Turning, he lifted his hand to hail the driver. But then he saw that the cab was occupied by a young woman dressed in finery for the Lord’s Day. He waved the driver on, but the woman in the carriage ordered the carriage to be stopped.

 

“Sir, I’d be happy to share this carriage with you,” she said too Robinson. “Are you going to church?” Robinson was about to decline, then he paused. “Yes,” he said at last. “I am going to church.” He stepped into the carriage and sat down beside the young woman.

 

As the carriage rolled forward Robert Robinson and the woman exchanged introductions. There was a flash of recognition in her eyes when he stated his name. “That’s an interesting coincidence,” she said, reaching into her purse. She withdrew a small book of inspirational verse, opened it to a ribbon-bookmark, and handed the book to him. “I was just reading a verse by a poet named Robert Robinson. Could it be…?”

 

He took the book, nodding. “Yes, I wrote these words years ago.”

 

“Oh, how wonderful!” she exclaimed. “Imagine! I’m sharing a carriage with the author of these very lines!”

 

But Robinson barely heard her. He was absorbed in the words he was reading. They were words that would one day be set to music and become a great hymn of the faith, familiar to generations of Christians:

 

Come, Thou Fount of every blessing,

Tune my heart to sing Thy grace’

Streams of mercy, never ceasing,

Call for songs of loudest praise.

 

His eyes slipped to the bottom of the page where he read:

 

Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it—

Prone to leave the God I love;

Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,

Seal it for Thy courts above.

 

He could barely read the last few lines through the tears that brimmed in his eyes. “I wrote these words—and I’ve lived these words. ‘Prone to wander…prone to leave the God I love.’”

 

The woman suddenly understood. “You also wrote, ‘Here’s my heart, O take and seal it.’ You can offer your heart again to God, Mr. Robinson. It’s not too late.””

- -

I’ve found myself there so many times - haven’t we all? Yet God invites us to repent! And one day we will know the realization of our certain hope: our ultimate sanctification in heaven. 

“On that day when freed from sinning

I shall see thy lovely face,

Clothèd then in blood-washed linen

How I’ll sing thy boundless grace.”

9/11

 “On this very night those years ago

We went to bed without a care in the world

Our lives were normal, our nation tall

We had no idea what was about to befall.

The day dawned crisp and bright and new

No one noticed the dastardly few

They slunk throughout our airport gates

Full of bitter, dark, revolting hate

While we went about our normal day

The dark cloud of hate accosted our way

Our towers flamed, our planes went down

We fell with weeping to the ground 

Our nation reeled from what was done 

We rose from the rubble united as one

We vowed to track the devils down

To never forget those hallowed grounds” 

How Can a Good God Send People to Hell?

 The most terrifying truth from scripture: God is good.

Why? Because we are not good. (Romans 3:23, Isaiah 53:6)

And what is a good God to do with evil-loving, righteousness-hating people?

God is righteous and because He is righteous He must love.

God is love and therefore He must hate. Ex: Do you love Jews? Yes? Then you must hate the holocaust. Do you love trafficked, tortured children? Then you must feel something toward their captors. If you can be dispassionate in the view of such evil then you yourself are vile - the only right response to such evil is righteous indignation.

Therefore, a good and loving God must punish sin.

But the good news? There is hope! “We have trespassed against our God… yet now there is hope… concerning this thing.” “ - Ezra 10:2 What hope? John writes in 1 John 1:9 “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” This is not a “I hope the weather is nice tomorrow” kind of hope. This is a certain and sure hope. Psalm 130:7 says  “Let Israel hope in the Lord: for with the Lord there is mercy, and with Him is plenteous redemption”

Excerpts taken from “Romans 3” Paul Washer

Some Assembly Required

I recently saw one of those cheesy, mildly humorous church signs: “The church is an incredible gift from God - some assembly required” it read. I chuckled a little and then paused... sadly, the church today seems to be drifting further and further away from the assembling of ourselves together. The times around us are changing in many ways. Churches are eliminating Sunday evening services, switching from mid-week prayer meetings to home groups, and in some cases churches are flat out closing their doors. While not all change is bad, these trends seem to reflect a larger movement amongst those bearing the name of Christ - a move away from church: less services, less fellowship gatherings, and less assembling of ourselves together. But church isn’t the only thing changing - the world is tearing down the road of destruction at a terrific speed and needs the salt and light the church provides more than ever.

The Apostle Paul seemed to have anticipated this time in history as he wrote under inspiration “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near. - (Hebrews 10:23-25)

So let’s gather Church. Let’s meet for coffee. Let’s invite one another over for dinner. Let’s attend as many services as we are physically able to attend. Let’s reach out and bring the lost in to our community of love and gospel-grace. Because, as it is written “they will know us by our love” (1John 4:7-10) Let’s strive to mimic the early church as described In Acts 2:42  “And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.”

True Generosity

I saw this somewhere and wanted to share:

When 67-year-old carpenter Russell Herman died in 1994, his will included a staggering set of bequests. Included in his plan for distribution was more than two billion dollars for the City of East St. Louis, another billion and a half for the State of Illinois, two and a half billion for the national forest system, and to top off the list, Herman left six trillion dollars to the government to help pay off the national debt. That sounds amazingly generous, but there was a small problem—Herman’s only asset when he died was a 1983 Oldsmobile. He made grand pronouncements, but there was no real generosity involved. His promises were meaningless because there was nothing to back them up.

True generosity is not determined by the amount that we give but by our hearts. When Jesus saw the widow give two mites in the Temple He responded, “Verily I say unto you, That this poor widow hath cast more in, than all they which have cast into the treasury”(Matthew 12:43). The sacrificial gift that she gave demonstrated how much she loved God and His work. The best way to determine what we love most is not by our words but by how we use our time and our money.

There is Hope!

Ezra 10:2  ”And Shechaniah the son of Jehiel, one of the sons of Elam, answered and said unto Ezra, We have trespassed against our God, and have taken strange wives of the people of the land: yet now there is hope in Israel concerning this thing.”

Did you catch that? “We have trespassed against our God… yet now there is hope…”  Israel had directly disobeyed God. They had married foreign wives and sinned against the Lord. As they gathered together in Jerusalem, and were confronted with their sin, their hearts were convicted. Shecaniah spoke for them all when he said “We have trespassed against our God, and have taken strange wives of the people of the land: yet now there is hope in Israel concerning this thing.”

Amazing. In spite of ourselves - in spite of our sin - there is hope.

What hope? John writes in 1 John 1:9 “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” This is not a “I hope the weather is nice tomorrow” kind of hope. This is a certain and sure hope. Psalm 130:7 says  “Let Israel hope in the Lord: for with the Lord there is mercy, and with him is plenteous redemption”

Hope in God Christian! For with Him is plenteous redemption.