TO BE IN CHRIST – THE CARNAL CHRISTIAN (PART THREE)
TO BE IN CHRIST – THE CARNAL CHRISTIAN
(PART THREE)
You say, I
thought a carnal Christian was a backslider somebody for instance who used to
go to church but has run off with somebody else’s wife! Oh no! That is only one
kind of carnal Christian, and I would not suggest that you were that kind of
carnal Christian.
No, No! I am
talking about some Sunday school teachers. I am talking about some Sunday
school superintendents. I am talking about some Pastor in his pulpit. I am
talking about some missionary on the field. I am talking about many ordinary
average earnest Christians. They are wonderful people. You would love to meet
them. They talk all the language of salvation and they mean every work. They
say they are not hypocrites.
They are
overwhelmed inwardly with a sense of defeat, frustration, futility and bareness.
When you meet them they will smile sweetly and they will mean the smile they
give you. They will grip you by the hand and they will say “God bless you for
passing my way”!
They will thank
you for all the encouragement that you have given them; yet as you thank them
for the message you have just heard from their lips your very words of thanks
will hurt them. They know what you do not know. They know that for years they
have labored in vain.
The fruit that
has appeared to others has fallen, oh so often, so cruelly often to the ground
only to rot immaturely and prematurely and never to produce.
Story after story
could be told of men and women who bravely doggedly out of a sense of duty,
love and devotion go on. Deep down in
their hearts they are tired almost beyond endurance! Again and again they have
got down by their bedside and cried out to God with tears in their eyes: God,
you know how barren I am, you know how empty I am, and you know how stale I am.
You know it and yet they do not know the answer.
I wonder are you
like that? At last the burden became intolerable. The men of the City came to
the man of God, and they poured out the whole story. He said “bring me a new
cruse and put salt therein”. They brought it to him and he went forth unto the
spring of the waters and cast the salt in there and said this saith the Lord. “I
have healed these waters; there shall not be from thence any more death or barren
land”. So the waters were healed unto this day, according to the saying of
Elisha which he spoke (II Kings 2:20-23). He went to the spring of the waters,
for there were waters and he placed salt at the source. What does salt
represent?
Pastor James P. Norman
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