HOPELESSNESS IS A SAD CONDITION

“Are you cutting your short life into chips by wasting time on trivia when our salvation still has not been worked out?

If God is not in your conscience to comfort it, you must be a raging devil or a stupid atheist. If God is not in you, the devil is; for a man's heart is a house that will not stand empty.

You cannot afford to be without hope in life or in death. It is a sad legacy that shuts out the rebellious child from all claim to his inheritance. But even if you do have wealth, it is all you have. Does it not make your heart ache to think that your reward is all paid here, and will be spent by the time the saints start receiving theirs?

Yet it is far worse to be without this hope when death comes. The condemned prisoner had rather stay in his cell than accept deliverance at the executioner's hand. The hopeless soul has more reason to prefer to spend his eternity in earth's worse dungeon than to be eased of his pain with hell's torment. Here is the sad confusion in the thoughts of guilty men when their souls leave their bodies. If the sobs of mourning friends in the room of the dying man make his passage harder, how much more will the horror of the sinner's own conscience frighten him when he sees the flaming inevitability of his approaching destination?

Are you cutting your short life into chips by wasting time on trivia when our salvation still has not been worked out? Are you pampering and decorating your body while your soul is slipping into hell? This is like painting your door when your house is on fire. It would be far more becoming for you to call upon God and lie in repentant tears for your sins at His feet than to wallow in your sensual pleasures and let your sleeping conscience temporarily ease the dread thought of your approaching punishment.

It is possible to obtain a hope of salvation. I do not mean the way you are now, for it is as impossible for you to get to heaven without salvation as it is for God to lie. If any devil in hell had a thousand worlds at his disposal, he would give them all for this hope and count it a bargain.”

Quoted material from, ”The Christian in Complete Armour Daily Readings in Spiritual Warfare” by Gurnall and James S Bell. http://www.moodypublishers.com/pub_productDetail.aspx?id=41823&pid=53617

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