Worldly-Mindedness a Snare
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In your present state you are doing far more harm than good; for
you have a form of godliness and profess to believe the truth, while
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your words and actions say: “Wide is the gate, and broad is the way”
that leads to life, “and many there be which go in thereat.” If your life
is a confession of Christ, then we may truly say that the world has gone
after Him. Your profession may be right; but have you humility and
love, meekness and devotion? “Whosoever shall confess Me before
men,” by a holy life and godly conversation, “him shall the Son of
man also confess before the angels of God.” No one can confess Christ
unless he has the mind and spirit of Christ; he cannot communicate
that which he does not possess. The daily life must be an expression of
the sanctifying power of the truth, and evidence that Christ is abiding
in the soul by faith. Whatever is opposed to the fruits of the Spirit, or
to the work of God in separating His people from the world, is a denial
of Christ; and His words are: “He that denieth Me before men shall be
denied before the angels of God.”
We may deny Christ by our worldly conversation and by our pride
of apparel. You have a circle of friends who are a snare to you and
to your children. You love their companionship. Through association
with them, you are led to dress yourselves and your children after
the fashions followed by those who have no fear of God before their
eyes. You thus show that you have friendship with the world. “In
the multitude of words there wanteth not sin.” Does your intercourse
with these friends incline you to visit the closet and ask divine love
and grace, or does it estrange your mind from God? And your dear
children—what is your neglect of their eternal interests doing for them?
Your example has encouraged them to hurry on the life journey with
heedless presumption or with blind self-confidence, having no fixed
religious principles to guide them. They have no conscientious regard
for the Sabbath, or for the claims of God in any respect; they do not
love Christian duties, and are straying further and further from the
Source of light, peace, and joy.
Without faith it is impossible to please God; “for whatsoever is
not of faith is sin.” The faith that is required is not a mere assent
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to doctrines; it is the faith that works by love and purifies the soul.
Humility, meekness, and obedience are not faith; but they are the
effects, or fruit, of faith. These graces you have yet to attain by
learning in the school of Christ. You do not know the sentiments