worldliness
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“Confronted with this kind of violent reaction when they seek to mold their congregations into instruments of evangelism and social healing, pastors gradually settle down and lose interest in being change agents in the church. An unconscious conspiracy arises between their flesh and that of their congregations. It becomes tacitly understood that the laity will…
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“The arithmetic of your short-lived days may on Sabbath make the clearest impression upon your understanding—and from his fancied bed of death, may the preacher cause a voice to descend in rebuke and mockery on all the pursuits of earthliness, and as he pictures before you the fleeting generations of men, with the absorbing grave,…
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“A man will no more consent to the misery of being without an object because that object is a trifle, or of being without a pursuit because that pursuit terminates in some frivolous or fugitive acquirement, than he will voluntarily submit himself to the torture because that torture is to be of short duration. If…
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“Still, it is not enough to recognize that life is short and fleeting, that our course will soon be done and that therefore we need not faint. We must also look to the hope to which we are called. Why? The reason we are not keen to dedicate ourselves to God is that we see…
S.W.F. Knecht 