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Showing posts from October 13, 2013

From "The Chill of Love" by Horatius Bonar

Horatius Bonar was a Free Church of Scotland minister, poet and hymn writer during the middle of the 19th Century. This is from his sermon, " The Chill of Love " "Let us notice some of the things which decrease when sin increases. 1. As iniquity increases, faith decreases. Unbelief overflows like a deluge. One sin lets loose another. Faith withers down; dies out, like a flower in a desert. 2. As iniquity increases, truth decreases. For error is sin, and sin is error; so that truth and sin cannot co-exist. Sin expels truth, both from the heart and from the world; from the individual saint, and from the church at large. Darkness dispossesses light. 3. As iniquity increases, righteousness and holiness decrease. A man cannot be both holy and unholy; the encroachments of sin can leave no room for holiness at all. Inch by inch, iniquity creeps in and creeps along. 4. As iniquity increases, religion decreases. Sin drives religion out of the heart, out of the church, ou

The Day of Refreshment, Re-creation, Restoration and Redemption: Luke 13:10-17

In my morning prayers today I was struck (again!) by this episode in Luke 13.10-17: 10  Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath.  11  And behold, there was a woman who had had a disabling spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not fully straighten herself.  12  When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said to her, “Woman, you are freed from your disability.”  13  And he laid his hands on her, and immediately she was made straight, and she glorified God.  14  But the ruler of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, said to the people, “There are six days in which work ought to be done. Come on those days and be healed, and not on the Sabbath day.”  15  Then the Lord answered him, “You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger and lead it away to water it?  16  And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on t