Heaven's Sinners Quotes

We may be surprised at the people we find in heaven. God has a soft spot for sinners. His standards are quite low.

But listen, there will be more joy in heaven over the tears of a repentant sinner than over the white robes of a hundred just men.

If I were in heaven, Nelly, I should be extremely miserable." "Because you are not fit to go there," I answered. "All sinners would be miserable in heaven.

I took a deep breath, and shut the bedroom door behind me. Even though we'd put each other through hell, we'd found heaven. Maybe that was more than a couple of sinners deserved, but I wasn't going to complain.

Christ did not die to forgive sinners who go on treasuring anything above seeing and savoring God. And people who would be happy in heaven if Christ were not there, will not be there. The gospel is not a way to get people to heaven; it is a way to get people to God. It's a way of overcoming every obstacle to everlasting joy in God. If we don't want God above all things, we have not been converted by the gospel.

God has such gladness every time he sees from heaven that a sinner is praying to Him with all his heart, as a mother has when she sees the first smile on her baby's face.

I would have been an atheist but for you proving to me that both heaven and hell were real, even if they existed only when I was with you.

An eternity of boredom sounds worse than death. And heaven sounds pretty fucking boring.

Life is a symphony composed by God, played by us with preludes, themes, movements, passages...and wrong notes, so many wrong notes. Heaven is where we get to hear the music played perfectly for the first time.

In the New Testament, grace means God's love in action toward people who merited the opposite of love. Grace means God moving heaven and earth to save sinners who could not lift a finger to save themselves. Grace means God sending his only Son to the cross to descend into hell so that we guilty ones might be reconciled to God and received into heaven.

Kissing Zahra is like reaching Heaven after an eternity spent in purgatory. Like I’ve spent most of my life hopelessly ambling around, waiting for her to show me the way back to the light. She’s divine with enough wickedness to make a sinner like me want to pray in devotion.

May your glass always be full, may there always be a roof over your head, and may you dirty sinners be in heaven a half hour before the devil knows you're dead.

At best we are but clay, animated dust; but viewed as sinners, we are monsters indeed. Let it be published in heaven as a miracle that the Lord Jesus should set His heart's love upon people like us.

An expensive coffin does not decrease the deceased’s chances of going to hell.

If you are in Christ, you have a Friend who, in your sorrow, will never lob down a pep talk from heaven. He cannot bear to hold himself at a distance. Nothing can hold him back. His heart is too bound up with yours.

Doesn’t it honor Him more when His children no longer see themselves only as sinners saved by grace, but now as heirs of God? Isn’t it a greater form of humility to believe Him when He says we are precious in His sight when we don’t feel very precious?

These people who expect to be saints in heaven, though they were not on Earth, have ignored the wisdom of the founders of the great religions. This wisdom is that the kingdom of heaven is within you and that you do not go to heaven unless you are already in it. The magic must be wrought by you and you alone. God has no fairy wand to tap the pig and turn it into a swan. People ignore this. And those who believe in sinners burning in hell are, perhaps, not so much concerned with going to heaven as with being sure that sinners-–others-–roast forever in the flames.

No doubt it is true that there is more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner repented than over all the saints who consistently remain holy, and the rare, sudden gentlenesses of arrogant people have infinitely more effect than the continual gentleness of gentle people. Arrogance turned gentle melts the heart.

... You are the closest I will ever come to heaven, either here on Earth or in the afterlife, and I will not regret it, not even at the cost of your tears. So I go to my grave an unrepentant sinner, I’m afraid. There is no use in mourning one such as I, dearest... -Simon to Lucy in a letter before the last duel.

Both heaven and hell are populated entirely and only by forgiven sinners. Hell is just a courtesy for those who insist they want no part of forgiveness.

I know how to make sin feel like heaven.

If I could, I would have you use me as your stepping stone, the bridge you take apart after crossing, the bones you need to trample on your climb, the sinner who endures the agony of a million knives. But I know you won’t allow it.

I think life is a book,” Eleanor said. “God writes it. We’re His characters. He knows what happens on the next page, but we don’t. Heaven is where we get to read the book cover to cover and see how it all makes sense.

His mercy is so great that it forgives great sins to great sinners after great lengths of time and then gives great favors and great privileges and raises us up to great enjoyments in the great heaven of the great God!

Only as we drink down the kindness of the heart of Christ will we leave in our wake, everywhere we go, the aroma of heaven, and die one day having startled the world with glimpses of a divine kindness too great to be boxed in by what we deserve.

Even though we'd put each other through hell, we'd found heaven. Maybe it was more than a couple of sinners like us deserved, but I wasn't going to complain.

Oh, the remembrance of my great sins, of my great temptations, and of my great fears of perishing forever! They bring afresh into my mind the remembrance of my great help, my great support from Heaven, and the great grace that God extended to such a wretch as I.

The image of God I was raised with was this: God is an angry bastard with a killer surveillance system who had to send his little boy (and he only had one) to suffer and die because I was bad. But the good news was that if I believed this story and then tried really hard to be good, when I died I would go to heaven, where I would live in a golden gated community with God and all the other people who believed and did the same things as I did.....this type of thinking portrays God as just as mean and selfish as we are, which feels like it has a lot more to do with our own greed and spite than it has to do with God.

A Christ-centered church is not a showcase for saints but a hospital for sinners.

Let's say that the consensus is that our species, being the higher primates, Homo Sapiens, has been on the planet for at least 100,000 years, maybe more. Francis Collins says maybe 100,000. Richard Dawkins thinks maybe a quarter-of-a-million. I'll take 100,000. In order to be a Christian, you have to believe that for 98,000 years, our species suffered and died, most of its children dying in childbirth, most other people having a life expectancy of about 25 years, dying of their teeth. Famine, struggle, bitterness, war, suffering, misery, all of that for 98,000 years. Heaven watches this with complete indifference. And then 2000 years ago, thinks 'That's enough of that. It's time to intervene,' and the best way to do this would be by condemning someone to a human sacrifice somewhere in the less literate parts of the Middle East. Don't lets appeal to the Chinese, for example, where people can read and study evidence and have a civilization. Let's go to the desert and have another revelation there. This is nonsense. It can't be believed by a thinking person. Why am I glad this is the case? To get to the point of the wrongness of Christianity, because I think the teachings of Christianity are immoral. The central one is the most immoral of all, and that is the one of vicarious redemption. You can throw your sins onto somebody else, vulgarly known as scapegoating. In fact, originating as scapegoating in the same area, the same desert. I can pay your debt if I love you. I can serve your term in prison if I love you very much. I can volunteer to do that. I can't take your sins away, because I can't abolish your responsibility, and I shouldn't offer to do so. Your responsibility has to stay with you. There's no vicarious redemption. There very probably, in fact, is no redemption at all. It's just a part of wish-thinking, and I don't think wish-thinking is good for people either. It even manages to pollute the central question, the word I just employed, the most important word of all: the word love, by making love compulsory, by saying you MUST love. You must love your neighbour as yourself, something you can't actually do. You'll always fall short, so you can always be found guilty. By saying you must love someone who you also must fear. That's to say a supreme being, an eternal father, someone of whom you must be afraid, but you must love him, too. If you fail in this duty, you're again a wretched sinner. This is not mentally or morally or intellectually healthy. And that brings me to the final objection - I'll condense it, Dr. Orlafsky - which is, this is a totalitarian system. If there was a God who could do these things and demand these things of us, and he was eternal and unchanging, we'd be living under a dictatorship from which there is no appeal, and one that can never change and one that knows our thoughts and can convict us of thought crime, and condemn us to eternal punishment for actions that we are condemned in advance to be taking. All this in the round, and I could say more, it's an excellent thing that we have absolutely no reason to believe any of it to be true.

I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes! Poison-mixers are they, whether they know it or not. Despisers of life are they, decaying and poisoned themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so let them go. Once the sin against God was the greatest sin; but God died, and these sinners died with him. To sin against the earth is now the most dreadful thing, and to esteem the entrails of the unknowable higher than the meaning of the earth... What is the greatest experience you can have? It is the hour of the great contempt. The hour when your happiness, too, arouses your disgust, and even your reason and your virtue.

One of the disconcerting and delightful teaching of the master was: "God is closer to sinners than to saints." This is how he explained it: " God in heaven holds each person by a string. When you sin you cut the string. then God ties it up again, making a knot-and therby bringing you a little closer to him. Again and again your sins cut the string-and with each further knot God keeps drawing you closer and closer.

Heaven is populated entirely by forgiven sinners, not by spiritual and moral aces

Every saint has a past, the sixteenth-century poet had said, and every sinner has a future.

All sinners would be miserable in heaven.

The wrath of God is never an evil wrath. God gets angry because he loves people like a mother would love her child if someone were to harm it. There is something wrong if the mother never gets angry; it is safe to say that that is the unloving mother.

God was happy without humans before they were made; he would have continued happy had he simply destroyed them after they had sinned; but as it is he has set his love upon particular sinners, and this means that, by his own free voluntary choice, he will not know perfect and unmixed happiness again till he has brought every one of them to heaven. He has in effect resolved that henceforth for all eternity his happiness shall be conditional upon ours.

There was a long moment of silence. Philip was holding his breath. When Remigius looked up again, his face was wet with tears. "Yes , please, Father," he said. "I want to come home." Philip felt a glow of joy. "Come on, then," he said. "Get on my horse." Remigius looked flabbergasted. Jonathan said: "Father! What are you doing?" Philip said to Remigius: "Go on, do as I say." Jonathan was horified, "but Ftaher, how will you travel?" "I'll walk," Philip said happily. "One of us must." "Let Remigius walk!" Jonathan said in a tone of outrage. "Let him ride," Philip said, "He's pleased God today." "What about you? Haven't you pleased God more than Remigius?" "Jesus said there's more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people," Philip countered. "Don't you remember the parable of the prodigal son? When he came home, his father killed the fatted calf. The angels are rejoicing over Remigius's tears. The least I can do is give him my horse.

...I am for going on, and venturing my eternal state with Christ, whether I have comfort here or no; if God doth not come in, thought I, I will leap off the ladder even blindfold into eternity, sink or swim, come heaven, come hell; Lord Jesus, if thou wilt catch me, do; if not, I will venture for thy name.

The first fruit of love is the musing of the mind on God. He who is in love, his thoughts are ever upon the object. He who loves God is ravished and transported with the contemplation of God. "When I awake, I am still with thee" (Psalm 139:18). The thoughts are as travelers in the mind. David's thoughts kept heaven-road. "I am still with Thee." God is the treasure, and where the treasure is, there is the heart. By this we may test our love to God. What are our thoughts most upon? Can we say we are ravished with delight when we think on God? Have our thoughts got wings? Are they fled aloft? Do we contemplate Christ and glory?... A sinner crowds God out of his thoughts. He never thinks of God, unless with horror, as the prisoner thinks of the judge.

The world is full of weak, pitiful sinners like myself, people just looking for a way around our duties and obligations. A way to follow Christ without taking up our cross. A way to be a Christian without making sacrifices. A way to enter Heaven while holding onto a piece of earth.

- and even though sinners like me can only wish for heaven, my bastard ass has somehow managed to sneak through the door and step into this thing called paradise

Heaven is for redeemed sinners, he said, after hours of silence. Dogs don’t need it. They live their whole lives in heaven.

Some mistake has been made: I died, heaven exists, and they let me in.

Looking inside ourselves, we can anticipate only harshness from heaven. Looking out to Christ, we can anticipate only gentleness.

Confession is a difficult Discipline for us because we all too often view the believing community as a fellowship of saints before we see it as a fellowship of sinners. We feel that everyone else has advanced so far into holiness that we are isolated and alone in our sin. We cannot bear to reveal our failures and shortcomings to others. We imagine that we are the only ones who have not stepped onto the high road to heaven. Therefore, we hide ourselves from one another and live in veiled lies and hypocrisy. But if we know that the people of God are first a fellowship of sinners, we are freed to hear the unconditional call of God's love and to confess our needs openly before our brothers and sisters. We know we are not alone in our sin. The fear and pride that cling to us like barnacles cling to others also. We are sinners together. In acts of mutual confession we release the power that heals. Our humanity is no longer denied, but transformed.

As long as you fix your attention on your sin, you will fail to see how you can be safe. But as long as you look to this high priest, you will fail to see how you can be in danger. Looking inside ourselves, we can anticipate only harshness from heaven. Looking out to Christ, we can anticipate only gentleness.

Jesus, I am a sinner. I am vain. I am narcissistic. And my biggest sin was that I have been so afraid of You that I never really loved You until this moment. But I’m not afraid anymore because heaven and hell are not destinations. They are decisions.

I’ll never set you free, little demon. It’s best you understand that now.” She licks her wet lips. “Because I’d hate to have to kill us both.” If I can’t have her, no one will. But I also would never want to survive in a world where she doesn’t exist. Death would be heaven compared to a life without her being mine.

The forgiveness of God is gratuitous liberation from guilt. Paradoxically, the conviction of personal sinfulness becomes the occasion of encounter with the merciful love of the redeeming God. "There will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner repenting..." (Luke 15:7). In his brokenness, the repentant prodigal knew an intimacy with his father that his sinless, self-righteous brother would never know.

If you are humble, nothing will touch you, neither praise nor disgrace, because you know what you are. If you are blamed, you won’t be discouraged; if anyone calls you a saint, you won’t put yourself on a pedestal. If you are a saint, thank God; if you are a sinner, don’t remain one. Christ tells us to aim very high, not to be like Abraham or David or any of the saints, but to be like our heavenly Father.

Jesus brings a kingdom ruled by the crucified one and populated by the unclean and always found in the unexpected. I'd expected to look at the past and see only mistakes that I'd moved on from, to see only damage and addiction and tragic self-delusion. But by thinking that way, I'd assumed that God was nowhere to be found back then. But that's kind of an insult to God. It's like saying, 'You only exist when I recognize you.' The kingdom of heaven, which Jesus talked about all the time, is, as he said, here. At hand. It's now. Wherever you are. In ways you'd never expect.

There is no heaven of glory bright, and no hell where sinners roast. Here and now is our day of torment! Here and now is our day of joy! Here and now is our opportunity! Choose ye this day, this hour, for no redeemer liveth!

most people are accusing God, asking, “How can you punish sinners? How can you let good people go to hell?” But the question the Bible asks is exactly the opposite: “God, how can you be just and still let guilty sinners into heaven?” And the only answer to that question is Jesus Christ.

A sinless sinner, banned awhile on earth, But by the dead commended; and with them I shall abide for ever.  As for thee, Scorn, if thou wilt, the eternal laws of Heaven.   ISMENE

There’s no Hell to spite the sinners. There’s no Heaven for the blessed. God is not what you imagine.

There’s no Hell to spite the sinners. There’s no Heaven for the blessed. God is not what you imagine.

Since man's natural instincts lead him to sin, all men are sinners; and all sinners go to hell. If everyone goes to hell, then you will meet all your friends there. Heaven must be populated with some rather strange creatures if all they lived for was to go to a place where they can strum harps for eternity.

Yes," resumed the Bishop, "you have come from a very sad place. Listen. There will be more joy in heaven over the tear-bathed face of a repentant sinner than over the white robes of a hundred just men. If you emerge from that sad place with thoughts of hatred and of wrath against mankind, you are deserving of pity; if you emerge with thoughts of good-will and of peace, you are more worthy than any one of us.

Dead shall rise, an' stars shall fall; Weald shall rot to ruin ae all. Lions roar an' angels weep; Sinners' hands our secrets keep. Til Godling's heart brights heav'en's eye, From reddest blood comes bluest sky.

Beethoven was deaf when he composed this piece. He couldn’t hear his own masterpiece anywhere but in his own head. But we are all deaf in a way. Life is a symphony composed by God, played by us with preludes, themes, movements, passages...and wrong notes, so many wrong notes. Heaven is where we get to hear the music played perfectly for the first time.

Christians must show that misery fits the good for heaven, while happiness prepares the bad for hell; that the wicked get all their good things in this life, and the good all their evil; that in this world God punishes the people he loves, and in the next, the ones he hates; that happiness makes us bad here, but not in heaven; that pain makes us good here, but not in hell. No matter how absurd these things may appear to the carnal mind, they must be preached and they must be believed. If they were reasonable, there would be no virtue in believing. Even the publicans and sinners believe reasonable things. To believe without evidence, or in spite of it, is accounted as righteousness to the sincere and humble christian. In short, Christians are expected to denounce all pleasant paths and rustling trees, to curse the grass and flowers, and glorify the dust and weeds. They are expected to malign the wicked people in the green and happy fields, who sit and laugh beside the gurgling springs or climb the hills and wander as they will. They are expected to point out the dangers of freedom, the safety of implicit obedience, and to show the wickedness of philosophy, the goodness of faith, the immorality of science and the purity of ignorance.

Remember also the word, the word, I say, upon which the Lord hath caused you to hope: if you have sinned against light, if you are tempted to blaspheme, if you are drowned in despair, if you think God fights against you, or if heaven is hid from your eyes; remember it was thus with your father; but out of them all the Lord delivered me.

Then said the giant, "Thou practices the craft of a kidnapper. Thou gatherest up woman and children and carriest them into a strange country, to the weakening of my master's kingdom." But now Great-Heart replied, "I am a servant of the God of Heaven; my business is to persuade sinners of repentance. I am commanded to do my endeavor to turn men, women and children, fro darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God.

You’re the sinner, seeing the heavenly, Sweetest dream, before passing away…

Because you are not fit to go there,' I answered. 'All sinners would be miserable in heaven.

If I can’t have her, no one will. But I also would never want to survive in a world where she doesn’t exist. Death would be heaven compared to a life without her being mine.

John Bunyan: "But one day, as I was passing in the field, and that too with some dashes on my conscience, fearing lest yet all was not right, suddenly this sentence fell upon my soul, Thy righteousness is in heaven; and methought withal, I saw, with the eyes of my soul, Jesus Christ at God's right hand; there, I say, as my righteousness; so that wherever I was, or whatever I was adoing, mGod could not say of me, He wants my righteousness, for that was just before him. I also saw, moreover, that it was not my good frame of heart that made my righteousness better, nor yet my bad frame that made my righteousness worse; for my righteousness was Jesus Christ himself, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever." (Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, 35-36)

Heaven must be a hell of a place. Nothing but repentant sinners up there, isn't it? All the pimps, prostitutes and politicians in creation trying to cash in on eternity and their little tin god.

Yes," said Hardacre, "but it's not real. We're not real. And when the story is all told, when He writes 'The End' at the bottom of the last page, then all this will wrap up. No more Hell, no more Heaven, no more angels, devils, saints or sinners. The story's done. It will be as if we never were

A man who is born again has a special love for all true disciples of Christ. Like his Father in heaven, he loves all men with a great general love, but he has a special love for those who share his faith in Christ. Like his Lord and Saviour, he loves the worst of sinners and could weep over them; but he has a peculiar love for those who are believers. He is never so much at home as when he is in their company.

Your Highness, I understand your everything." Hua Cheng said quietly. "Your courage, your despair. Your kindness, your pain. Your resentment, your hate. Your wisdom, your foolishness. "If I could, I would have you use me as your stepping stone, the bridge you take apart after crossing, the bones you need to trample on your climb, the sinner who endures the agony of a million knives. But I know you won't allow it.

Perhaps we are not following Christ all the way or in the right spirit. We are likely, for example, to be a little sparing of the palms and hosannas. We are chary of wielding the scourge of small cords, lest we should offend somebody or interfere with trade. We do not furnish up our wits to disentangle knotty questions about Sunday observance and tribute money, nor hasten to sit at the feet of the doctors, both hearing them and asking them questions. We pass hastily over disquieting jests about making friends with the mammon of unrighteousness and alarming observations about bringing not peace but a sword; nor do we distinguish ourselves by the graciousness by which we sit at meat with publicans and sinners. Somehow or other, and with the best intentions, we have shown the world the typical Christian in the likeness of a crashing and rather ill-natured bore---and this in the name of the one who assuredly never bored a soul in those thirty-three years during which he passed through the world like a flame. Let us, in heaven's name, drag out the divine drama from under the dreadful accumulation of slipshod thinking and trashy sentiment heaped upon it, and set it on an open stage to startle the world into some sort of vigorous reaction. If the pious are the first to be shocked, so much worse for the pious---others will pass into the kingdom of heaven before them. If all men are offended because of Christ, let them be offended; but where is the sense of their being offended at something that is not Christ and is nothing like him? We do him singularly little honor by watering down his personality till it could not offend a fly. Surely it is not the business of the Church to adapt Christ to men, but to adapt men to Christ.

The figure of the passing-away world, 1 Cor. vii. 31. is like an old man's face, full of wrinkles, and foul with weeping: we are waiting when Jesus shall be revealed from heaven, and shall come and wipe the old man's face.

Red and white, the Tudor rose that symbolized the union between the Red Rose of Lancaster and the White Rose of York, blood and snow, passion and purity, fire and ice, hell and heaven, sinner and saint, conquest and surrender, whore and virgin, the red dazzle of rubies and the nacreous lustrous shimmer of pearls, innocence born from a bloody womb, the blood is the life, the cold white marble of death—a tomb effigy; red roses for the blood of martyrs.

How baffling you are, oh Church, and yet how I love you! How you have made me suffer, and yet how much I owe you! I would like to see you destroyed, and yet I need your presence. You have given me so much scandal and yet you have made me understand what sanctity is. I have seen nothing in the world more devoted to obscurity, more compromised, more false, and yet I have touched nothing more pure, more generous, more beautiful. How often I have wanted to shut the doors of my soul in your face, and how often I have prayed to die in the safety of your arms. No, I cannot free myself from you, because I am you, though not completely. And besides, where would I go? Would I establish another? I would not be able to establish it without the same faults, for they are the same faults I carry in me. And if I did establish another, it would be my Church, not the Church of Christ. I am old enough to know that I am no better than anyone else. …) The Church has the power to make me holy but it is made up, from the first to the last, only of sinners. And what sinners! It has the omnipotent and invincible power to renew the Miracle of the Eucharist, but is made up of men who are stumbling in the dark, who fight every day against the temptation of losing their faith. It brings a message of pure transparency but it is incarnated in slime, such is the substance of the world. It speaks of the sweetness of its Master, of its non-violence, but there was a time in history when it sent out its armies to disembowel the infidels and torture the heretics. It proclaims the message of evangelical poverty, and yet it does nothing but look for money and alliances with the powerful. Those who dream of something different from this are wasting their time and have to rethink it all. And this proves that they do not understand humanity. Because this is humanity, made visible by the Church, with all its flaws and its invincible courage, with the Faith that Christ has given it and with the love that Christ showers on it. When I was young, I did not understand why Jesus chose Peter as his successor, the first Pope, even though he abandoned Him. Now I am no longer surprised and I understand that by founding his church on the tomb of a traitor(…)He was warning each of us to remain humble, by making us aware of our fragility. (…) And what are bricks worth anyway? What matters is the promise of Christ, what matters is the cement that unites the bricks, which is the Holy Spirit. Only the Holy Spirit is capable of building the church with such poorly moulded bricks as are we. And that is where the mystery lies. This mixture of good and bad, of greatness and misery, of holiness and sin that makes up the church…this in reality am I .(…) The deep bond between God and His Church, is an intimate part of each one of us. (…)To each of us God says, as he says to his Church, “And I will betroth you to me forever” (Hosea 2,21). But at the same time he reminds us of reality: 'Your lewdness is like rust. I have tried to remove it in vain. There is so much that not even a flame will take it away' (Ezechiel 24, 12). But then there is even something more beautiful. The Holy Spirit who is Love, sees us as holy, immaculate, beautiful under our guises of thieves and adulterers. (…) It’s as if evil cannot touch the deepest part of mankind. He re-establishes our virginity no matter how many times we have prostituted our bodies, spirits and hearts. In this, God is truly God, the only one who can ‘make everything new again’. It is not so important that He will renew heaven and earth. What is most important is that He will renew our hearts. This is Christ’s work. This is the divine Spirit of the Church.

And I was alone, had been for a while, and might be for a while, but it no longer frightened me the way it had. I was discovering something terrifyingly simple: there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. I was discovering this in the way, I suppose, that everybody does, but having tried, endlessly, to do something about it. You attach yourself to someone, or you allow someone to attach themselves to you. This person is not for you, and you, really, are not for that person--and that's it, son. But you try, you both try. The only result of all your trying is to make absolutely real the unconquerable distance between you: to dramatize, in a million ways, the absolutely unalterable truth of this distance. Side by side, and hand in hand, your sunsets, nevertheless are not occurring in the same universe. It is not merely that the rain falls differently on each of you, for that can be a wonder and a joy: it is that what is rain for the one is not rain for the other. Your elements will not mix, unless one agrees that the elements be pulverized--and the result of that is worse than being alone. The result of that is to become one of the living dead. The most dreadful people I have ever known are those who have been "saved," as they claim, by Christ--they could not possibly be more deluded--those for whom the heavenly telephone is endlessly ringing, always with disastrous messages for everybody else. Or those people who have been cured by their psychiatrists, a cure which has rendered them a little less exciting than oatmeal. I prefer sinners and madmen, who can learn, who can change, who can teach--or people like myself, if I may say so, who are not afraid to eat a lobster alone as they take on their shoulders the monumental weight of thirty years.

No amount of sin-finding on Earth will bring you any closer to God. You won’t get a gold star on your soul when you return to Heaven, nor will anyone greet you with congratulations for identifying sinners on Earth and all their sinny, sin sins.

They pledged each other in their spiced beer, a very good drink, with cloves, which I have never tasted but let glide with pleasure down their gullets. Very oft is the telling only a substitute for enjoyment which we, or the heavens, deny ourselves.

God has to punish sinners, because God is holy, but Jesus has paid the price for our sin, and so we can have eternal life. However true or untrue that is technically or theologically, what it can do is subtly teach people that Jesus rescues us from God.

When a man kills another man, the people say he is a murderer, but when the Emir kills him, the Emir is just. When a man robs a monastery, they say he is a thief, but when the Emir robs him of his life, the Emir is honourable. When a woman betrays her husband, they say she is an adulteress, but when the Emir makes her walk naked in the streets and stones her later, the Emir is noble. Shedding of blood is forbidden, but who made it lawful for the Emir? Stealing one's money is a crime, but taking away one's life is a noble act. Betrayal of a husband may be an ugly deed, but stoning of living souls is a beautiful sight. Shall we meet evil with evil and say this is the Law? Shall we fight corruption with greater corruption and say this is the Rule? Shall we conquer crimes with more crimes and say this is Justice? Had not the Emir killed an enemy in his past life? Had he not robbed his weak subjects of money and property? Had he not committed adultery? Was he infallible when he killed the murderer and hanged the thief in the tree? Who are those who hanged the thief in the tree? Are they angels descended from heaven, or men looting and usurping? Who cut off the murderer's head? Are they divine prophets, or soldiers shedding blood wherever they go? Who stoned that adulteress? Were they virtuous hermits who came from their monasteries, or humans who loved to commit atrocities with glee, under the protection of ignorant Law? What is Law? Who saw it coming with the sun from the depths of heaven? What human saw the heart of God and found its will or purpose? In what century did the angels walk among the people and preach to them, saying, "Forbid the weak from enjoying life, and kill the outlaws with the sharp edge of the sword, and step upon the sinners with iron feet?

But the same day, as I was in the midst of a game of Cat, and having struck it one blow from the hole, just as I was about to strike it the second time, a voice did suddenly dart from heaven into my soul, which said, Wilt thou leave thy sins and go to heaven, or have thy sins and go to hell?  At this I was put to an exceeding maze; wherefore leaving my cat upon the ground, I looked up to heaven, and was, as if I had, with the eyes of my understanding, seen the Lord Jesus looking down upon me, as being very hotly displeased with me, and as if He did severely threaten me with some grievous punishment for these and other ungodly practices.

He kissed Kyle, checking to see that her eyes stayed sure and real. They did. Instead of saint and sinner, they were man and woman now. When Cole finally tasted her skin, the flavor was honeysuckle. Heaven was not something he had to die to enjoy. Kyle was here now.

Oh, God, I know I am a sinner. I am sorry for my sins, and I want to turn from them. I trust Christ alone as my Savior, and I confess Him as my Lord. From this moment on, I want to serve Him and follow Him in the fellowship of His church. In Christ’s name, I pray. Amen.

ANTIGONE: A sinless sinner, banned awhile on earth, But by the dead commended; and with them I shall abide for ever. As for thee, Scorn, if thou wilt, the eternal laws of Heaven. ... CREON: So am I purposed; never by my will Shall miscreants take precedence of true men, But all good patriots, alive or dead, Shall be by me preferred and honored. ... GUARD: Take it all in all, I deem A man's first duty is to serve himself.

Maura moved quietly to the alcove. There she lit three candles for three women. One for Sister Ursula. One for Sister Camille. And one for a faceless leper whose name she would never know. She did not believe in heaven or hell; she was not even sure she believed in the eternal soul.

That is the heavenly Father's deepest impulse toward us. You are the apple of His eye. And anyone who messes with you messes with Him. His protective instincts are most poignantly seen at the cross - the place where unconditional love and omnipotent power for the amalgam called amazing grace. That's where the Creator stepped between every fallen sinner and the fallen angel, Satan. That's where the Advocate took His stand against the Accuser of the brethren. The Sinless Son of God took the fall for us. The cross is God's way of saying, "You are worth dying for.

They shall stand there to be judged, but not to be acquitted. Fear shall lay hold upon them there; they shall not stand their ground; they shall flee away; they shall not stand in their own defence; for they shall blush and be covered with eternal contempt. Well may the saints long for heaven, for no evil men shall dwell there, "nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous." All our congregations upon earth are mixed. Every Church hath one devil in it. The tares grow in the same furrows as the wheat. There is no floor which is as yet thoroughly purged from chaff.

We are not really surprised that God has redeemed us. Somewhere deep inside, in the secret chambers of our hearts, we harbor the notion that God owes us His mercy. Heaven would not be quite the same if we were excluded from it. We know that we are sinners, but we are surely not as bad as we could be. There are enough redeeming features to our personalities that if God is really just, He will include us in salvation. What amazes us is justice, not Brice.

Our Father in heaven" -- I am a child away from home. "Your name be honored as holy"--I am a worshiper. "Your kingdom come"--I am a subject. "Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven"--I am a servant. "Give us today our daily bread"--I am a beggar. "And forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors"--I am a sinner. "And do not bring us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one"--I am a sinner in danger of being a still greater sinner.

Let us not despise the woman who is neither mother nor daughter nor wife. Let us not limit our esteem to family life, narrow our tolerance to simple egotism. Given that heaven rejoices more at the repentance of one sinner than over a hundred good men who have never sinned, let us endeavor to make heaven rejoice. We may be rewarded with interest. Let us leave along the path the alms of our forgiveness for those whose earthly desires have marooned them, so that a divine hope may save them, and, as the wise old women say when they prescribe a remedy of their own invention, if it doesn't help, at least it can't hurt.

Our sexuality is not our soul, marriage is not heaven, and singleness is not hell. So may we all preach the news that is good for a reason. For it proclaims to the world that Jesus has come so that all sinners, same-sex-attracted and opposite-sex-attracted, can be forgiven of their sins to love God and enjoy Him forever.

Do not be afraid of anything, never be afraid, and do not grieve. Just let repentance not slacken in you, and God will forgive everything. There is not and cannot be in the whole world such a sin that the Lord will not forgive one who truly repents of it. A man even cannot commit so great a sin as would exhaust God’s boundless love. How could there be a sin that exceeds God’s love? Only take care that you repent without ceasing, and chase away fear altogether. Believe that God loves you so as you cannot conceive of it; even with your sin and in your sin he loves you. And there is more joy in heaven over one repentant sinner than over ten righteous men4—that was said long ago. Go, then, and do not be afraid. Do not be upset with people, do not take offense at their wrongs. Forgive the dead man in your heart for all the harm he did you; be reconciled with him truly. If you are repentant, it means that you love. And if you love, you already belong to God … With love everything is bought, everything is saved. If even I, a sinful man, just like you, was moved to tenderness and felt pity for you, how much more will God be. Love is such a priceless treasure that you can buy the whole world with it, and redeem not only your own but other people’s sins. Go, and do not be afraid.

I remember preaching on Jesus’s call to the practice of radical forgiveness and being challenged by a church member who said, “Yeah, but the Bible says, ‘An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.’ ” I had to explain to him that a Christian can’t cite Moses to silence Jesus. When we try to embrace Biblicism by placing all authority in a flat reading of Scripture and giving the Old Testament equal authority with Christ, God thunders from heaven, “No! This is my beloved Son! Listen to him!

Nnu Ego was like those not-so well-informed Christians who,promised the Kingdom of Heaven,believed that it was literally just round the corner and that Jesus Christ was coming on the very morrow. Many of them would hardly contribute anything ton this world,reasoning, "What is the use? Christ will come soon" They became so insulated in their beliefs that not only would they have little to do with ordinary sinners,people going about their daily work, they even pitied them and in many cases looked down on them because the Kingdom of God was not for the likes of them. Maybe this was a protective mechanism devised to save them from realities too painful to accept.

Oh! the un-thought-of imaginations, frights, fears, and terrors, that are affected by a thorough application of guilt yielding to desperation!  This is the man that hath his dwelling among the tombs with the dead; that is always crying out, and cutting himself with stones.  Mark v. 1, 2, 3.  But, I say, all in vain; desperation will not comfort him, the old covenant will not save him: nay, heaven and earth shall pass away, before one jot or tittle of the word and law of grace will fail or be removed. 

Yeah, yeah, yeah.. Lots of fine people have sat staring at the inside of prison walls. Socrates, Gandhi, Joan of Arc, even our lord Jesus Christ. He spent the last night of his life not with holy men, but with scum like the kind we've got in Oz. One of the last things Jesus did on earth was invite a prisoner to join him in heaven. He loved that criminal. I say he loved that criminal as much as he loved anyone. Jesus knew in his heart it takes a lot to love a sinner. But the sinner, he needs it all the more.

A true Christian is made by faith and love toward Christ. Our sins do not in the least hinder our Christianity, according to the word of the Savior Himself. He deigned to say: not the righteous have I come to call, but sinners to salvation; there is more joy in heaven over one who repents than over ninety righteous ones. Likewise concerning the sinful woman who touched His feet, He deigned to say to the Pharisee Simon: to one who has love, a great debt is forgiven, but from one who has no love, even a small debt will be demanded. From these judgments a Christian should bring himself to hope and joy, and not in the least accept an inflicted despair. Here one needs the shield of faith.

there's more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people. p890

He thought it preposterous: the idea of fire and brimstone, that sinners went to Hell while everyone else went to Heaven. Sins seemed to be subjective.

We have been called to wrestle with sin through the cross of Jesus Christ; we are not here to wrestle with the sinner. Matthew 16:24

They say there's a heaven for those who will wait Some say it's better but I say it ain't I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints The sinners are much more fun

When her glance was cast my way and I was included in that smile, I knew what the first glimpse of heaven must feel like to a sinner whose fate had been in doubt.

The very identity of racist Southerners depends upon contrasting themselves with those dirty black “nigras.” But, conversely, the out-groups feel that they are really and truly “in,” and nourish their collective ego with relishingly indignant conversation about squares, Ofays, Wasps, Philistines, and the blasted bourgeoisie. Even Saint Thomas Aquinas let it out that part of the blessedness of the saints in Heaven was that they could look over the battlements and enjoy the “proper justice” of the sinners squirming in Hell. All winners need losers; all saints need sinners; all sages need fools—that is, so long as the major kick in life is to “amount to something” or to “be someone” as a particular and separate godlet.

Lord, You have told me who You are, You have in mercy revealed Yourself to me, I know You to be that blessed 'gift of God' which alone can save and satisfy my soul. The depth and compass of heavenly love are manifested in You, and You have shown me, not my need only, but the sufficiency of Your grace and power to meet it. I am an empty sinner, You are a full Christ!

Yes,” answered the bishop, “you have left a place of suffering. But listen, there will be more joy in heaven over the tears of a repentant sinner than over the white robes of a hundred just men. If you are leaving that sad place with hatred and anger against men, you deserve compassion; if you leave it with goodwill, gentleness, and peace, you are better than any of us.

That is the way God sees us, you and me and everyone who has ever inched his way on this earth. He sees not our history but our destiny. Not what we once were but what we will one day become. He sees not our drizzly gray past but our sun-washed future, a rainbow full of promise arching over the whole of it. For God sees not as man sees. We see the disgusting sinner; He sees the destined saint.

If I were in heaven, Nelly, I should be extremely miserable.” “Because you are not fit to go there,” I answered. “All sinners would be miserable in heaven.” “But it is not for that. I dreamt, once, that I was there.” “I tell you I won’t harken to your dreams, Miss Catherine! I’ll go to bed,” I interrupted again. She laughed, and held me down, for I made a motion to leave my chair. “This is nothing,” cried she; “I was only going to say that heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out, into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy. That will do to explain my secret, as well as the other. I’ve no more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to be in heaven; and if the wicked man in there had not brought Heathcliff so low, I shouldn’t have thought of it. It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff, now; so he shall never know how I love him; and that, not because he’s handsome, Nelly, but because he’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same, and Linton’s is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire.

The raw afternoon is rawest, and the dense fog is densest, and the muddy streets are muddiest near that leaden-headed old obstruction, appropriate ornament for the threshold of a leaden-headed old corporation, Temple Bar. And hard by Temple Bar, in Lincoln's Inn Hall, at the very heart of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery. Never can there come fog too thick, never can there come mud and mire too deep, to assort with the groping and floundering condition which this High Court of Chancery, most pestilent of hoary sinners, holds this day in the sight of heaven and earth. On

Losing her never felt like being dismembered, or having the blood drained right from your body, creating a loneliness unlike anything I’ve ever known. It never felt like spending your life as a sinner and finally getting a taste of Heaven, only to have it ripped right out from beneath your fingertips. But it takes a woman like Elena to elicit feelings like that. It requires kindness, and warmth, not the kind of fires lit just for the hell of it, but the kind of flames that flourish with passion and understanding and just a touch of darkness. It’s her innate goodness that makes the loss fucking unbearable.

That I had been a great and grievous sinner, and that it was now too late for me to look after heaven; for Christ would not forgive me, nor pardon my transgressions.  Then I fell to musing on this also; and while I was thinking of it, and fearing lest it should be so; I felt my heart sink in despair, concluding it was too late; and therefore I resolved in my mind I would go on in sin: for, thought I, if the case be thus, my state is surely miserable; miserable if I leave my sins, and but miserable if I follow them; I can but be damned, and if I must be so, I had as good be damned for many sins, as be damned for few.

The Bible says that each person is a sinner and everyone is wicked in the sight of God. God cannot allow sin into Heaven, so we must get rid of our sin somehow. If we don’t, then we have no hope of Heaven.” Jesus is the only one who can take our sins away. The Bible says that God is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. Jesus came down from Heaven and died on the cross for our sins.

...Hell is the home of the unreal and of the seekers for happiness. It is the only refuge from heaven, which is, as I tell you, the home of the masters of reality, and from earth, which is the home of the slaves of reality. The earth is a nursery in which men and women play at being heroes and heroines, saints and sinners; but they are dragged down from their fool’s paradise by their bodies: hunger and cold and thirst, age and decay and disease, death above all, make them slaves of reality: thrice a day meals must be eaten and digested: thrice a century a new generation must be engendered: ages of faith, of romance, and of science are all driven at last to have but one prayer, “Make me a healthy animal.” But here you escape this tyranny of the flesh; for here you are not an animal at all: you are a ghost, an appearance, an illusion, a convention, deathless, ageless: in a word, bodiless. There are no social questions here, no political questions, no religious questions, best of all, perhaps, no sanitary questions. Here you call your appearance beauty, your emotions love, your sentiments heroism, your aspirations virtue, just as you did on earth; but here there are no hard facts to contradict you, no ironic contrast of your needs with your pretensions, no human comedy, nothing but a perpetual romance, a universal melodrama. As our German friend put it in his poem, “the poetically nonsensical here is good sense; and the Eternal Feminine draws us ever upward and on...

The high ground of Christ & Him crucified must be claimed in our preaching. Any other footing is a slippery slope that inevitably descends downward into vain rhetoric and mere words. To the contrary, every pulpit must present a towering vision of the unique person and saving work of Jesus Christ. All preaching must point to His sin-bearing, substitutionary death for sinners. All exposition must lift up this Sacrificial Lamb who became a sin-bearing Substitute for all who believe. Every message must exalt this Christ, who was raised from the dead, exalted to the right hand of God the Father, and entrusted with all authority in heaven and earth.

This woman and I, though we came together as poor as poor might be (not having so much household stuff as a dish or a spoon betwixt us both), yet this she had for her part: The Plain Man’s Pathway to Heaven and The Practice of Piety; which her father had left her when he died.  In these two books I would sometimes read with her, wherein I also found some things that were somewhat pleasing to me (but all this while I met with no conviction).  She also would be often telling of me what a godly man her father was, and how he would reprove and correct vice, both in his house, and among his neighbours; what a strict and holy life he lived in his days, both in word and deed.

But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name. John 1:12 Divine sonship is not something that we gain of ourselves. Only to those who receive Christ as their Saviour is given the power to become sons and daughters of God. The sinner cannot, by any power of his own, rid himself of sin. For the accomplishment of this result, he must look to a higher Power. John exclaimed, "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world." Christ alone has power to cleanse the heart. He who is seeking for forgiveness and acceptance can say only,-- "Nothing in my hand I bring; Simply to Thy cross I cling." But the promise of sonship is made to all who "believe on his name." Every one who comes to Jesus in faith will receive pardon. The religion of Christ transforms the heart. It makes the worldly-minded man heavenly-minded. Under its influence the selfish man becomes unselfish, because this is the character of Christ. The dishonest, scheming man becomes upright, so that it is second nature to him to do to others as he would have others do to him. The profligate is changed from impurity to purity. He forms correct habits; for the gospel of Christ has become to him a savor of life unto life. God was to be manifest in Christ, "reconciling the world unto himself." Man had become so degraded by sin that it was impossible for him, in himself, to come into harmony with Him whose nature is purity and goodness. But Christ, after having redeemed man from the condemnation of the law, could impart divine power, to unite with human effort. Thus by repentance toward God and faith in Christ, the fallen children of Adam might once more become "sons of God." When a soul receives Christ, he receives power to live the life of Christ.

Want to know the coolest thing about the coming? Not that the One who played marbles with the stars gave it up to play marbles with marbles. Or that the One who hung the galaxies gave it up to hang doorjambs to the displeasure of a cranky client who wanted everything yesterday but couldn't pay until tomorrow. Not that he, in an instant, went from needing nothing to needing air, food, a tub of hot water and salts for his tired feet, and, more than anything, needing somebody - anybody - who was more concerned about where he would spend eternity rather than where he would spend Friday's paycheck. Or that he resisted the urge to fry the two=bit, self-appointed hall monitors of holiness who dared suggest that he was doing the work of the devil. Not that he kept his cool while the dozen best friends he ever had felt the heat and got out of the kitchen. Or that he gave no command to the angels who begged, "Just give us the nod, Lord. One word and these demons will be deviled eggs." Not that he refused to defend himself when blamed for every sin of every slut and sailor since Adam. Or that he stood silent as a million guilty verdicts echoed in the tribunal of heaven and the giver of light was left in the chill of a sinner's night. Not even that after three days in a dark hole he stepped into the Easter sunrise with a smile and a swagger and a question for lowly Lucifer - "Is that your best punch?" That was cool, incredibly cool. But want to know the coolest thing about the One who gave up the crown of heaven for a crown of thorns? He did it for you. Just for you.

If I were in heaven, Nelly, I should be extremely miserable.' 'Because you are not fit to go there,' I answered. 'All sinners would be miserable in heaven.' 'But it is not for that. I dreamt once that I was there.' 'I tell you I won't hearken to your dreams, Miss Catherine! I'll go to bed,' I interrupted again. She laughed, and held me down; for I made a motion to leave my chair. 'This is nothing,' cried she: 'I was only going to say that heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy.

This is the church that Stanley High spoke of when he said: The church has failed to tell me that I am a sinner. The church has failed to deal with me as a lost individual. The church has failed to offer me salvation in Jesus Christ alone. The church has failed to tell me of the horrible consequences of sin, the certainty of hell, and the fact that Jesus Christ alone can save. We need more of the last judgment and less of the Golden Rule, more of the living God and the living devil as well, more of a heaven to gain and a hell to shun. The church must bring me not a message of cultivation but of rebirth. I might fail that kind of church, but that kind of church will not fail me.

We adore You, O Christ, and we praise You, because by Your holy cross, You have redeemed the world. Jesus, most innocent, who neither did nor could commit a sin, was condemned to death, and moreover, to the most ignominious death of the cross. To remain a friend of Caesar, Pilate delivered Him into the hands of His enemies. A fearful crime – to condemn Innocence to death, and to offend God in order not to displease men! O innocent Jesus, having sinned, I am guilty of eternal death, but You willingly accept the unjust sentence of death, that I might live. For whom, then, shall I live, if not for You, my Lord? Should I desire to please men, I could not be Your servant. Let me, therefore, rather displease men and all the world, than not please You, O Jesus. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. Amen. Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with you. Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen. Lord Jesus, crucified, have mercy on us! The Second Station Jesus is made to carry His Cross

Although there were events that made me sad, they were never anything but small wounds that never shook my love for God. I remained faithful because I truly loved God as much as a poor sinner can love him, given his own limitations. In my heart I always had the assurance that God loved me. In our lives, everything is the gift of his Love. How then could I remain indifferent to such a great mystery? How could I not respond to the Love of the heavenly Father by dedicating my whole life to him? On

If I was to…jump. What would it feel like? Would it hurt? Would everything go black? I don’t believe in God, or heaven and hell, but I wonder—would I still scream a confession as I broke the surface of the water, in a last-bid attempt to save my soul?

To say that Christ is unable to win to Himself those who are unwilling, is to deny that all power in heaven and earth is His. To say that Christ cannot put forth His power without destroying man’s responsibility is a begging of the question here raised, for He has put forth His power and made willing those who have come to Him, and if He did this without destroying their responsibility, why “cannot” He do so with others? If He is able to win the heart of one sinner to Himself, why not that of another? To say, as is usually said, the others will not let Him, is to impeach His sufficiency. It is a question of His will. If the Lord Jesus has decreed, desired, purposed the salvation of all mankind, then the entire human race will be saved, or, otherwise, He lacks the power to make good His intentions; and in such a case it could never be said, “He shall see of the travail of His soul and be satisfied” (Isa 53:11). The issue raised involves the deity of the Saviour, for a defeated Saviour cannot be God.

The gospel Jesus spreads in the book of Luke has as one of its main themes that Jesus brings a social revolution, in which the previous systems and hierarchies of clean and unclean, sinner and saved, and up and down don't mean what they used to. God is doing a new work through Jesus, calling all people to human solidarity. Everybody is a brother, a sister. Equals, children of the God who shows no favouritism. To reject this new social order was to reject Jesus, the very movement of God in flesh and blood.

Oh, damned be those who can enjoy Heaven on behalf of the sighing and crying of the unfortunate sufferers on earth, on behalf of the mad gnashing of the sinners in hell! Let the ones who can delight themselves! I, for one, cannot! I do not wish such a Heaven…

Sanity for anyone is pretty much out of the question, as both the saint and the sinner appear only equally insane: the saint appears it for actually believing in a place of eternal torment; the sinner, for deciding to risk going to that place of eternal torment.

Think of it this way. Christ’s heart is a steady reality flowing through time. It isn’t as if his heart throbbed for his people when he was on earth but has dissipated now that he is in heaven. It’s not that his heart was flowing forth in a burst of mercy that took him all the way to the cross but has now cooled down, settling back once more into kindly indifference. His heart is as drawn to his people now as ever it was in his incarnate state. And the present manifestation of his heart for his people is his constant interceding on their behalf.

He is magnificent. He’s also the cruellest, most unbearable asshole I’ve ever come across. Want something? Pax will take it away from you. Love something? Pax will destroy it. Love him? Then Heaven help you. You’d have to be the stupidest person to walk the face of the earth.

Most churches do not grow beyond the spiritual health of their leadership. Many churches have a pastor who is trying to lead people to a Savior he has yet to personally encounter. If spiritual gifting is no proof of authentic faith, then certainly a job title isn't either. You must have a clear sense of calling before you enter ministry. Being a called man is a lonely job, and many times you feel like God has abandoned you in your ministry. Ministry is more than hard. Ministry is impossible. And unless we have a fire inside our bones compelling us, we simply will not survive. Pastoral ministry is a calling, not a career. It is not a job you pursue. If you don’t think demons are real, try planting a church! You won’t get very far in advancing God’s kingdom without feeling resistance from the enemy. If I fail to spend two hours in prayer each morning, the devil gets the victory through the day. Once a month I get away for the day, once a quarter I try to get out for two days, and once a year I try to get away for a week. The purpose of these times is rest, relaxation, and solitude with God. A pastor must always be fearless before his critics and fearful before his God. Let us tremble at the thought of neglecting the sheep. Remember that when Christ judges us, he will judge us with a special degree of strictness. The only way you will endure in ministry is if you determine to do so through the prevailing power of the Holy Spirit. The unsexy reality of the pastorate is that it involves hard work—the heavy-lifting, curse-ridden, unyielding employment of your whole person for the sake of the church. Pastoral ministry requires dogged, unyielding determination, and determination can only come from one source—God himself. Passive staff members must be motivated. Erring elders and deacons must be confronted. Divisive church members must be rebuked. Nobody enjoys doing such things (if you do, you should be not be a pastor!), but they are necessary in order to have a healthy church over the long haul. If you allow passivity, laziness, and sin to fester, you will soon despise the church you pastor. From the beginning of sacred Scripture (Gen. 2:17) to the end (Rev. 21:8), the penalty for sin is death. Therefore, if we sin, we should die. But it is Jesus, the sinless one, who dies in our place for our sins. The good news of the gospel is that Jesus died to take to himself the penalty of our sin. The Bible is not Christ-centered because it is generally about Jesus. It is Christ-centered because the Bible’s primary purpose, from beginning to end, is to point us toward the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus for the salvation and sanctification of sinners. Christ-centered preaching goes much further than merely providing suggestions for how to live; it points us to the very source of life and wisdom and explains how and why we have access to him. Felt needs are set into the context of the gospel, so that the Christian message is not reduced to making us feel better about ourselves. If you do not know how sinful you are, you feel no need of salvation. Sin-exposing preaching helps people come face-to-face with their sin and their great need for a Savior. We can worship in heaven, and we can talk to God in heaven, and we can read our Bibles in heaven, but we can’t share the gospel with our lost friends in heaven. “Would your city weep if your church did not exist?” It was crystal-clear for me. Somehow, through fear or insecurity, I had let my dreams for our church shrink. I had stopped thinking about the limitless things God could do and had been distracted by my own limitations. I prayed right there that God would forgive me of my small-mindedness. I asked God to forgive my lack of faith that God could use a man like me to bring the message of the gospel through our missionary church to our lost city. I begged God to renew my heart and mind with a vision for our city that was more like Christ's.

In vain you beg, in vain you ache, in vain you’ve opened your wrecked heart wide. Perhaps in heaven the rainclouds quake because we both have cried? This pain of ours is without a wing. The fainthearted cry can never fly. Weep and pray! What god is coming by the path of the stars up high? Abandon yourself to the dust and upon it fall in surrender. Our great mother is ever so just to every sinner who kisses her. Within a Hell of godless emptiness submit yourself ever more to sleep’s spell. All is a dream, all is nothingness: the flower of the world is the asphodel. (Trans. Michael Shindler)

For the Word created heaven and earth and all things [Ps. 33:6]; the Word must do this thing, and not we poor sinners. In short, I will preach it, teach it, write it, but I will constrain no man by force, for faith must come freely without compulsion. Take myself as an example. I opposed indulgences and all the papists, but never with force. I simply taught, preached, and wrote God’s Word; otherwise I did nothing. And while I slept [cf. Mark 4:26–29], or drank Wittenberg beer with my friends Philipp and Amsdorf, the Word so greatly weakened the papacy that no prince or emperor ever inflicted such losses upon it. I did nothing; the Word did everything. The Second Sermon, March 10, 1522, Monday after Invocavit. [Luther, M. (1999, c1959). Vol. 51: Luther’s works, vol. 51: Sermons I. (J. J. Pelikan, H. C. Oswald & H. T. Lehmann, Ed.). Luther’s Works (51:III-78). Philadelphia: Fortress Press]

ORGON. Just Heaven! Can what I hear be credited? TARTUFFE. Yes, brother, I am wicked, I am guilty, A miserable sinner, steeped in evil, The greatest criminal that ever lived. Each moment of my life is stained with soilures; And all is but a mass of crime and filth; Heaven, for my punishment, I see it plainly, Would mortify me now. Whatever wrong They find to charge me with, I'll not deny it But guard against the pride of self-defence. Believe their stories, arm your wrath against me, And drive me like a villain from your house; I cannot have so great a share of shame But what I have deserved a greater still.

At best, we are but clay, animated dust, mere walking hillocks; but viewed as sinners, we are monsters indeed. Let it be published in heaven as a wonder, that the Lord Jesus should set his heart's love upon such as we are. Dust and ashes though we be, we must and will "magnify the exceeding greatness of his grace.

Yet what moved Our Blessed Lord to invective was not badness but just such self-righteousness as this…He said that the harlots and the Quislings would enter the Kingdom of Heaven before the self-righteous and the smug. Concerning all those who endowed hospitals and libraries and public works, in order to have their names graven in stone before their fellow men, He said, “Amen I say to you, they have received their reward” (Matt. 6:2). They wanted no more than human glory, and they got it. Never once is Our Blessed Lord indignant against those who are already, in the eyes of society, below the level of law and respectability. He attacked only the sham indignation of those who dwelt more on the sin than the sinner and who felt pleasantly virtuous, because they had found someone more vicious than they. He would not condemn those whom society condemned; his severe words were for those who had sinned and had not been found out…He would not add His burden of accusation to those that had already been hurled against the winebibbers and the thieves, the cheap revolutionists, the streetwalkers, and the traitors. They were everybody’s target, and everybody knew that they were wrong…And the people who chose to make war against Our Lord were never those whom society had labeled as sinners. Of those who sentenced Him to death, none had ever had a record in the police court, had ever been arrested, was ever commonly known to be fallen or weak. But among his friends, who sorrowed at His death, were coverts drawn from thieves and from prostitutes. Those who were aligned against Him were the nice people who stood high in the community—the worldly, prosperous people, the men of big business, the judges of law courts who governed by expediency, the “civic-minded” individuals whose true selfishness was veneered over with public generosity. Such men as these opposed him and sent Him to His death.

We were looking for opportunities to share the message with people who wouldn’t be caught in a church— unless they were wheeled in via a casket! Matthew 11: 19 says this of Jesus: “The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and “sinners.”’  ” Jesus didn’t get that kind of reputation from hanging out only in temples and church buildings. Going to a bar or pool hall doesn’t mean you’re a drunk, just like sitting in a henhouse doesn’t make you a chicken. It’s the same in the opposite setting. Sitting in a church building doesn’t make you a follower of Christ. In fact, Acts 17: 24 says: “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands.” God lives in heaven and in the hearts of men and women on earth. Misunderstanding this principle is one of the reasons so many people act one way in a church building and the total opposite everywhere else.

Hell begins to look like a place God creates alongside heaven for the primary purpose of torturing sinners for eternity. But this is the wrong story. In the gospel story, heaven and earth are currently torn by sin. Our world is being ravaged by the destructive power of hell. Sin has unleashed it into God’s good world, and God is on a mission to get it out, to reconcile heaven and earth from hell’s evil influence to himself through the reconciling life of Christ. The time is coming when God’s heavenly kingdom will come down to reign on earth forever, when Jesus will cast out the corrosive powers of sin, death, and hell that have tormented his world for so long.

Not long after I'd first met Doc, we were sitting on our rock on the hill behind the rose garden and I had asked him why I was a sinner and what I had done to be condemned to eternal hellfire unless I was born again. He sat for a long time looking over the valley and then he said, "Peekay, God is too busy making the sun come and and go down and watching so the moon floats just right in the sky to be concerned with such rubbish. Only man wants always God should be there to condemn this one and save that one. Always it is man who wants to make Heaven and Hell. God is too busy training the bees to make honey and everyday opening up all the new flowers for business.

The hatred directed against the privileged in body and spirit: the revolt of the ugly and bungled souls against the beautiful, the proud, and the cheerful. The weapons used: contempt of beauty, of pride, of happiness: 'There is no such thing as merit,' 'The danger is enormous: it is right that one should tremble and feel ill at ease,' 'Naturalness is evil; it is right to oppose all that is natural — even 'reason' (all that is antinatural is elevated to the highest place). It is again the priests who exploit this condition, and who win the 'people' over to themselves. 'The sinner' over whom there is more joy in heaven than over 'the just person.' This is the struggle against 'paganism' (the pang of conscience, a measure for disturbing the harmony of the soul). The hatred of the mediocre for the exceptions, and of the herd for its independent members. (Custom actually regarded as 'morality.' The revulsion of feeling against 'egotism': that only is worth anything which is done 'for another.' 'We are all equal'; — against the love of dominion, against 'dominion' in general; — against privilege;—against sectarians, free-spirits, and sceptics; — against philosophy (a force opposing mechanical and automatic instincts); in philosophers themselves — 'the categorical imperative,' the essential nature of morality, 'general and universal.

CHURCH WINDOWS ARE MY MIRRORS Blessed are the scars and the holiness of our hearts. Only saints break it without remorse for sinners, I expect nothing else but playing their part with our gentle soul. Church windows are my mirrors and prayers my gate to heavens end - I find everything by losing myself-nothing was ever lost from the beginning.

Only penitent sinners, who are granted forgiveness, are set on fire with love for Jesus. So I can testify how impoverished a life without daily repentance is. Heaven does not draw near. The radiance of joy is missing. There is no adoration or songs of praise. Love for Jesus is not burning in one's heart. There is no power in one's ministry, and it bears no fruit.

reconciling grace, saving grace of Jesus "[In regards to struggles and potential in relationship],..we are sinner with capacity to to do great damage to ourselves and our relationships. We need God's grace to save us from ourselves. But we are also God's children, which means that we have great hope and potential-- not hope that rests on our gifts, experience, or track record, but hope that rests in Christ. Because he is in us and we are in him, it is right to say that our potential IS Christ. We are well aware that we are smack-dab in the middle of God's process of sanctification. And because this is true, we will struggle again. Selfishness, pride, an unforgiving spirit, irritation, and impatience will certainly return. But we are neither afraid nor hopeless. We have experienced what God can do in the middle of the mess. This side of heaven, relationships and ministry are always shaped in the forge of struggle. None of us get to relate to perfect people or avoid the effects of the fall on the work we attempt to do. Yet amid the mess, we find the highest joys of relationship and ministry.

This figure upon the Cross is not a MVD agent or a Gestapo inquisitor, but a Divine Physician, Who only asks that we bring our wounds to Him in order that He may heal them. If our sins be as scarlet, they shall be washed white as snow, and if they be as red as crimson, they shall be made white as wool. Was it not He Who told us, “I say to you, that even so there shall be more joy in Heaven upon one sinner that doth penance than upon ninety-nine just who need not penance” (Luke 15:7)? In the story of the prodigal, did He not describe the Father as saying, “Let us eat and make merry: because this my son was dead and is come to life again; was lost and is found” (Luke 15:23, 24)? Why is there more joy in Heaven for the repentant sinner than for the righteous? Because God’s attitude is not judgment but love. In judgment, one is not as joyful after doing wrong as before; but in love, there is joy because the danger and worry of losing that soul is past. He who is sick is loved more than he who is well, because he needs it more. Some will feign sickness to solicit love and pretend wounds that the beloved may bind them.

Truth seeks, knowledge finds. Awareness seeks, experience finds. Opinions seek, facts find. Theory seeks, certainty finds. Knowledge seeks, philosophy finds. Intelligence seeks, wisdom finds. Want seeks, need finds. Desire seeks, fulfillment finds. Contentment seeks, peace finds. Pleasure seeks, happiness finds. Laughter seeks, joy finds. Compassion seeks, mercy finds. Humility seeks, honor finds. Prudence seeks, goodness finds. Innocence seeks, freedom finds. Virtue seeks, love finds. Followers seek, leaders find. Scholars seek, sages find. Sinners seek, saints find. Religion seeks, spirituality finds. Education seeks, enlightenment finds. The mind seeks, the heart finds. The heart seeks, the soul finds. The soul seeks, the spirit finds. The spirit seeks, God finds. Reality seeks, fate finds. Experience seeks, destiny finds. Time seeks, immortality finds. The world seeks, the universe finds. The past seeks, the present finds. The present seeks, the future finds. The future seeks, eternity finds. Time seeks, eternity finds. Risk seeks, fortune finds. Peace seeks, harmony finds. Nature seeks, Heaven finds. Life seeks, Paradise finds.

He'd traveled into the afterlife, hollering for help and hearing nothing back. He knew there was no God waiting. No devil. No saints or sinners. There were only people and the stories they told themselves. People gave the heavens a voice so they had something to ask for a better harvest, a healthy child, or a milder winter. God was hope, and mankind needed hope the way it needed warmth, food, and ale. But with hope came disappointment. The downtrodden yearned for stories to explain their misfortunes, though what they really wanted was someone to blame for their misery. It was impossible to set fire to the blight that ruined your crops, but a blight was easily summoned by a witch, at which point any poor woman would do...or any old man within kicking distance.

In his High Priestly prayer, he said, “I have glorified You on the earth. I have finished the work which You have given Me to do” (John 17:4). He could shout the word “tetelestai” because he was a faithful Savior who accomplished the Father’s will. Jesus was faithful in spite of satanic opposition, in spite of the blindness and disobedience of the religious leaders, even in spite of the stupidity and slowness to believe of his own disciples. When sinful people were doing their worst, Jesus Christ was giving his best; and he did it because he loved the Father and loved a world of lost sinners. Jesus Christ is still a faithful Servant. Having finished His work on earth, he is now faithfully serving his people in heaven as High Priest and Advocate (Heb. 4:14–16; 1 John 2:1–3). When we’re tempted, we can come to his throne and receive the grace and mercy we need. If we sin, we can come to our heavenly Advocate, confess our sins, and be forgiven (1 John 1:9–2:2). He is faithful to deliver us in times of temptation (1 Cor. 10:13), faithful to forgive us when we fall, and faithful to keep us until we meet him face to face (2 Tim. 1:12; Jude 24).

I beg your pardon, Mrs. Graham - but you get on too fast. I have not yet said that a boy should be taught to rush into the snares of life, - or even wilfully to seek temptation for the sake of exercising his virtue by overcoming it; - I only say that it is better to arm and strengthen your hero, than to disarm and enfeeble the foe; - and if you were to rear an oak sapling in a hothouse, tending it carefully night and day, and shielding it from every breath of wind, you could not expect it to become a hardy tree, like that which has grown up on the mountain-side, exposed to all the action of the elements, and not even sheltered from the shock of the tempest.' 'Granted; - but would you use the same argument with regard to a girl?' 'Certainly not.' 'No; you would have her to be tenderly and delicately nurtured, like a hot-house plant - taught to cling to others for direction and support, and guarded, as much as possible, from the very knowledge of evil. But will you be so good as to inform me why you make this distinction? Is it that you think she has no virtue?' 'Assuredly not.' 'Well, but you affirm that virtue is only elicited by temptation; - and you think that a woman cannot be too little exposed to temptation, or too little acquainted with vice, or anything connected therewith. It must be either that you think she is essentially so vicious, or so feeble-minded, that she cannot withstand temptation, - and though she may be pure and innocent as long as she is kept in ignorance and restraint, yet, being destitute of real virtue, to teach her how to sin is at once to make her a sinner, and the greater her knowledge, the wider her liberty, the deeper will be her depravity, - whereas, in the nobler sex, there is a natural tendency to goodness, guarded by a superior fortitude, which, the more it is exercised by trials and dangers, is only the further developed - ' 'Heaven forbid that I should think so!' I interrupted her at last." 'Well, then, it must be that you think they are both weak and prone to err, and the slightest error, the merest shadow of pollution, will ruin the one, while the character of the other will be strengthened and embellished - his education properly finished by a little practical acquaintance with forbidden things. Such experience, to him (to use a trite simile), will be like the storm to the oak, which, though it may scatter the leaves, and snap the smaller branches, serves but to rivet the roots, and to harden and condense the fibres of the tree. You would have us encourage our sons to prove all things by their own experience, while our daughters must not even profit by the experience of others. Now I would have both so to benefit by the experience of others, and the precepts of a higher authority, that they should know beforehand to refuse the evil and choose the good, and require no experimental proofs to teach them the evil of transgression. I would not send a poor girl into the world, unarmed against her foes, and ignorant of the snares that beset her path; nor would I watch and guard her, till, deprived of self-respect and self-reliance, she lost the power or the will to watch and guard herself; - and as for my son - if I thought he would grow up to be what you call a man of the world - one that has "seen life," and glories in his experience, even though he should so far profit by it as to sober down, at length, into a useful and respected member of society - I would rather that he died to-morrow! - rather a thousand times!' she earnestly repeated, pressing her darling to her side and kissing his forehead with intense affection. He had already left his new companion, and been standing for some time beside his mother's knee, looking up into her face, and listening in silent wonder to her incomprehensible discourse. Anne Bronte, "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" (24,25)

a week;  j I give tithes of all that I get.’ 13But the tax collector,  g standing far off,  k would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but  l beat his breast, saying, ‘God,  m be merciful to me, a sinner!’ 14I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For  n everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.

The churches (even the gospel churches) are worldly in spirit, morally anemic, on the defensive, imitating instead of initiating and in a wretched state generally because for two full generations they have been told that justification is no more than a “not guilty” verdict pronounced by the heavenly Father upon a sinner who can present the magic coin faith with the wondrous “open-ses-ame” engraved upon it.

There is much I do not understand about the way humans think of punishment and forgiveness, and what happens to sinners when they die. I wish Jessamine was here to explain it to me, for the plants do not speak of heaven and hell. They speak only of the turning of the seasons and of starting anew each spring. Never despair, they counsel, for the orchard that is barren one season may bear fruit in plenty in the next.

He was the meekest and lowliest of all the sons of men, yet he spoke of coming on the clouds of heaven with the glory of God. He was so austere that evil spirits and demons cried out in terror at his coming, yet he was so genial and winsome and approachable that the children loved to play with him, and the little ones nestled in his arms. His presence at the innocent gaiety of a village wedding was like the presence of sunshine. No one was half so compassionate to sinners, yet no one ever spoke such red hot scorching words about sin. A bruised reed he would not break, his whole life was love, yet on one occasion he demanded of the Pharisees how they ever expected to escape the damnation of Hell. He was a dreamer of dreams and a seer of visions, yet for sheer stark realism He has all of our stark realists soundly beaten. He was a servant of all, washing the disciples feet, yet masterfully He strode into the temple, and the hucksters and moneychangers fell over one another to get away from the mad rush and the fire they saw blazing in His eyes. He saved others, yet at the last Himself He did not save. There is nothing in history like the union of contrasts which confronts us in the gospels. The mystery of Jesus is the mystery of divine personality.

All pulpits must passionately declare Christ to be the eternal Son of the living God, the only Savior of sinners. All preaching must boldly announce Him as the reigning Lord of heaven and earth. He must be fearlessly announced as the One before whom every knee will bow and every tongue will confess. All preaching must assert that this Jesus is the final Judge of every human life. To fulfill this sacred duty, every preacher must proclaim the full counsel of God. Every doctrine in Scripture must be delivered. Every truth must be taught. Every sin must be exposed. Every warning must be issued. And every promise must be offered. If God is to bless our preaching, the supreme majesty of Jesus Christ Himself must be expounded in our sermons. All the lines of our preaching must intersect at this highest pinnacle—Jesus Christ and Him crucified.

His biggest gripe with religion was the concept of heaven, of paradise, that we could only get there after we died. He said any philosophy that cared more about life after death than life before death wasn’t anything he could believe in. That’s why he called this farm Paradise. He said Paradise was ours if we wanted it. It was ours to make in the here and now, not something out there in the future that we had to wait for.

In accusing me of being a damnable sinner, you are cutting your own throat, Satan. You are reminding me of God's fatherly goodness toward me, that He so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. In calling me a sinner, Satan, you really comfort me above measure." With such heavenly cunning we are to meet the devil's craft and put from us the memory of sin.

We have in this parable a lively emblem of the condition and behavior of sinners in their natural state. When enriched by the bounty of the great common Father, thus do they ungratefully run from Him, 15:12. Sensual pleasures are eagerly pursued, till they have squandered away all the grace of God, 15:13. But while these pleasures continue, not a serious thought of God can find a place in their minds. And even when afflictions come upon them, 15:14, still they will endure much hardship before they will let the grace of God, concurring with His Providence, persuade them to think of a return, 15:15, 16. But when they see themselves naked, indigent, and undone, then they recover the exercise of their reason, 15:17. Then they remember the blessings they have thrown away, and pay attention to the misery they have incurred. Upon this, they resolve to return to their Father, and put the resolution immediately in practice, 15:18, 19. Behold with wonder and pleasure the gracious reception they find from Divine, injured goodness! When such a prodigal comes to his Father, He sees him afar off, 15:20. He pities, meets, embraces him, and interrupts his acknowledgments with the tokens of His returning favor, 15:21. He arrays him with the robe of a Redeemer’s righteousness, with inward and outward holiness, adorns him with all His sanctifying graces, and honors him with the tokens of adopting love, 15:22. And all this He does with unutterable delight, in that he who was lost is now found, 15:23, 24. Let no older brother murmur at this indulgence, but rather welcome the prodigal back into the family. And let those who have been thus received, wander no more, but emulate the strictest piety of those who for many years have served their heavenly Father and not transgressed His commandments.

If I were to construct a God I would furnish Him with some way and qualities and characteristics which the Present lacks. He would not stoop to ask for any man's compliments, praises, flatteries; and He would be far above exacting them. I would have Him as self-respecting as the better sort of man in these regards. He would not be a merchant, a trader. He would not buy these things. He would not sell, or offer to sell, temporary benefits of the joys of eternity for the product called worship. I would have Him as dignified as the better sort of man in this regard. He would value no love but the love born of kindnesses conferred; not that born of benevolences contracted for. Repentance in a man's heart for a wrong done would cancel and annul that sin; and no verbal prayers for forgiveness be required or desired or expected of that man. In His Bible there would be no Unforgiveable Sin. He would recognize in Himself the Author and Inventor of Sin and Author and Inventor of the Vehicle and Appliances for its commission; and would place the whole responsibility where it would of right belong: upon Himself, the only Sinner. He would not be a jealous God--a trait so small that even men despise it in each other. He would not boast. He would keep private Hs admirations of Himself; He would regard self-praise as unbecoming the dignity of his position. He would not have the spirit of vengeance in His heart. Then it would not issue from His lips. There would not be any hell--except the one we live in from the cradle to the grave. There would not be any heaven--the kind described in the world's Bibles. He would spend some of His eternities in trying to forgive Himself for making man unhappy when he could have made him happy with the same effort and he would spend the rest of them in studying astronomy.

The Kingdom of God is a tricky concept, and I was always taught it referred to our heavenly reward for being good, which, now that I actually read the Bible for myself, makes very little sense. Others say that the Kingdom of God is another way of talking about the church, and still others say that it's the dream God has for the wholeness of the world, a dream being made true little by little among us right here, right now. My answer? All of the above.

We owe all to Jesus crucified. What is your life, my brethren, but the cross? Whence comes the bread of your soul but from the cross? What is your joy but the cross? What is your delight, what is your heaven, but the Blessed One, once crucified for you, who ever liveth to make intercession for you? Cling to the cross, then, put both arms around it! Hold to the Crucified, and never let Him go. Come afresh to the cross at this moment, and rest there now and for ever! Then, with the power of God resting upon you, go forth and preach the cross! Tell out the story of the bleeding Lamb. Repeat the wondrous tale, and nothing else. Never mind how you do it, only proclaim that Jesus died for sinner. The cross held up by a babe’s hands is just as powerful as if a giant held it up. The power lies in the word itself, or rather in the Holy Spirit who works by it and with it. O glorious Christ, when I have had a vision of Thy cross, I have seen it at first like a common gibbet, and Thou wast hanging on it like a felon; but, as I have looked, I have seen it begin to rise, and tower aloft till it has reached the highest heaven, and by its mighty power has lifted up myriads to the throne of God. I have seen its arms extend and expand until they have embraced all the earth. I have seen the foot of it go down deep as our helpless miseries are; and what a vision I have had of Thy magnificence, O Thou crucified One! Brethren, believe in the power of the cross for the conversion of those around you. Do not say of any man that he cannot be saved. The blood of Jesus is omnipotent. Do not say of any district that it is too sunken, or of any class of men that they are too far gone: the word of the cross reclaims the lost. Believe it to be the power of God, and you shall find it so. Believe in Christ crucified, and preach boldly in His name, and you shall see great and gladsome things. Do not doubt the ultimate triumph of Christianity. Do not let a mistrust flit across your soul. The cross must conquer; it must blossom with a crown, a crown commensurate with the person of the Crucified, and the bitterness of His agony. His reward shall parallel His sorrows. Trust in God, and lift your banner high, and now with psalms and songs advance to battle, for the Lord of hosts is with us, the Son of the Highest leads our van. Onward, with blast of silver trumpet and shout of those that seize the spoil. Let no man’s heart fail him! Christ hath died! Atonement is complete! God is satisfied! Peace is proclaimed! Heaven glitters with proofs of mercy already bestowed upon ten thousand times ten thousand! Hell is trembling, heaven adoring, earth waiting. Advance, ye saints, to certain victory! You shall overcome through the blood of the Lamb.

Man cannot commit a sin so great as to exhaust the infinite love of God. Can there be a sin which could exceed the love of God? Think only of repentance, continual repentance, but dismiss fear altogether. Believe that God loves you as you cannot conceive; that He loves you with your sin, in your sin. It has been said of old that over one repentant sinner there is more joy in heaven than over ten righteous men. Go, and fear not. Be not bitter against men. Be not angry if you are wronged. Forgive the dead man in your heart what wrong he did you. Be reconciled with him in truth. If you are penitent, you love. And if you love you are of God. All things are atoned for, all things are saved by love. If I, a sinner, even as you are, am tender with you and have pity on you, how much more will God. Love is such a priceless treasure that you can redeem the whole world by it, and expiate not only your own sins but the sins of others.

O, Topsy, poor child, I love you!" said Eva, with a sudden burst of feeling, and laying her little thin, white hand on Topsy's shoulder; "I love you, because you haven't had any father, or mother, or friends;—because you've been a poor, abused child! I love you, and I want you to be good. I am very unwell, Topsy, and I think I shan't live a great while; and it really grieves me, to have you be so naughty. I wish you would try to be good, for my sake;—it's only a little while I shall be with you." The round, keen eyes of the black child were overcast with tears;—large, bright drops rolled heavily down, one by one, and fell on the little white hand. Yes, in that moment, a ray of real belief, a ray of heavenly love, had penetrated the darkness of her heathen soul! She laid her head down between her knees, and wept and sobbed,—while the beautiful child, bending over her, looked like the picture of some bright angel stooping to reclaim a sinner.

We all carry our sins with us. But the Lord wants to hear us say to him, “Forgive me, help me to walk, change my heart!” And the Lord can change your heart. In the Church, the God we encounter is not a merciless judge but is like the Father in the Gospel parable. You may be like the son who left home, who sank to the depths, farthest from the Gospel. When you have the strength to say, “I want to come home,” you will find the door open. God will come to meet you because he is always waiting for you—God is always waiting for you. God embraces you, kisses you, and celebrates. That is how the Lord is, that is how the tenderness of our heavenly Father is. The Lord wants us to belong to a Church that knows how to open her arms and welcome everyone, that is not a house for the few, but a house for everyone, where all can be renewed, transformed, sanctified by his love—the strongest and the weakest, sinners, the indifferent, those who feel discouraged or lost.

WHEN I DESCRIBED THE TUMOR IN MY ESOPHAGUS as a “blind, emotionless alien,” I suppose that even I couldn’t help awarding it some of the qualities of a living thing. This at least I know to be a mistake: an instance of the pathetic fallacy (angry cloud, proud mountain, presumptuous little Beaujolais) by which we ascribe animate qualities to inanimate phenomena. To exist, a cancer needs a living organism, but it cannot ever become a living organism. Its whole malice—there I go again—lies in the fact that the “best” it can do is to die with its host. Either that or its host will find the measures with which to extirpate and outlive it. But, as I knew before I became ill, there are some people for whom this explanation is unsatisfying. To them, a rodent carcinoma really is a dedicated, conscious agent—a slow–acting suicide–murderer—on a consecrated mission from heaven. You haven’t lived, if I can put it like this, until you have read contributions such as this on the websites of the faithful: Who else feels Christopher Hitchens getting terminal throat cancer [sic] was God’s revenge for him using his voice to blaspheme him? Atheists like to ignore FACTS. They like to act like everything is a “coincidence.” Really? It’s just a “coincidence” [that] out of any part of his body, Christopher Hitchens got cancer in the one part of his body he used for blasphemy? Yeah, keep believing that, Atheists. He’s going to writhe in agony and pain and wither away to nothing and then die a horrible agonizing death, and THEN comes the real fun, when he’s sent to HELLFIRE forever to be tortured and set afire. There are numerous passages in holy scripture and religious tradition that for centuries made this kind of gloating into a mainstream belief. Long before it concerned me particularly I had understood the obvious objections. First, which mere primate is so damn sure that he can know the mind of god? Second, would this anonymous author want his views to be read by my unoffending children, who are also being given a hard time in their way, and by the same god? Third, why not a thunderbolt for yours truly, or something similarly awe–inspiring? The vengeful deity has a sadly depleted arsenal if all he can think of is exactly the cancer that my age and former “lifestyle” would suggest that I got. Fourth, why cancer at all? Almost all men get cancer of the prostate if they live long enough: It’s an undignified thing but quite evenly distributed among saints and sinners, believers and unbelievers. If you maintain that god awards the appropriate cancers, you must also account for the numbers of infants who contract leukemia. Devout persons have died young and in pain. Betrand Russell and Voltaire, by contrast, remained spry until the end, as many psychopathic criminals and tyrants have also done. These visitations, then, seem awfully random. My so far uncancerous throat, let me rush to assure my Christian correspondent above, is not at all the only organ with which I have blasphemed. And even if my voice goes before I do, I shall continue to write polemics against religious delusions, at least until it’s hello darkness my old friend. In which case, why not cancer of the brain? As a terrified, half–aware imbecile, I might even scream for a priest at the close of business, though I hereby state while I am still lucid that the entity thus humiliating itself would not in fact be “me.” (Bear this in mind, in case of any later rumors or fabrications.)

One of the problems with understanding what is meant by hell is that this tiny word has been forced to carry so much freight. Over the centuries it has picked up meanings often far removed from what was originally intended in the Bible. Hell has become a catchall word for however we imagine eternal punishment in the afterlife. But the Bible doesn’t talk near as much about the afterlife as we have imagined. A surprising thing about the Old Testament is its almost total disinterest in the afterlife. We think of heaven and hell as being the stock-in-trade of religion, but this was not the case with the writers of the Hebrew Scriptures. While the pagan religions of the Gentiles made elaborate speculations about the nature of the afterlife (this was a specialty with the Egyptians and Babylonians), the Hebrews were conspicuous in having almost no afterlife theology. For the Hebrews, death was Sheol, the grave, the underworld, the abode of the dead. The Hebrew Scriptures are fundamentally concerned with this life.

FURIOUS FAVOR I wonder if David would be allowed in our churches today. In most cases, when a church member has an affair, he is shunned at best or mistreated at worst—even if he repents. But David doesn’t just have an affair. He lusts, covets, fornicates, lies, and gets another man hammered. Then he tries to keep his dirty little secrets by murdering the husband of the woman he “loves.” I doubt I’ve met anyone as sinful as David. Have you? He breaks half of the Ten Commandments in a single episode. And he doesn’t repent until he’s caught. But when Nathan shoves his prophetic finger into David’s chest and rebukes him, David falls to his knees and admits his guilt. And right then, at that moment, God rips open the heavens to reach down and touch David’s soul with stubborn delight. God eagerly forgives David for his sin, and all of it is buried at the bottom of the sea, never to be remembered again. There is no hiccup in God’s furious favor toward David. So why do repentant sinners still bear the stigma of “adulterer,” “divorced,” or “addict” in our churches today? It’s one thing if they don’t repent. But quite often we shun repentant sinners, like Jeffrey Dahmer, whose crimes we just can’t forget. “He’s the former addict.” “That’s the divorced mom.” “Here comes the guy who slept with the church secretary.” For some reason we love to define people by the sin in their lives—even past sin in their lives—rather than by the grace that forgave it. It’s no wonder that David pens the last sentence in Psalm 23: “Surely goodness and mercy shall [hunt me down] all the days of my life” (Ps. 23:6).

God’s Search for Sinners Tax collectors and sinners gathered to hear Jesus. Pharisees and other religious people grumbled: “Jesus welcomes sinners and even eats with them.” So Jesus told them this story: “Suppose you have a hundred sheep and lose one. Don’t you leave the ninety-nine to search for the lost sheep? When you find it you return with joy. You say to your friends, ‘Rejoice with me! I’ve found my lost sheep.’ So listen to me. There’s great joy in heaven when one sinner turns away from sin. Much more than ninety-nine lawkeepers like you.

ANA. Thank you: I am going to heaven for happiness. I have had quite enough of reality on earth. DON JUAN. Then you must stay here; for hell is the home of the unreal and of the seekers for happiness. It is the only refuge from heaven, which is, as I tell you, the home of the masters of reality, and from earth, which is the home of the slaves of reality. The earth is a nursery in which men and women play at being heroes and heroines, saints and sinners; but they are dragged down from their fool’s paradise by their bodies: hunger and cold and thirst, age and decay and disease, death above all, make them slaves of reality: thrice a day meals must be eaten and digested: thrice a century anew generation must be engendered: ages of faith, of romance, and of science are all driven at last to have but one prayer “Make me a healthy animal.” But here you escape this tyranny of the flesh; for here you are not an animal at all: you are a ghost, an appearance, an illusion, a convention, deathless, ageless: in a word, bodiless. There are no social questions here, no political questions, no religious questions, best of all, perhaps, no sanitary questions. Here you call your appearance beauty, your emotions love, your sentiments heroism, your aspirations virtue, just as you did on earth; but here there are no hard facts to contradict you, no ironic contrast of your needs with your pretensions, no human comedy, nothing but a perpetual romance, a universal melodrama. As our German friend put it in his poem, “the poetically nonsensical here is good sense; and the Eternal Feminine draws us ever upward and on”—without getting us a step farther. And yet you want to leave this paradise!

on a volunteer's shoulders to see Donald break the English muffin. I understood why Christians imagined the kingdom of heaven as a feast: a banquet where nobody was excluded, where the weakest and most broken, the worst sinners and outcasts, were honored guests who welcomed one another in peace and shared their food. “Let this broken bread and shared wine be a foretaste of your kingdom,” we sang, “and bring us finally to your heavenly Table, where no one is left behind, and we will join with saints and angels at the feast you have prepared from the beginning.

God rejoices when one repentant sinner returns. Statistically that is not very interesting. But for God, numbers never seem to matter. Who knows whether the world is kept from destruction because of one, two, or three people who have continued to pray when the rest of humanity has lost hope and dissipated itself? From God’s perspective, one hidden act of repentance, one little gesture of selfless love, one moment of true forgiveness is all that is needed to bring God from his throne to run to his returning son and to fill the heavens with sounds of divine joy.

One who uses the morning prayer from A Manual of Eastern Orthodox Prayers will not only begin each day with the sign of the cross and an invocation of the Trinity, but will next say this: God, be merciful to me, a sinner. And then there follows a prayer to the Holy Spirit: O Heavenly King, O Comforter, the Spirit of truth, who are everywhere and fillest all things, the treasure of blessings, and giver of life, come and abide in us. In truth Orthodox fashion, the next sentence brings back the matter of sin: Cleanse us from all impurity, and of thy goodness save our souls.

We are all sinners in need of a savior. God came to earth in the person of Jesus to redeem and gather His people. He healed the sick, cast out demons, and taught about the kingdom of heaven. Labeled a blasphemous heretic by religious leaders, He was crucified on a cross but rose from the dead three days later at a real time in recorded history, in a real location. He revealed Himself to hundreds of real eyewitnesses, claiming that anyone who believed in Him would have peace, rest, and, most importantly, eternal life in a place where all tears would be wiped away, forever.

The center of the Christian message and the essential core of all biblical counseling is that Jesus, who existed eternally as God, came down from heaven and became a man, lived a life of unceasing and perfect love for God and neighbor, died in the place of sinners (and never sinned Himself) to bear the penalty of righteous wrath for their sins, rose to life to conquer death and give life to those who believe, presently intercedes for His followers, and anticipates a future return when He makes all things new and establishes a never-ending kingdom. (The Bible calls this message “the gospel.

Eventually I reached a crisis point concerning what the gospel is and how it should be preached. To a large extent, this came about when I began to seriously read the apostolic sermons found in the book of Acts. I had to admit the apostles did not preach the gospel the way I was preaching it. (“Pray the sinner’s prayer so you can go to heaven when you die.”) In fact, in the eight gospel sermons found in the book of Acts, not one of them is based on afterlife issues! Instead they proclaimed that the world now had a new emperor and his name was Jesus! Their witness was this: the Galilean Jew, Jesus of Nazareth, had been executed by Roman crucifixion, but God had vindicated him by raising him from the dead. The world now had a new boss: Jesus the Christ. What the world’s new Lord (think emperor) is doing is saving the world. This includes the personal forgiveness of sins and the promise of being with the Lord in the interim between death and resurrection as well as after the resurrection, but the whole project is much, much bigger than that—the world is to be repaired! Now that is a gospel I can get excited about! A gospel that isn’t reserved for the sweet by-and-by, but a gospel that is for the here and now!

But, uncle, isn’t it possible to make other songs, new songs?” “Why make them? There are enough for everything. There are songs for when you are sad, and for when you are gay; for when you are weary, and for when you are thinking of home; for when you despise yourself, because you have been a vile sinner, a worm upon the earth; for when you want to weep, because people have not been kind to you; and for when your heart is glad because the world is beautiful, and you see God’s heaven, which, like Him, is always kind, and seems to laugh at you…. There are songs for everything, everything. Why should I make them?

I thumped her on the back, picked her up and dropped her on top of her dungarees. “Put them pants on,” I said, “and be a man.” She did, but she cried quietly until I shook her and said gently, “Stop it now. I didn’t carry on like that when I was a little girl.” I got into my clothes and dumped her into the bow of the canoe and shoved off. All the way back to the cabin I forced her to play one of our pet games. I would say something—anything—and she would try to say something that rhymed with it. Then it would be her turn. She had an extraordinary rhythmic sense, and an excellent ear. I started off with “We’ll go home and eat our dinners.” “An’ Lord have mercy on us sinners,” she cried. Then, “Let’s see you find a rhyme for ‘month’!” “I bet I’ll do it … jutht thith onthe,” I replied. “I guess I did it then, by cracky.” “Course you did, but then you’re wacky. Top that, mister funny-lookin’!” I pretended I couldn’t, mainly because I couldn’t, and she soundly kicked my shin as a penance. By the time we reached the cabin she was her usual self, and I found myself envying the resilience of youth. And she earned my undying respect by saying nothing to Anjy about the afternoon’s events, even when Anjy looked us over and said, “Just look at you two filthy kids! What have you been doing—swimming in the bayou?” “Daddy splashed me,” said Patty promptly. “And you had to splash him back. Why did he splash you?” “ ’Cause I spit mud through my teeth at him to make him mad,” said my outrageous child. “Patty!” “Mea culpa,” I said, hanging my head. “ ’Twas I who spit the mud.” Anjy threw up her hands. “Heaven knows what sort of a woman Patty’s going to grow up to be,” she said, half angrily. “A broad-minded and forgiving one like her lovely mother,” I said quickly. “Nice work, bud,” said Patty. Anjy laughed. “Outnumbered again. Come in and feed the face.

This is often the primary difference between him and so many of those of us who follow him. When we encounter the many ills of the world, we find ourselves growing more and more callous toward people, more and more judgmental, less and less hopeful. Rather than seeing the hurting humanity we encounter every day as an opportunity to be the very loving presence of Jesus, we see them as reason to withdraw from it all. Faith becomes about retreating from the world when it should be about moving toward it. As we walk deeper into organized religion, we run the risk of eventually becoming fully blind to the tangible suffering around us, less concerned about mending wounds or changing systems, and more preoccupied with saving or condemning souls. In this way, the spiritual eyes through which we see the world change everything. If our default lens is sin, we tend to look ahead to the afterlife, but if we focus on suffering, we’ll lean toward presently transforming the planet in real time—and we’ll create community accordingly. The former seeks to help people escape the encroaching moral decay by getting them into heaven; the latter takes seriously the prayer Jesus teaches his disciples, that they would make the kingdom come—that through lives resembling Christ and work that perpetuates his work, we would actually bring heaven down. Practically speaking, sin management seems easier because essentially all that is required of us is to preach, to call out people’s errors and invite them to repentance, and to feel we’ve been faithful. But seeing suffering requires us to step into the broken, jagged chaos of people’s lives to be agents of healing and change. It’s far more time consuming and much more difficult to do as a faith community. It is a lot easier to train preachers to lead people in a Sinner’s Prayer than it is to equip them to address the systematic injustices around them.

Ilya Kovylin, a Moscow merchant born in 1731 and one of the founders of the Old Believer sect of the Fedoseevtsy, taught his followers that “without sin there is no repentance, without repentance no salvation. There will be many sinners in heaven.” It was Kovylin who coined the famous (or infamous) phrase “If you don’t sin, you don’t repent, if you don’t repent, you can’t be saved.” This Kovylin is immensely important, for his words have mistakenly been attributed to Rasputin, as if he spoke them first, having himself created some new perversion, when in fact they have a much older tradition and represent an idea shared by various sectarian groups.

By this rite they were pledged to fulfill, on their part, the conditions of the covenant made with Abraham. They were not to contract marriages with the heathen; for by so doing they would lose their reverence for God and his holy law; they would be tempted to engage in the sinful practices of other nations, and would be seduced into idolatry. God conferred great honor upon Abraham. Angels of heaven walked and talked with him as friend with friend. When judgments were about to be visited upon Sodom, the fact was not hidden from him, and he became an intercessor with God for sinners. His interview with the angels presents also a beautiful example of hospitality.

Ah! Gentle, gracious Dove, And art thou grieved in me, That sinners should restrain thy love, And say, “It is not free: It is not free for all: The most, thou passest by, And mockest with a fruitless call Whom thou hast doomed to die.” They think thee not sincere In giving each his day, “ Thou only draw’st the sinner near To cast him quite away, To aggravate his sin, His sure damnation seal: Thou show’st him heaven, and say’st, go in And thrusts him into hell.” O HORRIBLE DECREE Worthy of whence it came! Forgive their hellish blasphemy Who charge it on the Lamb: Whose pity him inclined To leave his throne above, The friend, and Saviour of mankind, The God of grace, and love. O gracious, loving Lord, I feel thy bowels yearn; For those who slight the gospel word I share in thy concern: How art thou grieved to be By ransomed worms withstood! How dost thou bleed afresh to see Them trample on thy blood! To limit thee they dare, Blaspheme thee to thy face, Deny their fellow-worms a share In thy redeeming grace: All for their own they take, Thy righteousness engross, Of none effect to most they make The merits of thy cross. Sinners, abhor the fiend: His other gospel hear— “The God of truth did not intend The thing his words declare, He offers grace to all, Which most cannot embrace, Mocked with an ineffectual call And insufficient grace. “The righteous God consigned Them over to their doom, And sent the Saviour of mankind To damn them from the womb; To damn for falling short, “Of what they could not do, For not believing the report Of that which was not true. “The God of love passed by The most of those that fell, Ordained poor reprobates to die, And forced them into hell.” “He did not do the deed” (Some have more mildly raved) “He did not damn them—but decreed They never should be saved. “He did not them bereave Of life, or stop their breath, His grace he only would not give, And starved their souls to death.” Satanic sophistry! But still, all-gracious God, They charge the sinner’s death on thee, Who bought’st him with thy blood. They think with shrieks and cries To please the Lord of hosts, And offer thee, in sacrifice Millions of slaughtered ghosts: With newborn babes they fill The dire infernal shade, “For such,” they say, “was thy great will, Before the world was made.” How long, O God, how long Shall Satan’s rage proceed! Wilt thou not soon avenge the wrong, And crush the serpent’s head? Surely thou shalt at last Bruise him beneath our feet: The devil and his doctrine cast Into the burning pit. Arise, O God, arise, Thy glorious truth maintain, Hold forth the bloody sacrifice, For every sinner slain! Defend thy mercy’s cause, Thy grace divinely free, Lift up the standard of thy cross, Draw all men unto thee. O vindicate thy grace, Which every soul may prove, Us in thy arms of love embrace, Of everlasting love. Give the pure gospel word, Thy preachers multiply, Let all confess their common Lord, And dare for him to die. My life I here present, My heart’s last drop of blood, O let it all be freely spent In proof that thou art good, Art good to all that breathe, Who all may pardon have: Thou willest not the sinner’s death, But all the world wouldst save. O take me at my word, But arm me with thy power, Then call me forth to suffer, Lord, To meet the fiery hour: In death will I proclaim That all may hear thy call, And clap my hands amidst the flame, And shout,—HE DIED FOR ALL

Moses saw the burning burn, yet the bush was not consumed. He turned aside at the wonder of it all, and in doing so, he came into the presence of God. It changed him forever! Why do we not see changes like this in every new believer? I am convinced it is our fault—we do not expect anything, and often become quite uncomfortable when someone we would lead to Christ expresses emotion. So we carefully prepare tracts that explain perfectly the doctrine, but we make no preparation for what might happen if the person should, God forbid, actually be overwhelmed by the spirit. We do not act like we even believe much has happened, yet the Bible says the angels in heaven rejoice over one sinner finding his way back.

IT MAY FEEL LIKE A GAMBLE TO YOU, BUT IT IS NO GAMBLE TO GOD. God has shown all of His cards, revealing breathtaking protection. He says, in essence, “What if I tell them who they now are? What if I take away any element of fear? What if I tell them I will always love them? That I love them right now, as much as I love my only Son? “What if I tell them there are no logs of past offenses, of how little they pray, or how often they’ve let me down? What if I tell them they are actually righteous, right now? What if I tell them I’m crazy about them? What if I tell them that, if I’m their Savior, they’re going to heaven no matter what—it’s a done deal? What if I tell them they have a new nature, that they are saints, not saved sinners? What if I tell them I actually live in them now, my love, power, and nature at their disposal? “What if I tell them they don’t have to put on masks? That they don’t need to pretend we’re close? “What if they knew that, when they mess up, I’ll never retaliate? What if they were convinced bad circumstances aren’t my way of evening the score? What if they knew the basis of our friendship isn’t how little they sin, but how much they allow me to love them? What if I tell them they can hurt my heart but I’ll never hurt theirs? What if I tell them they can open their eyes when they pray and still go to heaven? What if I tell them there is no secret agenda, no trapdoor? What if I tell them it isn’t about their self-effort, but about allowing me to live my life through them?

Christianity throws you in hell for eternity. Such an absurd assumption! Christianity accepts only one life. In one life how many sins can you commit? If you continuously commit sins day and night for seventy years, from the first day to the last you go on like a chain-sinner, then too eternal punishment cannot be justified. Eternal punishment…forever? There will be no end to it! And I don’t think you commit sins continuously every moment. A man may commit a few sins…may go to a jail for four years, five years; it may be justified. But eternal hell? So they are exploiting your fear: fear of hell and greed for pleasure in heaven. That has been their total pattern of working on the human mind. I want to say to you that they are only so-called religions. They are not religions at all.

Sinner’s Prayer Heavenly Father, I come to you in prayer asking forgiveness for my sins. I believe that Jesus died for my sins and was resurrected sitting on the right hand of the Father. Through Jesus, I believe I have eternal life. I believe that His death and resurrection provided for my forgiveness. I trust in Jesus and Jesus alone as my personal Lord and Savior. Thank you Lord, for saving me and forgiving me! I ask you right now to come into my heart and I give you my life. I accept Jesus as my personal savior. I confess with my mouth that I am born again. Fill me with your Holy Spirit and cleanse me Lord. Make me new in you. I receive your Holy Spirit and can begin a new life now in you Jesus. Help and guide me daily to read your word and to walk with you God. In Jesus’ name Amen.

Your dissatisfaction with the Church seems to me to come from an incomplete understanding of sin. This will perhaps surprise you because you are very conscious of the sins of Catholics; however what you seem actually to demand is that the Church put the kingdom of heaven on earth right here now, that the Holy Ghost be translated at once into all flesh. The Holy Spirit rarely shows Himself on the surface of anything. You are asking that man return at once to the state God created him in, you are leaving out the terrible radical human pride that causes death. Christ was crucified on earth and the Church is crucified in time, and the Church is crucified by all of us, by her members most particularly because she is a Church of sinners. Christ never said that the Church would be operated in a sinless or intelligent way, but that it would not teach error. This does not mean that each and every priest won’t teach error but that the whole Church speaking through the Pope will not teach error in matters of faith. The Church is founded on Peter who denied Christ three times and couldn’t walk on the water by himself. You are expecting his successors to walk on the water. All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful. Priests resist it as well as others. To have the Church be what you want it to be would require the continuous miraculous meddling of God in human affairs, whereas it is our dignity that we are allowed more or less to get on with those graces that come through faith and the sacraments and which work through our human nature. God has chosen to operate in this manner. We can’t understand this but we can’t reject it without rejecting life.

What franticke fit (quoth he) hath thus distraught Thee, foolish man, so rash a doome to give? What justice ever other judgement taught, But he should die, who merites not to live? None else to death this man despayring drive, But his owne guiltie mind deserving death. Is then unjust to each his due to give? Or let him die, that loatheth living breath? Or let him die at ease, that liveth here uneath? Who travels by the wearie wandring way, To come unto his wished home in haste, And meetes a flood, that doth his passage stay, Is not great grace to helpe him over past, Or free his feet, that in the myre sticke fast? Most envious man, that grieves at neighbours good, And fond, that joyest in the woe thou hast, Why wilt not let him passe, that long hath stood Upon the banke, yet wilt thy selfe not passe the flood? He there does now enjoy eternall rest And happie ease, which thou doest want and crave, And further from it daily wanderest: What if some litle paine the passage have, That makes fraile flesh to feare the bitter wave? Is not short paine well borne, that brings long ease, And layes the soule to sleepe in quiet grave? Sleepe after toyle, port after stormie seas, Ease after warre, death after life does greatly please. [...] Is not his deed, what ever thing is donne, In heaven and earth? did not he all create To die againe? all ends that was begonne. Their times in his eternall booke of fate Are written sure, and have their certaine date. Who then can strive with strong necessitie, That holds the world in his still chaunging state, Or shunne the death ordaynd by destinie? When houre of death is come, let none aske whence, nor why. The lenger life, I wote the greater sin, The greater sin, the greater punishment: All those great battels, which thou boasts to win, Through strife, and bloud-shed, and avengement, Now praysd, hereafter deare thou shalt repent: For life must life, and bloud must bloud repay. Is not enough thy evill life forespent? For he, that once hath missed the right way, The further he doth goe, the further he doth stray. Then do no further goe, no further stray, But here lie downe, and to thy rest betake, Th'ill to prevent, that life ensewen may. For what hath life, that may it loved make, And gives not rather cause it to forsake? Feare, sicknesse, age, losse, labour, sorrow, strife, Paine, hunger, cold, that makes the hart to quake; And ever fickle fortune rageth rife, All which, and thousands mo do make a loathsome life. Thou wretched man, of death hast greatest need, If in true ballance thou wilt weigh thy state: For never knight, that dared warlike deede, More lucklesse disaventures did amate: Witnesse the dongeon deepe, wherein of late Thy life shut up, for death so oft did call; And though good lucke prolonged hath thy date, Yet death then, would the like mishaps forestall, Into the which hereafter thou maiest happen fall. Why then doest thou, O man of sin, desire To draw thy dayes forth to their last degree? Is not the measure of thy sinfull hire High heaped up with huge iniquitie, Against the day of wrath, to burden thee? Is not enough, that to this Ladie milde Thou falsed hast thy faith with perjurie, And sold thy selfe to serve Duessa vilde, With whom in all abuse thou hast thy selfe defilde? Is not he just, that all this doth behold From highest heaven, and beares an equall eye? Shall he thy sins up in his knowledge fold, And guiltie be of thine impietie? Is not his law, Let every sinner die: Die shall all flesh? what then must needs be donne, Is it not better to doe willinglie, Then linger, till the glasse be all out ronne? Death is the end of woes: die soone, O faeries sonne.

As Thomas Watson beautifully wrote long ago: The first fruit of love is the musing of the mind upon God. He who is in love, his thoughts are ever upon the object. He who loves God is ravished and transported with the contemplation of God. “When I awake, I am still with thee” (Ps. 139:18). The thoughts are as travellers in the mind. David’s thoughts kept heaven-road, “I am still with Thee.” God is the treasure, and where the treasure is, there is the heart. By this we may test our love to God. What are our thoughts most upon? Can we say we are ravished with delight when we think on God? Have our thoughts got wings? Are they fled aloft? Do we contemplate Christ and glory? Oh, how far are they from being lovers of God, who scarcely ever think of God! “God is not in all his thoughts” (Ps. 10:4). A sinner crowds God out of his thoughts. He never thinks of God, unless with horror, as the prisoner thinks of the judge.

The Lord’s Prayer Expanded Our Father, Holy Father, Abba Father, in the heavens, Hallowed, holy, sacred be your name. From the rising of the sun, to the going down of the same, The name of the Lord is to be praised. Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of hosts, The whole earth is full of your glory. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God almighty, Who was and is and is to come. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, On earth as it is in heaven. Thy government come, thy politics be done, On earth as it is in heaven. Thy reign and rule come, thy plans and purposes be done, On earth as it is in heaven. May we be an anticipation of the age to come. May we embody the reign of Christ here and now. Give us day by day our daily bread. Provide for the poor among us. As we seek first your kingdom and your justice, May all we need be provided for us. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Transform us by the Holy Spirit into a forgiving community of forgiven sinners. Lead us not into trouble, trial, tribulation or temptation. Be mindful of our frame, we are but dust, We can only take so much. Lead us out of the wilderness into the promised land that flows with milk and honey, Lead us out of the badlands into resurrection country. Deliver us from evil and the evil one. Save us from Satan, the accuser and adversary. So that no weapon formed against us shall prosper. So that every tongue that rises against us in accusation you will condemn. So that every fiery dart of the wicked one is extinguished by the shield of faith. So that as we submit to you and resist the devil, the devil flees. So that as we draw near to Jesus Christ lifted up, His cross becomes for us the axis of love expressed in forgiveness, That refounds the world; And the devil, who became the false ruler of the fallen world, Is driven out from among us. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever. Amen

ZOE given some liberty from heaven God young and a rebel Is this why you chose me up against it all I wonder what's in store for this rebel you say I reveal? but I don't think I have that rebel appeal but I am radical in a heavenly sort of way and all the other angels do look up to me but only every other day and you still love me God with delight you often say you once said "when you grow then you will know as the rebel in you will show" this rebel you say I will reveal I don't think I have that rebel appeal but I am radical in a moral religious purity way but all the other angels did say that I really should read that Bible before I pray my morals do seem to sway sent to this world of giveaway this world of moral decay get these sinners back on side fixated on my holy ride this rebel you say I reveal I don't think I have that rebel appeal I know this rebel you want to see but this rebel I don't think it is in me revolutionist revolutionary rebellious rebelliously rebel I don't think I am but I do like to sell God's plan

One sees more and more that folk either have head religion or dead religion, or a very shallow view of the real thing. It seems these days the average evangelist offers too much for too little. A shallow repentance, if that is what it can be called, is accepted and then the person is guaranteed immunity from divine justice, eternal security, escape from hell, and the title deed to a first class mansion in heaven. What a travesty of the real thing. May God pity us. Newsweek has reported that six prominent Americans have been converted to Christianity recently. But none mentioned conviction of sin or of receiving Christ as Lord. So I see more than ever the weakness of modern evangelism. We get folks to walk an aisle and say a sinner’s prayer to ask forgiveness. But when do sinners, who are rebels against God, ever cry for mercy? Mercy, like repentance, is a dirty word with most evangelists. The old school view of evangelism is that people did not come to an altar for five minutes and leave, but would stay seeking the face of God until they had a real breakthrough.

Are you angry today? Let us not be too quick to assume our anger is sinful. After all, the Bible positively orders us to be angry when occasion calls for it (Ps. 4:4; Eph. 4:26). Perhaps you have reason to be angry. Perhaps you have been sinned against, and the only appropriate response is anger. Be comforted by this: Jesus is angry alongside you. He joins you in your anger. Indeed, he is angrier than you could ever be about the wrong done to you. Your just anger is a shadow of his. And his anger, unlike yours, has zero taint of sin in it. As you consider those who have wronged you, let Jesus be angry on your behalf. His anger can be trusted. For it is an anger that springs from his compassion for you. The indignation he felt when he came upon mistreatment of others in the Gospels is the same indignation he feels now in heaven upon mistreatments of you. In that knowledge, release your debtor and breathe again. Let Christ’s heart for you not only wash you in his compassion but also assure you of his solidarity in rage against all that distresses you, most centrally death and hell.

The man in this picture represents one of a thousand: he can conceive children,t travail in birth with children,-' and nurse them himself when they are born. You see him with his eyes lifted up to Heaven, the best of books in his hand and the law of truth written on his lips. All this is to show you that his work is to know and unfold dark things to sinners. You see him pleading with men, the world cast behind him, and a crown hanging over his head to show you that by rejecting and despising the things of this present world for the love that he has for his Master's service, he is sure to have glory as his reward in the world to come. I have shown you this picture first because the man whom it represents is the only man authorized by the Lord of the place where you are going to be your guide in all the difficult places you will encounter on the way. So pay attention to what I have shown you, and keep this picture foremost in your mind, so that if you meet with someone who doesn't resemble this picture's likeness but who pretends to lead you in the right way, you will not follow him down to destruction." Then

A monk lived near the temple of Shiva. In the house opposite lived a prostitute. Noticing the large number of men who visited her, the monk decided to speak to her. ‘You are a great sinner,’ he said sternly. ‘You reveal your lack of respect for God every day and every night. Do you never stop to think about what will happen to you after your death?’ The poor woman was very shaken by what the monk said. She prayed to God out of genuine repentance, begging His forgiveness. She also asked the Almighty to help her to find another means of earning her living. But she could find no other work and, after going hungry for a week, she returned to prostitution. But each time she gave her body to a stranger, she would pray to the Lord for forgiveness. Annoyed that his advice had had no effect, the monk thought to himself: ‘From now on, I’m going to keep a count of the number of men who go into that house, until the day the sinner dies.’ And from that moment on, he did nothing but watch the comings and goings at the prostitute’s house, and for each man who went in, he added a stone to a pile of stones by his side. After some time, the monk again spoke to the prostitute and said: ‘You see that pile of stones? Each stone represents a mortal sin committed by you, despite all my warnings. I say to you once more: do not sin again!’ Seeing how her sins accumulated, the woman began to tremble. Returning home, she wept tears of real repentance and prayed to God: ‘O Lord, when will Your mercy free me from this wretched life?’ Her prayer was heard. That same day, the angel of death came to her house and carried her off. On God’s orders, the angel crossed the street and took the monk with him too. The prostitute’s soul went straight up to Heaven, while the devils bore the monk down into Hell. They passed each other on the way, and when the monk saw what was happening, he cried out: ‘Is this Your justice, O Lord? I spent my whole life in devotion and poverty and now I am carried off into Hell, while that prostitute, who lived all her life steeped in sin, is borne aloft up to Heaven!’ Hearing this, one of the angels replied: Angels are always just. You thought that God’s love meant judging the behaviour of your neighbour. While you filled your heart with the impurity of another’s sin, this woman prayed fervently day and night. Her soul is so light after all the tears she has shed that we can easily bear her up to Paradise. Your soul is so weighed down with stones it is too heavy to lift.

Hebrews 4:12–16: For the Word that God speaks is alive and full of power—making it active, operative, energizing and effective; it is sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating to the dividing line of the breath of life (soul) and [the immortal] spirit, and of joints and marrow [of the deepest parts of our nature], exposing and sifting and analyzing and judging the very thoughts and purposes of the heart. And not a creature exists that is concealed from His sight, but all things are open and exposed, naked and defenseless to the eyes of Him with Whom we have to do. Inasmuch then as we have a great High Priest Who has [already] ascended and passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession [of faith in Him], For we do not have a High Priest Who is unable to understand and sympathize and have a fellow feeling with our weaknesses and infirmities and liability to the assaults of temptation, but One Who has been tempted in every respect as we are, yet without sinning. Let us then fearlessly and confidently and boldly draw near to the throne of grace—the throne of God's unmerited favor [to us sinners]; that we may receive mercy [for our failures] and find grace to help in good time for every need—appropriate help and well-timed help, coming just when we need it. (AMP)

In the chapter entitled “You Can’t Pray a Lie” in Twain’s beloved novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck Finn has helped hide Miss Watson’s runaway slave, Jim. But Huck thought he was committing a sin in helping a runaway slave. Huck had learned in Sunday school “that people that acts as I’d been acting … goes to everlasting fire.” So in an act of repentance in order to save his soul, Huck wrote a note to Miss Watson and told her where she could find her runaway slave. Now Huck was ready to pray his “sinner’s prayer” and “get saved.” I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn’t do it straight off but laid the paper down and set there thinking—thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me all the time: in the day and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a-floating along, talking and singing and laughing. But somehow I couldn’t seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I’d see him standing my watch on top of his’n, ‘stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him again in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey and pet me and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had smallpox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world and the only he’s got now; and then I happened to look around and see the paper. It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: “All right, then, I’ll go to hell”—and tore it up. It was awful thoughts and awful words but they was said. And I let them stay said; and never thought no more about reforming.1 Huck Finn had been shaped by the Christianity he’d found in his Missouri Sunday school—a Christianity focused on heaven in the afterlife while preserving the status quo of the here and now. Huck thought that helping Jim escape from slavery was a sin, because that’s what he had been taught. He knew he couldn’t ask God to forgive him until he was ready to “repent” and betray Jim. Huck didn’t want to go to hell; he wanted to be saved. But Huck loved his friend more, so he was willing to go to hell in order to save his friend from slavery.

Efficacious Novena to the Sacred Heart of Jesus   Recited daily by Padre Pio for those who requested his prayer. The prayer was written by St. Margaret Mary Alacoque.   I. O my Jesus, you have said: "Truly I say to you, ask and you will receive, seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened to you." Behold I knock, I seek and ask for the grace of...... (here name your request) Our Father....Hail Mary....Glory Be to the Father....Sacred Heart of Jesus, I place all my trust in you.     II. O my Jesus, you have said: "Truly I say to you, if you ask anything of the Father in my name, he will give it to you." Behold, in your name, I ask the Father for the grace of.......(here name your request) Our Father...Hail Mary....Glory Be To the Father....Sacred Heart of Jesus, I place all my trust in you.   III. O my Jesus, you have said: "Truly I say to you, heaven and earth will pass away but my words will not pass away." Encouraged by your infallible words I now ask for the grace of.....(here name your request) Our Father....Hail Mary....Glory Be to the Father...Sacred Heart of Jesus, I place all my trust in you.   O Sacred Heart of Jesus, for whom it is impossible not to have compassion on the afflicted, have pity on us miserable sinners and grant us the grace which we ask of you, through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, your tender Mother and ours. Say the Hail, Holy Queen and add: St. Joseph, foster father of Jesus, pray for us.

Well, Mr Markham, you that maintain that a boy should not be shielded from evil, but sent out to battle against it, alone and unassisted - not taught to avoid the snares of life, but boldly to rush into them, or over them, as he may - to seek danger rather than shun it, and feed his virtue by temptation - would you-' 'I beg your pardon, Mrs Graham - but you get on too fast. I have not yet said that a boy should be taught to rush into the snares of life - or even wilfully to seek temptation for the sake of exercising his virtue by overcoming it - I only say that it is better to arm and strengthen your hero, than to disarm and enfeeble the foe; and if you were to rear an oak sapling in a hot-house, tending it carefully night and day, and shielding it from every breath of wind, you could not expect it to become a hardy tree, like that which has grown up on the mountain-side, exposed to all the action of the elements, and not even sheltered form the shock of the tempest.' 'Granted; but would you use the same arguments with regard to a girl?' 'Certainly not.' 'No; you would have her to be tenderly and delicately nurtured, like a hot-house plant - taught to cling to others for direction and support, and guarded, as much as possible, from the very knowledge of evil. But will you be so good as to inform me why you make this distinction? Is it that you think she has no virtue?' 'Assuredly not.' 'Well, but you affirm that virtue is only elicited by temptation; and you think that a woman cannot be too little exposed to temptation, or too little acquainted with vice, or anything connected therewith. It must be, either, that you think she is essentially so vicious, or so feeble-minded that she cannot withstand temptation - and though she may be pure and innocent as long as she is kept in ignorance and restraint, yet, being destitute of real virtue, to teach her how to sin, is at once to make her a sinner, and the greater her knowledge, the wider her liberty, the deeper will be her depravity - whereas, in the nobler sex, there is a natural tendency to goodness, guarded by a superior fortitude, which, the more it is exercised by trials and dangers, it is only further developed-' 'Heaven forbid that I should think so!' I interrupted her at last. 'Well then, it must be that you think they are both weak and prone to err, and the slightest error, the nearest shadow of pollution, will ruin the one, while the character of the other will be strengthened and embellished - his education properly finished by a little practical acquaintance with forbidden things. Such experience, to him (to use a trite simile), will be like the storm to the oak, which, though it may scatter the leaves, and snap the smaller branches, serves but to rivet the roots, and to harden and condense the fibres of the tree. You would have us encourage our sons to prove all things by their own experience, while our daughters must not even profit by the experience of others.

Not long after I'd first met Doc, we were sitting on our rock on the hill behind the rose garden and I had asked him why I was a sinner and what I had done to be condemned to eternal hell fire unless I was born again. He sat for a long time looking over the valley, and then he said, :Peekay, God is too busy making the sun come up and go down and watching so the moon floats just right in the sky to be concerned with such rubbish. Only man ants always God should be there to condemn this on and save that one. Always it is man who wants to make heaven and hell. God is too busy training the bees to make honey and every morning opening up all the new flowers for business."He paused and smiled "In Mexico there is a cactus that even sometimes you would think God forgets. But no, my friend, this is not so. On a full moon in the desert every one hundred years he remembers and he opens up a single flower to bloom. And if you should be there and you see this beautiful cactus blossom painted silver by the moon and laughing up at the stars, this, Peekay, is heaven.: He looked at me, his deep blue eyes sharp and penetrating. "This is the faith in God the cactus has". We had sat for a while before he spoke again. "it is better just to get on with the business living and minding your own business and maybe, if God likes the way you do things, he may just let you flower for a day or a night. But don't go pestering and begging and telling him all your stupid little sins, that way you will spoil his day. Absoloodle.

As the violence of the storm increased, trees, buildings, rocks, and earth were hurled in every direction. The terror of man and beast was beyond description. Above the roar of the tempest was heard the wailing of a people that had despised the authority of God. Satan himself, who was compelled to remain in the midst of the warring elements, feared for his own existence. He had delighted to control so powerful a race, and desired them to live to practice their abominations and continue their rebellion against the Ruler of heaven. He now uttered imprecations against God, [100] charging him with injustice and cruelty. Many of the people, like Satan, blasphemed God, and had they been able, they would have torn him from the throne of power. Others were frantic with fear, stretching their hands toward the ark and pleading for admittance. But their entreaties were in vain. Conscience was at last aroused to know that there is a God who ruleth in the heavens. They called upon him earnestly, but his ear was not open to their cry. In that terrible hour they saw that the transgression of God’s law had caused their ruin. Yet while, through fear of punishment, they acknowledged their sin, they felt no true contrition, no abhorrence of evil. They would have returned to their defiance of heaven, had the judgment been removed. So when God’s judgments shall fall upon the earth before its deluge by fire, the impenitent will know just where and what their sin is—the despising of his holy law. Yet they will have no more true repentance than did the old-world sinners.

The most wonderful thing of all about the cross is that it reveals the love of God to us. It is not surprising that Paul should say to the Romans, "God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." How do we see the love of God in the cross? Ah, says the modern man, I see it in this way, that though man rejected and murdered the Son of God, God in His love still says, "All right, I still forgive you. Though you have done that to My Son, I still forgive you." Yes, that is part of it, but it is the smallest part of it. That is not the real love of God. God was not a passive spectator of the death of His Son. That is how the moderns put it - that God in heaven looked down upon it all, saw men killing His own Son, and said, "All right, I will still forgive you." But it was not we who brought God's Son to the cross. It was God. It was the predeterminate counsel and foreknowledge of God. If you really want to know what the love of God means, read what Paul wrote to the Romans: "For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh." God condemned sin in the flesh of His own Son. This is the love of God. Read again Isaiah 53, that wonderful prophecy of what happened on Calvary's hill. You notice how he goes on repeating it: "Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows... it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief." These are the terms. And they are nothing but a plain, factual description of what happened on the cross.

JANUARY 29 Colossians 3:15-17 Offering Thanks Do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks.   COLOSSIANS 3:17 IN WORD   Hebrews 12:28 says that gratitude is an acceptable offering to God. Why? Because it acknowledges who He is better than any other attitude. It recognizes that He is a Blesser, a Giver, and a Redeemer of incomparable worth. Gratitude sees God as He is. Gratitude especially sees God accurately when it sees Him through Jesus. After all, the Incarnation was God’s plan to make Himself visible to human eyes. It was His aggressive strategy to make Himself accessible to sinners in need of salvation. Jesus is the ultimate act of God in this world. For the early church, Jesus quickly became the identity of the believer. Paul, for example, saw himself to be crucified with Him, buried with Him, raised up with Him, exalted with Him, seated in heavenly places with Him, and united with Him forever. When someone is that identified with his Redeemer, the attitude of his heart becomes a clear statement of the Redeemer’s worth. If gratitude isn’t there, the Redeemer isn’t worth much to that person. If we value Jesus as our identity, we will be exceedingly grateful for what He means to us. IN DEED   You may faithfully make offerings of money and time, but what are you offering God with your attitude? Is it an acceptable offering, declaring His worth accurately? Or does it underestimate His value in your life by neglecting the thankfulness due Him? Or were you even aware that the attitudes of your heart are, whether you mean it or not, a statement about Him and an offering to Him? Watch your heart carefully. Whatever fills it will soon dominate your life and experience. With that in mind, let thankfulness flow from within as a sacrifice to God. Insist that your heart make statements of truth about your Redeemer, acknowledging the enormous sacrifice He made in order to offer you enormous glory. Recognize the salvation—the utterly complete, comprehensive salvation—that now defines your life. Whatever you do, do it in His name with thanks for who He is. The best way to show my gratitude to God is to accept everything, even my problems, with joy. —Mother Teresa

BEING God is. That is the primordial fact. It is in order that we may discover this fact for ourselves, by direct experience, that we exist. The final end and purpose of every human being is the unitive knowledge of God’s being. What is the nature of God’s being? The invocation to the Lord’s Prayer gives us the answer. “Our Father which art in heaven.” God is, and is ours—immanent in each sentient being, the life of all lives, the spirit animating every soul. But this is not all. God is also the transcendent Creator and Law-Giver, the Father who loves and, because He loves, also educates His children. And finally, God is “in heaven.” That is to say, He possesses a mode of existence which is incommensurable and incompatible with the mode of existence possessed by human beings in their natural, unspiritualized condition. Because He is ours and immanent, God is very close to us. But because He is also in heaven, most of us are very far from God. The saint is one who is as close to God as God is close to him. It is through prayer that men come to the unitive knowledge of God. But the life of prayer is also a life of mortification, of dying to self. It cannot be otherwise; for the more there is of self, the less there is of God. Our pride, our anxiety, our lusts for power and pleasure are God-eclipsing things. So too is that greedy attachment to certain creatures which passes too often for unselfishness and should be called, not altruism, but alter-egoism. And hardly less God-eclipsing is the seemingly self-sacrificing service which we give to any cause or ideal that falls short of the divine. Such service is always idolatry, and makes it impossible for us to worship God as we should, much less to know Him. God’s kingdom cannot come unless we begin by making our human kingdoms go. Not only the mad and obviously evil kingdoms, but also the respectable ones—the kingdoms of the scribes and pharisees, the good citizens and pillars of society, no less than the kingdoms of the publicans and sinners. God’s being cannot be known by us, if we choose to pay our attention and our allegiance to something else, however creditable that something else may seem in the eyes of the world.

All right, then. While it might be beyond her power to stop desiring him entirely, she didn’t have to let him control the attraction. In her years of dreaming of him--the admittedly chaste dreams of a virgin--she had been in control, making him burn and yearn, making him regret that he’d ever put her aside. Perhaps it was time to fulfill those dreams. She opened her eyes to find him watching her with a heavy-lidded gaze that promised all manner of sensual pleasures if she would just give herself over to him. She would make him keep that promise…but without giving up herself. Edwin would undoubtedly disapprove of this dalliance, but just now she didn’t care. Dom was about to learn that she wouldn’t be ruled by him or any other man. Looping her arms about his neck, she rose up on tiptoe to kiss his mouth. This time she was the one to instigate the duel of tongues and lips that sent her senses reeling. This time she was the one in control. Until Dom pulled down her bodice and corset and shift to bare her breasts. Oh, sweet Lord in heaven. He was more wicked--and more wonderful at this--than even she could have imagined. But she could be wicked, too. Remembering what Nancy had told her about men, she reached down between them to cup the hard length of him through his trousers. He jerked back. “What are you doing?” How wonderful to be the one to shock him! Though she noticed he didn’t step away or pull her hand off him. And his flesh seemed to grow beneath her very fingers. “Don’t you like it?” she said in what she hoped was a sultry-sounding voice. “Good God, yes.” He practically groaned the words. “But where the blazes did you learn to do it?” “Nancy said men like to be touched…down there.” “Wonderful. Now the sinner is instructing the saint,” he muttered before he took her mouth again, giving her no chance to protest that she wasn’t as saintly as he assumed. But clearly he’d guessed because he leaned into her hand, letting her fully explore the male appendage that Nancy had only described in furtive whispers. To Jane’s delight, the more she rubbed him through his trousers, the more his kiss changed, grew bolder, hotter, fiercer. How delicious! They had certainly never done anything like this in their youth. Perhaps if they had, he wouldn’t have been so content to toss her aside. It was definitely making her ignite. Or perhaps it was his hands roaming her body doing that. Whichever the case, an unfamiliar ache began between her legs that made her want to squirm. So she focused on caressing him with renewed vigor, hoping to regain control over this…insanity. He grabbed her hand to still it. She tore her mouth from his. “What? Am I doing it wrong?” “If you do it any more right, I will embarrass myself.” He fixed her with a dark stare. “Or perhaps that’s what you want. Another way to torture me.” “I don’t know what you mean. Am I doing it right or am I torturing you? Which is it?” He searched her face, then, apparently satisfied with what he saw there, smiled faintly. “Both.” Taking her by surprise, he dripped onto the pianoforte bench and tugged her across his lap. “Here, I’ll show you.” As he drew her skirts up to her knees, she froze. “I don’t know if this is…such a good idea, Dom.” “Oh, trust me, it’s a fine idea.” He smoothed his hands up her stockings and past her garters until he came to her drawers. “Before you go running off to seal your ‘arrangement’ with Blakeborough, you should at least have a taste of passion. Just so you’ll know how important it really is.” Pressing his mouth to her ear, he added, “Men aren’t the only ones who like to be touched there, sweeting.