“The current emphasis on inclusion and accepting those who are different to us to have a harmonious society could make those who hold to the absolute uniqueness of Christ and the horror of lostness look like uncharitable and arrogant people… …We must learn how to live an evangelistic life with both humility and boldness.”
“The current emphasis in counselling on sensitivity to people’s feelings could make insistence on dogged obedience to the biblical lifestyle (even when it goes against our feelings) look like a violation of people’s human needs and rights.”
“The current trivialisation of sex and emphasis on the right to satisfy our sexual desires could cause us to be accomodating of premarital sex, adultery, and practising homosexual relations. What we once described as temptations to avoid we are now regarding as human rights that need to be satisfied.”
“The current emphasis on the final state being a perfected earth may result in us losing sight of the transcendent glory of heaven with our sweet and awesome occupation of worshipping God. One of the great ambitions of my life is the glorious prospect of spending eternity rejoicing and in communion with the One who died for me. That motivates me today to pay the price of service to others”.
“We must not let necessary earthly concerns cloud out those serious eternal concerns from our lives….If we neglect basic gospel truths, we could lose our vision of the gospel as the only means of bringing lost people to salvation and to entry into the kingdom of God…We could be lured into the trap of neglecting the challenging and unpopular work of evangelism.”
“After salvation, our goal in life is to ‘strive for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord’ (Heb. 12:14). I once did a count and found that 1400 of the 2005 verses in Paul’s Epistles are related to the life of holiness. That’s about 70% of the verses. Do we give a similar emphasis to holiness in our preaching, teaching, and conversations?”
“May our hearts always burn with a passion for the lost, and may our programmes always be driven by a desire to bring people to meet the Saviour and pursue a biblical lifestyle of holiness?” (Ajith Fernando, Director of Youth for Christ in Sri Lanka)
I find that what is shared by brother Ajith is full of practical godly wisdom, particularly in this current age we are living in as believers. It is truly a breath of fresh air to help us realise how we ought to live in this age when the ‘pressures’ of the culture and thinking of the present age could easily dilute our convictions and cause us to forget the most important things in our Christian life and neglect focussing on what truly matters in the eyes of our Lord and God.