Category Pressing Issues

If not pagan, if not Muslim, if not ‘new age’, could it be Christian?

RC by any chance? Or Protestant?

Is it Old Testament oriented – New Testament oriented?

Is it modern? Is it mystical? Is it musical?

Is it streamlined? Is it candle-lit?

Is it public? Is it organized? Is it private?

Is it physical? Is it emotional? Is it spiritual?

Is it Real?

     Worship Dilemma

At the dawn of history

Two brothers worship their Creator – one doesn’t want to know about sin and condemnation. He offers his own ‘worthiness’. The other one, deeply aware of his total unworthiness and guilt, by faith offers a “lamb” and sheds its blood as an ‘atonement’. God Himself responds and gives testimony that this worship is accepted, whereas his brother’s is rejected (Hb. 11:4).

     ...

A Letter from Hudson Taylor (out in China with the Mission he Founded) to his Sister Amelia in England

(slightly adjusted to modern English, with Bible references added).

Chinkiang, October 17th, 1869.

My Dear Sister,

So many thanks for your long letter… I do not think you have written me such a letter since we have been in China. I know it is with you as with me — it is not that you will not, rather that you cannot. Mind and body will not bear more than a certain amount of strain, or do more than a certain amount of work. As to work, mine was never so plentiful, so responsible, or so difficult; but the weight and strain are all gone. The last month or more has been, perhaps, the happiest of my life and I long to tell you a little of what the Lord has done for my soul...

by David Tryon

“To will is present with me;
but how to perform that which is good I find not”
(Romans 7:18).

This is the cry from the heart of many a disappointed, defeated, disheartened, and troubled Christian. The beginning of the Christian pathway was so bright. He looks back to the time when he received the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior. He rejoiced in the joy of knowing that his sins were forgiven; a great burden was lifted from his heart; he was filled with love for his newly-found Savior. It seemed then that he would never want to sin again, that nothing could be simpler than to live always in the power of this new joy. But this did not last...

A testimony:

“About two years after I had begun my Christian life I was trying very hard to do all the things which preachers said I was meant to do. But nothing seemed to be working, and although I knew God had forgiven me, I was thoroughly frustrated and miserable. At that point someone gave me a little booklet by David Tryon called The Vine and the Branches, and within a few hours I was relaxed and again trusting God to work in and through me.”

Robert Brow.

by  David Tryon

There are many Christians, struggling to live the Christian life, who have never discovered where the strength to live that life is to be found...