What is happening there in the spiritual deeps beyond the veil of what men can see? To grieve the Holy Spirit of God: this is language that startles me and captures my attention. To even hear that it is possible forces me into a closer inspection with timidity and a furled brow. To then learn it is by reason of my own activity, because of the wrath of the creature, the disobedience of the forgiven, my own indifference and disregard for the sacred in my adulteries, is heart stopping. It is a travailing concept that my fragile mind doesn't quite know how to bring forth. It only pains in vanity. The Creator in some sense wounded by the creature? What has God communicated to us here in our own language of grief regarding transcendent things of Himself that we do not yet grasp? What does He still subject Himself to on my behalf? What does it sound like when eternity groans? Does it have a sound? Do the heavens convulse? Is time and space pulled taunt and briefly strained between the divergent excellencies of his eternal compassions and perfect justice? Though I falter to apprehend, I gain the wisdom of fear.  
    It is my opinion that apathy kills a professor of Christ quicker than any other rot. To escape the torments of an eternal fire may be the highest deterrent of rebellion in unregenerate men, but for the bride and lover of Christ, it is His love that constrains us, not His wrath. An unregenerate professor may fear God as an animal fears a larger predator and then feels safe again when he thinks he is separated by a great distance. He remains indifferent to the threat until he senses the predator's return, and only then returns to his guard.
    The bride however, fears the strains and griefs of wounded love. Distance does not make any difference with her. If anything, she is all the more absorbed in her thoughts of the one she loves when she senses His perceived distance. There is anything but apathy. What should strike through her heart with greater terror than any external through of personal safety is the fear that she might offend, wound, and grieve Him who died and gave all to draw her with cords of love and rescue her. She is consumed by the thought of His power and love and majesty. Thus, if His sacred head was once wounded of devils and rebels, and it still causes her tears, how much more is she undone if she be the cause of wounding a sacred heart?
    A mother would throw herself to the dogs to protect her young baby. A father would starve himself to death if it meant the difference of providing for his own household who is precious to him. Lover will brave any storm and any threat for the one whom their souls hunger for. Here it is the same, the bride would rather suffer any other physical torment than the torment of the knowledge that she grieved the one she loved most. This careful fear constrains her activities.The unregenerate professor, in the mean time, dies of apathy. The lion gets him after all, in the day and in the hour when he least expects it. He is caught off guard and drug down into the pit. 
    Kept in the love of God, the smitten bride lives forever, for love is as strong as death. And just as death was not sufficient to keep her from the one she loved while she lived, it will not be sufficient to keep her from Him afterward. To live is Christ, to die is gain. Her Husband passed over that gulf already for her, now she will pass over in Him. If He guarantees her safe passage, she need not fear the fires beneath, her only concern is Him.
    Dear children of the light, keep yourselves in the love of God. Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouths, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers. Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God.   

"And I will utter my judgments against them touching all their wickedness, who have forsaken me, and have burned incense unto other gods, and worshipped the works of their own hands."
-Jeremiah 1:16

"He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool: but whoso walketh wisely, he shall be delivered."
-Proverbs 28:26
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"Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ." 
-Colossians 2:8

  It is common Christian teaching that idols can be and are deceptive. They are not always enveloped in shrines of gold and surrounded by candles that announce what they are. The danger of the idol is that the offense and the sin of it all does not lie so much in the thing itself, but in the heart that worships it. It is in the heart of man that the power and sin of the idol is to be found. The stones, wood, and senses of this world all serve their purposes daily without being abused beyond the intended scope and eventually will perish with use. They are not pagan in their own condition, only finite. Wherever we have a longing, a hunger, or a dependence upon that which was intended for The Eternal Living God to supply, we have supplied an idol it's pagan status. 

    Thus anything can become an idol if the heart yields and assigns it that status. This is bad news for a people who's heart is deceitful. As John Calvin once said: ​

      There is one idol today in particular that I see which seems to stand almost completely unopposed in the Christian churches of America. When you first hear of it, it may not convince you immediately for the devil that it is, but this, I believe, only adds to it's subtlety and consequently, its danger. The idol of human sentimentality is enjoying great sway over it's adherents...

    I mean this. American Christianity has almost exclusively become religious sentimentality, and the god of this new relevant religion, the very god that is now worshipped across the nation, is sentimentalism. This culture loves and reverences nothing higher than its own feelings of tenderness, sadness, and nostalgia. Every tear is self-indulgent. Whether it is the sentimental stories that dominate our sermon illustrations or the talent show that precedes the message, we look for something to invoke and stir up our own emotions.  We look for worship experiences to be a sort of theatrical performance that provoke the inner parts of our own human senses and cause feelings, emotions, and imaginations to swell towards the surface where we can then experience it and appreciate it for our own sake. So called Christ followers will look high and low, search far and wide, and jump church to church to find the emotionally charged atmosphere that satisfies their longing as nothing else can do. Without this euphoria, the experience is said to be dry, hollow, unfulfilling, and not conducive to "good" worship. Of course, for those such as these, the "worship experience" will always be unfulfilling when the tender sentiments of human emotion are not played upon and made the target of the experience. This begs the question, Who exactly is being worshipped again? Meanwhile, the Crucified Lord of Creation bids us come, to take up our cross, die to self, and follow Him into the crucified life, that we might then worship the Father in Spirit and in Truth. Today, that particular call seems more despised by the new relevant religious than the atheist, and is therefore largely ignored... 

    Do I advocate for stoicism? Am I at war with any display of feelings? No not at all, quite the opposite actually. Jeremiah wept in his service to The Lord, John The Baptist raised his voice unto his generation. The Church in Acts knew little of stoicism. What I am saying is that they also knew little of sensationalism and mere sentimentality. The worship did not have to be hyped up or synthetically energized by leveraging carnal emotions. The Spirit of God moved these men, not only to tears, but to obedience, and martyrdom. Not by the flesh, but by the Spirit. I am advocating that the emotion of a man may be, and often is a genuine byproduct of The Spirit's moving; but it can never be the means nor the WAY into God's presence. If you come some other way than Spirit and Truth, you will come to some other god. THAT is idolatry, and this is how subtle it is.

"16 For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day. 17 For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; 18 While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal." -2 Corinthians 4:16-18

"21 For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain." -Phil.1:21

1 Corinthians 13:13
13 And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.
2 Peter 1:7
7 And to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity.
Hebrews 13
1 Let brotherly love continue.


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“The spirit of Christianity is a spirit of love. Faith works by love. The true religion is the strongest bond of friendship; if it be not so, it has its name for nothing.”
– Matthew Henry
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Regarding Spiritual Maturity, in the running of this race so as to obtain masteries, the highest order of the Christian is the one who is mastering the sacred art of Love.
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    Saints that have been perfected are those Saints in whom this love has grown to the highest degree and been thoroughly perfected. Love covers a multitude of sins. They wield love as a mighty weapon of grace and are able to melt through the greatest barriers of sin and flesh. Love disarms the devices of Satan, and disposes strongholds, all with a meek disposition. They deflect ungodly thoughts and imaginations with ease, for love thinketh no evil. And because love is not puffed up, nor arrogant, nor proud, then the measure of our love thus becomes the measure of our humility.

    Some have sought to grow in humility as a goal. This is a virtuous and honorable pursuit to which every child of God ought to attend. But, any attempt to grow upward in humility apart from first deepening the wellspring of the love that supplies it is vain. It is like putting a higher structure upon a yet shallow foundation for which it was not suited. It will only appear to stand until the winds of trial and testing bring it down with embarrassment to the builder. Until you first have a genuine and a real love, a sensitive care and thoughtful affection, a sacrificial burden for the brethren who you interact with, how can you even begin to consider others as better than yourself? Deepen the wellspring of the hidden love of the heart first, and where ever you lack, seek out the Helper, because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us. And we will find that from the heart flow all the issues of life. As Wesley said: “As is the measure of love, so is the measure of humility.”

    One day we will see all the saints perfected in this. One day the meek shall inherit the Earth; and oh what a gentle sphere it shall become when that happens!  Even now, when the bonds of brotherly love are become strong, when Christian affection is real, when the blood of the covenant does indeed flow thicker than the water of the womb, then, even here, we can know something of heaven on Earth ourselves.
    Is this not the blessed fellowship for which we long? Is this not what the Christ, who has made us partakers of the divine nature has equipped us for, and called us to? Didn’t Christ give commandment concerning our love for one another?​

    Well I can certainly say that things are as busy now as they ever were. In less than a month, we will be landing in Manila again as we did almost exactly one year ago (for those who can remember), with a couple notable differences. Last year I went as a guest speaker, sent by a loose fellowship of brothers and sisters who had themselves just become without an official home church. This same fellowship of believers, who then helped provide the first means to be able to go, are largely the same group of believers that now represent Christ Evangel Christian Fellowship, and are enabling me yet again to labor, though not as a guest speaker, but as the Assistant Director of the Missions Organization. My, how much of a difference a year can make. CECF is now a participating and active partner in FLM, a sister church to Christ Bible Church of California, and is currently growing in an evangelistic partnership with Mt.Zion and Chapel Library. All of this can only be explained by God's rich and unlimited grace. " Grace! Grace! God's Grace! Grace that is greater than all our sin!" ​