“Is it not your inner cravings that make war within your members?” —James 4:1

Our inner cravings (Jas 4:1) for pleasures (Jas 4:3) and our prideful (Jas 4:6) friendship with the world (Jas 4:4) are the origins of the conflicts and disputes in our lives and in this world (Jas 4:1). “Therefore submit to God; resist the devil and he will take flight. Draw close to God, and He will draw close to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; purify your hearts, you backsliders. Begin to lament, to mourn, and to weep; let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy into sorrow. Be humbled in the sight of the Lord and He will raise you on high” (Jas 4:7-10).
This is not only the message for Lent next week, but also for life. “We lived at the level of the flesh, following every whim and fancy, and so by nature deserved God’s wrath like the rest” (Eph 2:3), but “those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified their flesh with its passions and desires” (Gal 5:24). By God’s grace and only by God’s grace, we must “put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the desires of the flesh” (Rm 13:14). “You are not to spend what remains of your earthly life on human desires but on the will of God. Already you have devoted enough time to what the pagans enjoy” (1 Pt 4:2-3).

Prayer: Jesus, if You set me free, I will truly be free (Jn 8:36).
Promise: “If anyone wishes to rank first, he must remain the last one of all and the servant of all.” —Mk 9:35
Praise: For several decades, Linda has spent several weeks each summer organizing evangelistic missions to bring Jesus to rural Appalachia through the Legion of Mary.

February 25, 2014 by dgcree

There is a time to be born and a time to die

A sermon on Ecclesiastes
by St Gregory of Nyssa
[ c.330 – 395 A.D. ]

There is a time to be born and a time to die. God grant that mine may be a timely birth and a timely death! Of course no one imagines that the Speaker regards as acts of virtue our natural birth and death, in neither of which our own will plays any part. A woman does not give birth because she chooses to do so; neither does anyone die as a result of his own decision. Obviously, there is neither virtue nor vice in anything that lies beyond our control. So we must consider what is meant by a timely birth and a timely death.There is a time to be born and a time to die. The fact that there is a natural link between birth and death is expressed very clearly in this text of Scripture. Death invariably follows birth, and everyone who is born comes at last to the grave.
It seems to me that the birth referred to here is our salvation, as is suggested by the prophet Isaiah. This reaches its full term and is not stillborn when, having been conceived by the fear of God, the soul’s own birth pangs bring it to the light of day. We are in a sense our own parents, and we give birth to ourselves by our own free choice of what is good. Such a choice becomes possible for us when we have received God into ourselves and have become children of God, children of the Most High. On the other hand, if what the Apostle calls the form of Christ has not been produced in us, we abort ourselves. The man of God must reach maturity.
Now if the meaning of a timely birth is clear, so also is the meaning of a timely death. For Saint Paul every moment was a time to die, as he proclaims in his letters: I swear by the pride I take in you that I face death every day. Elsewhere he says, For your sake we are put to death daily and we felt like men condemned to death.
How Paul died daily is perfectly obvious. He never gave himself up to a sinful life but kept his body under constant control. He carried death with him, Christ’s death, wherever he went. He was always being crucified with Christ. It was not his own life he lived; it was Christ who lived in him. This surely was a timely death-a death whose end was true life.
I put to death and I shall give life, God says, teaching us that death to sin and life in the Spirit is his gift, and promising that whatever he puts to death he will restore to life again.