Personal Declension - Octavious Winslow

|

"As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?.... Why are thou cast down, O my soul? and why are thou disquieted within me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God." Psalm 42.
If there is one consideration more humbling than another to a spiritually-minded believer, it is, that, after all God has done for him, - after all the rich displays of his grace, the patience and tenderness of his instructions, the repeated discipline of his covenant, the tokens of love received, and the lessons of experience learned, there should still exist in the heart a principle, the tendency of which is to secret, perpetual, and alarming departure from God. Truly, there is in this solemn fact, that which might well lead to the deepest self-abasement before Him.
If, in the present early stage of our inquiry into this subject, we might be permitted to assign a cause for the growing power which this latent, subtle principle is allowed to exert in the soul, we would refer to the believer's constant forgetfulness of the truth, that there is no essential element in divine grace that can secure it from the deepest declension; that, if left to its self-sustaining energy, such are the hostile influences by which it is surrounded, such the severe assaults to which it is exposed, and such the feeble resistance it is capable of exerting, there is not a moment - splendid though its former victories may have been - in which the incipient and secret progress of declension may not have commenced and be going forward in the soul! ........................
We must here, however, guard a precious and important truth; viz., the indestructible nature of true grace. Divine grace in the soul never really die; true faith can never utterly and finally fail. We are speaking now but of their decay. A flower may droop, and yet live: a plant may be sickly, and yet not die. In the lowest stage of spiritual declension, in the feeblest state of grace, there is a life that never dies. In the midst of all his startings aside, the ebb and the flow, the wandering and the restoring, the believer in Jesus is "kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation." He cannot utterly fall; he cannot finally be lost. The immutability of God keeps him, - the indwelling of the Spirit keeps him, and keeps him to eternal glory. We say, then, true grace is indestructible grace; it can never die.......

Excerpts from Octavious Winslow's "Personal Declension and Revival of Religion in the Soul"

Free Christian Calendars 2010 and Free Christian Planners 2010:
Free Calendars 2010 and Planners 2010:

Other Free Christian Bookmarks Templates:

Free Christian Cards Templates:
Free Homemade Bookmarks, Calendars 2010 and other Crafts Websites:

Words that will help you find this page/website:
Free Christian Bookmarks, Download Christian Homemade Bookmarks Templates, Christian Bookmarks with Bible verses, Free religious bookmarks, bookmark templates christian, free christian bookmark templates, Christian homemade crafts, printable 2010 christian calendar, christian planner 2010

Books available at Amazon.com

Books available at Amazon.com

Words that will help you to find this website : Encouragements for Christian / Christian encouragements / Encouragements Quotes / Poem encouraging believers / Christian encouragement quotes / simple Christian sermons on encouragement / christian encouragements / biblical sermon on encouragement / Christian bookmark templates / Christian cards / Christian poems /2010 2011 Christian calendar template / Free printable Bible quotes / Free encouraging sermons / Biblical verse of encouragement for the believers and sermons / Free Christian encouraging images / Free christian encouraging pictures / Christian encouragements phrases

 

©2009 Believers Encouragements | Template Blue by TNB