When I think about those years, when I considered myself a Christian, yet did whatever I felt like without any conviction..I shudder at the thought of being in that state again....alive to this world but dead to God. As Watchman Nee observed, sin, with all it's repuslive grotesqueness revealed to us, is still not the worst thing a sinner can face in this world...sin's hateful plague can be remedied at the cross, but spiritual deadness, as long as it's blindness and hardness remains, is a truly comfortless, accursed, and damnable condition.
Therefore I am so thankful for the piercing conviction of the Holy Spirit! If conviction should ever fade in our lives, on any sin we are faced with, we should run back without haste to the place we last felt it and plead with God for his forgiveness for our hard heartedness before it is too late.
When the conviction of the Holy Spirit leaves, so has His comfort. Then the only comfort we will find is pleasure and indulgement...even as we maintain our religous exterious we can be dead and hollow on the inside. This is the general condition of the worldy American church today...a once mighty oak still standing, but is scretly hollow of Christ's life, it's dark hidden interior is the damp feeding ground for untold crawing parasite sins...and when the wind blows she will fall mightily.
Many carnal people mistake conviction for condemnation, righteousness for legalism, and worst of all...adversity for abandonment. Hypocrites fear the wind of adversity, because they know that their exterior needs calm weather to stay intact. They may be towering over other men, but they know they are hollow on the inside, standing without inward integrity. So the Lord will allow the wind to blow and snap them open and reveal the rottenness inside...if that day comes before the Great Judgement, there is mercy on that man! If that man cries out for forgiveness, he may lose the religous stature he valued in the congregation but he will find the salvation of his soul!
Praise God who breaks our pride and reveals to us our true condition before the last Judgement... who preserves our life among the living, and doesn't allow our feet to be moved. For you, God, have tested us. You have refined us, as silver is refined. You brought us into prison. You laid a burden on our backs. You allowed men to ride over our heads. We went through fire and through water, but you brought us to the place of abundance.
MC
